Travel Diaries

Travel diaries used to be kept by every RTW backpacker worth their salt. I’m not sure why exactly, maybe we all want to be travel writers or work for Lonely Planet when we grow up, if we grow up. I did it, my husband did it and I’m sure that if you’ve ever backpacked you did it too.

I’d love to find the travel diaries from when we first met in Egypt!

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.

         Oscar Wilde

They store memories, document experiences and just kill time. There is an awful lot of time to fill when you’re travelling long term, waiting for connections, spending days on trains, filling empty evenings and hot sticky afternoons when the heat drives you indoors.

First time around, 12 years ago, we didn’t travel with computers, blackberrys, ipads and other gadgetry, just books to read and diaries to write. I think that is possibly a good thing, we all spend far too much time interacting with machines and not enough interacting with real people.

We didn’t even have digital cameras, can you believe that? I was shooting film on a not very fancy pocket camera so there aren’t thousands of photos to record our trip.

I guess these days everybody writes a blog,  that’s why I’ve started blogging already, a bit premature, but I thought we were possibly the only family out there with this crazy idea, I’ve since found we’re not, there are plenty of us and I love reading all the travelling family blogs I’ve found. They offer me inspiration, advice and ideas.

This Time Travel Diaries Take Second Place

I’m travelling with two very important people this time around, my children. There won’t be all that time to fill, they will want my attention and they deserve it. I’ve made a resolution to myself to put them first. It’s very tempting to make the blog the centre of my life at the moment, it’s making money, it feels good to be doing something creative and lucrative after being-just-a-mum for the last 5 years. Money coming in is exciting, but the children have to be my priority. I hate to see people fiddling with phones while their kids go ignored, I’m in danger of turning into one of those people myself, driven by my own selfish needs. They’ll only be kids once and I should be present in body and mind.

I’ve still got those 12 year old travel diaries tucked away somewhere, I had them shipped out to Australia when we emigrated, I’ve never looked at them since the day we arrived home.  If and when I find them, I’ll see if there is anything interesting enough to share with the world, I know there is a lot of financial information in there, I was the trip accountant, obsessively recording costs for food, beer, accommodation and transport, we were on a very strict budget, I think $10/ day for all of the above. There might be some useful information in there to help us plan our trip, jog my memory about great guest houses, remind me where not to go. I have wonderful memories of the whole thing but there probably were some crappy days where I could have killed for my own clean bed, a cup of Earl Grey and a bourbon .

I wonder if the kids will still be able to read this blog in 12 years time?

I’ll let you know when I find them.