Traveling is all about discovering, feeling alive, finding out the truth about yourself, and collecting the most precious memories. You can travel far or near, solo or in a group, go abroad or simply re-discover the beauty of your surroundings.
Everywhere you go you document the things you see, whether you intend to or not. And you feel the natural urge to share what you've seen, experienced and loved. It happens so because the emotions associated with traveling form a great communication platform to socially engage with others. We all do it for our own reasons — some want to impress, some encourage, and some simply love the joy of sharing the same passion as it brings them together to those who are their ultimate social match.
In time we've managed to come up various ways to save and ultimately share travel memories. Obviously the simplest one is saving it in our own heads and then just simply telling the story to the others. With time, however, we've learned to save memories outside our own human hard drive. We've started writing stories down, documenting each step of the journeys with sketches that later turned into pictures that later evolved into Instagram and other picture-altering apps loved by some and ridiculed by others.
We've made it possible to store just about every memory we have externally. What we lack is a truly perfect way to save and share travel memories with those who share our passions in a simple way. Or do we?
1. Simple Storage: Your Brain
It all starts and ends in your head — brain to be more precise. You perceive reality and choose the things (consciously or subconsciously) that end up as your memories. Then you choose again — this time consciously — which memories you want to extract and which ones you want to share. Your brain is a vast vessel capable of saving a lot of information.
The problem is once you want to share the memories that are in your head with others, you may lack the skill, the possibility, or the communication tools to make them feel exactly the same excitement, joy or any other emotion related to your travels that you might want to share. That is why people have started (centuries ago) to document things both verbally and visually. The journeys and travels were the favorite sets of events to be shared.
The good news? Now you have tools galore to choose from. You do not have to rely on your memory to keep everything in place. But you have to rely on your brain to make an informative decision on how you do want to save and share your travel memories.
2. Conservative Saving in Scrapbooking
You can start with a simple old-fashioned scrapbook or a diary. A scrapbook, by nature, is one of the first "multimedia" mediums that allows you to share your experiences with the world. But let's face it, as romantic and cute it may seem, it does not allow you to share it with people that are not in the same room as you.
No matter how you call it — a scrapbook, a family album, a diary, or a journal — in a physical off-line form it does have its limitations. It can be destroyed, it is sometimes incapable of containing all of the memories, and it does only allow limited "range" when it comes to sharing.
3. Document and Publish Memories with a Blog
This might be why so many current travelers embrace the digital. Blogs seem to be a perfect solution — digital means no limits in collecting, saving and sharing all things travel. Theoretically, your pictures could get a nice frame and words can be read by everyone who is online.
Starting a blog is a great thing but manning the blog ship all on your own can be challenging. Internet is democratic — everyone can do it — but not everyone has the time and money to fight in the Google page rank battle. But if you have the time and the energy — you can own blog land before too long.
4. Save and Share with Social Media
Social media was introduced and suddenly we were all given this Holy Grail of sharing capabilities. Want to share your meal or daily inspirations? It's so easy now!
But social media is also a killer way to share AND save those travel memories. They say that things published on the internet are in ink and can never truly be erased. But unfortunately, not everyone will be obsessed with elephants in Bali or snow leopards in Nepal.
That's why we search for the social mediums that cater to people JUST like us with the same interests. Whether that's a forum for Hunger Games districts or a place to share travel memories- we crave to share and feel accepted!
5. Putting it All Together: A Dedicated Platform
There are numerous websites out there where travelers can come together. Some of them are truly about organizing your stay, some are about recommendations and reviews, and some rely on travel industry content that is heavily marketed. But what do YOU need? You need something that combines all of these into one.
One such option is a relatively new project called Travel World Passport. It is known as a framework to save and share travel memories. For bloggers it can be a good tool to reach out to new audiences without paying bucks for AdWords to Google.
For travelers it can be a source of inspiration; and for all, it can be a forum to meet, recommend and discuss. This framework allows you to concentrate on the memories from the perspective of a traveler — your perspective. Like a digital scrapbook, it allows you to finally save and share in the most natural way
Remember, all of this starts in your head and ends up here. But you can decide where you want to go, what you want to save, how you want to save it, and with whom you are willing to share your passions and experiences.
Travel memories have proved to have a long expiration date. After all, we all still recall the infamous trek of Christopher Columbus centuries later. Can you imagine if he had these opportunities to document?
Make sure yours will be remembered for that long, too.
Lara Parker is a blogger for Travel World Passport, a web app designed for those who love to travel and share experiences. It's the ultimate framework to share and save your favorite memories from trips.
