Most travel journals are kept for three days. Day one is written on the flight, full of intent. Day two is shorter. By day four the trip has taken over, and the journal comes home with four entries and a boarding pass tucked into the back.
This is not a failure of will. It is a badly designed system. The standard idea of a travel journal, sitting down each evening to write a full account of the day, competes directly with the trip itself, and the trip wins. A method that survives has to cost almost nothing while you are travelling and do its real work afterwards.
Here is one that works.
Why trips disappear
A holiday compresses in memory faster than ordinary life, and it compresses unevenly. What survives without a record is the highlights, which are also the parts you photographed, which are also the parts you will remember anyway.
What vanishes is everything else. The temperature. What the room smelt like. The argument on day three. What things cost. The name of the man who ran the guesthouse. The two hours in a bus station that felt endless and later became the funniest part of the trip.
A travel journal is not for recording the Taj Mahal. Photographs do that better. It is for the bus station.
While you are travelling: three lines, not three pages
The rule is that during the trip you never write more than you can finish standing up.
Once a day, ideally not at night when you are tired, write three lines:
- Where you physically were. Place names, in order. "Bhuj, then the road to Hodka, then salt flats till dark."
- One thing you can still see when you close your eyes. A single image, described physically. Not "beautiful sunset" but "white ground, no horizon, a man cycling across it."
- One thing that was annoying, boring or went wrong. This is the line that makes the entry honest, and it is invariably the line you enjoy most later.
Three lines takes ninety seconds. It fits in a queue, on a train, in the ten minutes before dinner arrives. A trip journalled this way is complete rather than abandoned, and complete beats eloquent every time.
If you have more time and want it, add a fourth line: what things cost today. Prices are the detail that dates a trip most precisely and the one nobody remembers.
What to collect as you go
Paper picked up during a trip does half the work of writing and takes none of the effort. Keep a pocket or an envelope at the back of the diary and put things in it.
- Train and bus tickets, particularly the ones with the class and the fare printed on them
- Entry tickets to monuments and museums
- Restaurant bills, which record both what you ate and what it cost
- Hotel key cards, luggage tags, boarding passes
- A pressed leaf or flower, which works better than it sounds and takes a day to dry between pages
- Anything with a local script on it, however mundane
Do not stick these in while travelling. Adhesive and a moving bag are a bad combination. Collect loose, sort at home.
The specifics of travelling in India
Some things are worth writing down here that would not be worth writing anywhere else.
Train journeys. The most journal-worthy hours of any Indian trip and the ones most often skipped because they feel like transit rather than travel. Write the coach, the berth, who was in the compartment, what was sold in the aisle and at what hour. Long-distance trains are a moving record of a country and they are extremely hard to remember afterwards.
Food, by name. Not "we had a thali" but which region's thali, what was in the katoris, and whether it was better than the one two days earlier. Regional food changes faster than architecture and it is the thing you will most want to look up later.
The heat and the rain. Note the actual conditions, not the season. Forty-one degrees at three in the afternoon in Kutch is a fact that shapes an entire day's memory. Monsoon travel especially: what got wet, what dried, what you gave up on.
Language. Write down phrases you heard and did not understand, spelled how they sounded. Half of them are recoverable later and each one anchors a place.
Craft and cloth. If you are travelling through Kutch, Bhuj, Jaipur or Bagru, write down what you saw being made and by whom. Our notes on natural dyes of India and Bandhani may help you name what you are looking at while you are still there.
People, with permission. Names and details of people who helped you. This is the category travellers most regret not recording, and the one that is completely unrecoverable.
What to write after you get home
This is where a travel journal becomes worth keeping, and it is the step almost everyone skips.
Within a week of returning, while it is still close, sit down properly once and write four things.
The full route. Every place, in order, with dates. Ten minutes of work and it becomes the index for everything else.
The day you would repeat. One day, written out at length, in detail. Not the most spectacular day. The one that was best. Everyone has one and it is rarely the obvious candidate.
What you got wrong. What you overpacked, what you booked badly, where you allowed too little time, what you would skip. This is the entry that makes your next trip better, and it is the only genuinely practical thing in a travel journal.
What changed. One honest paragraph. Sometimes the answer is nothing, and writing "nothing changed, it was simply a good week" is a legitimate and rather good entry.
Then stick in the tickets. Then close it.
If you want a sense of what a trip looks like written up properly rather than logged, our Passage essays on a day at the edge of the Rann, the light of Jaipur and a fortnight in Banff are all built from exactly this kind of note.
What not to do
- Do not buy a dedicated travel journal with printed prompts. Boxes marked "favourite meal" and "best moment" produce dutiful, forgettable answers. A plain diary produces better writing.
- Do not try to write it all at night. You are tired, and the entry you owe yourself grows every day you miss until the debt is large enough to abandon.
- Do not write for an audience. The moment a travel journal is written to be read aloud, it becomes a caption reel.
- Do not carry anything you would be upset to lose. Bags get soaked, left in autos and rained on. Carry something you like and can replace.
- Do not photograph instead of writing. They record opposite things. You will have four hundred photographs and no idea what any of the days felt like.
The kit
Small, and less than you think.
One diary, A5 or smaller, that fits in the bag you actually carry rather than the one in the hold. A cover that tolerates being handled with dusty hands; cotton and board do this better than a coated finish, which shows every mark. An elastic or a tie closure matters more on a trip than at home, because a loose book in a bag opens and creases.
One pen, not three, and not your good one.
Our Katha Fabric Diary is built around this: a block-print cotton cover over smooth paper, light enough to carry, and it slips into the front pocket of the Ikat Tote so it is reachable without unpacking. If you are packing for a wedding or a longer trip, our guide to packing ethnic wear without creasing covers the rest of the bag, and our travel essentials list covers the vanity and hair kit.
The diary and tote described above are both part of our handcrafted accessories edit, made for exactly this kind of daily carrying.
Shop AccessoriesFrequently asked questions
How do I keep a travel journal without it taking over the trip?
Write three lines a day while travelling: where you were, one image you can still see, and one thing that went wrong. Do the longer writing in the week after you return, not during the trip.
What should I write in a travel journal?
The things photographs do not capture. Prices, smells, heat, delays, the names of people who helped, what you ate and what it was called. Skip descriptions of famous sights; those are already recorded.
Should I write in a travel journal every day?
Yes, but briefly. A short daily entry beats a detailed one every third day, because the gaps are what cause people to abandon the journal entirely.
What size journal is best for travel?
A5 or smaller, so it fits the bag you carry rather than the one you check in. A closure of some kind is worth having, and a cover that can be handled with dusty hands.
What do I write after a trip is over?
Four things: the full route with dates, one day written out at length, what you would do differently, and one honest paragraph on whether anything changed.
Is it worth keeping a paper travel journal when I have my phone?
They record different things. A phone captures images and locations automatically. Paper captures what a day felt like, which nothing else will do for you.
Related reading
- What to write in a diary: 40 things worth recording
- How to choose a diary: size, paper, binding and cover
- How to pack ethnic wear without creasing
- Salt and indigo: a day at the edge of the Rann
See the Katha Fabric Diary in twenty block-print covers, or the Ikat Tote it travels in.
