Deeper travel through preparation, photography, journaling, and a creative project.

Context: A Travel Workshop, shared as an essay.

Recently, I’ve been guiding workshops about a way to travel to get the most out of the experience.

I’ve been asked  to share my “facilitator notes.” While I can’t recreate the engaging participant stories or our laughs, I can share the workshop outline and exercises.

I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think: celebratebeautifulcultures@gmail.com

Overview: Level-Up your Travel.

 “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”  – Henry Miller

How can your travel experiences be as personal, creative, and important to you as possible?

This room is full of people committed to building lives of growth and meaning. We all seek out new experiences and keep learning. I want to encourage you to think of your travel time and money as investments in your life. Annie Dillard has the great quote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” That wisdom applies doubly when we are away from routines and in the flexible, open, exploring mindset of travel.  

Travel literally transports us out of our habits and fixed patterns. We surround ourselves with new sights, sounds, and smells. We try new things, talk to different people, and ask new questions. The more attention we give to a trip, the more rewarding that travel can become. We create opportunities to discover something new that we can take back to our daily lives. Attentive travel can act as an accelerant to our personal development and broader life journey.

I am going to share with you a system that maximizes your travel experiences. Our workshop starts with the big question of what you want from your investment of time and money that goes to travel. We then break that down into a planning step before moving into photography and journaling tips. We wrap up the week with tools to create something special that will preserve your memories for the future.

Here are our 5 steps:

1.       Big Picture: investigate what role travel serves in your life.

2.       Preparation: shape a learning agenda to enrich your trip.

3.       Photography: capture authentic moments that remind you of how you felt in the moment.

4.       Journaling: build reflections and preserve memories.

5.       Synthesis: bring it all together in a creative project that you can enjoy and share for years.

You can select from these building blocks and try implementing just one or two steps. Just know that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. For example, your photos will have more resonance if you research what you want to photograph and your journal will add memories that a photo can’t capture. My hope is that you will embrace the full system for your next trip to add more meaning to the experience.

Step 1: The Big Picture. What role does travel play in your life?

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

What role does travel play in your life? None of us have unlimited time and most of us don’t have unlimited money. Where will you go? Why there instead of somewhere else?

Of course, we might choose a location to relax. I am not disparaging the need for leisure. For the purposes of this workshop,  a restorative escape is different from travel.

Greece Example:

Travel, for me, is an opportunity to explore different beliefs. For example, in Crete I experienced an almost casual, daily interaction between locals and lighting church candles. Nowhere else in the world have I had a driver stop and invite me to pop into a church with him to light a candle for our safety. He explained that to pass by a church dedicated specifically to the saint of drivers without lighting a candle was unthinkable. Once I had that clue, I saw a constant flow of people popping into churches in order to spend a brief ~5 minutes for a candle lighting. They were of all ages and this ritual took place at all hours of the day and night. There were couples out for a date, students heading to class and workers before a shift. This glimpse into a different way of living, whether it is a daily candle habit or a large annual festival, are why I travel.

Your answer will be different. Maybe you love food and the experience of new spices and flavors that you can take home? Or you enjoy local crafts and seeing how people make different things, weaving yarn or carving wood? Or the architecture, history, scenery intrigue you? Or a trip might be about reconnecting with your travel partner and creating something together. Your answers will help you create a trip that is more customized and important to you.

Exercises:

a) What was the most memorable trip you have had? Why do you feel connected to it?

b) Zoom out now to the really big picture and explore “why” you travel.

Here is some help with “b,” if it feels like a strange question to answer. There is a business framework called “jobs-to-be-done” (JTBD, since everything in business needs an acronym). Simply, it is an idea that we buy things to solve problems or do “jobs” for us. We have a pot and the “job” for that pot is to hold our food when we heat it on a stove. We choose a book because we want to learn something, or because we want to be entertained. Note that those would be two different “jobs” (entertainment vs. education) and we therefore might then choose different books. The point is to be clear on what “problem” we are solving or what “job” needs to be done. What “job” is travel doing for you?

c) How do you travel most of the time? General group tours? Where your friends want to go or solo? Luxury or local? Describe the type of trips you take most of the time.

d) Is there good alignment between these first three things (a, b, and c)?

We’ll come back together tomorrow to explore step 2, which is about really caring and working on how you prepare for a trip. Continue to think about the purpose of travel in your life. Your answer will inspire the preparation you’ll want to do before you travel next time.

Step 2: Preparation for a trip. Anticipation is half the fun!

“Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of a place is a great reality.” – D.H. Lawrence

We probably all know someone who love to arrive somewhere new without research or bias. Maybe you are one of those people? However, there are folks who miss seeing the Alhambra without arranging tickets far enough in advance or who drive within a few miles of a designated “most beautiful village” in Provence without realizing it exists. Planning pays off, and we are going to be “biased” whether we research or not. We all have impressions and opinions about a place before we go. Let’s start expanding our knowledge and make the most of the delicious phase of anticipation.

A few ideas:

Books: my sense of travel is largely shaped by reading. There are loads of reading lists to inspire you, including a recent NY Times series, “Read your way around the world” if you are lucky enough to be heading somewhere already featured: https://www.nytimes.com/series/literary-guides. Go beyond guide books to explore a country’s great authors or literary accounts from prior travelers.

Classes: an in-person tour company, Context Tours, pivoted during Covid to offer Zoom classes. These seminars are such a hit that Context has continued to offer them, featuring international experts across an expansive breadth of topics, (archaeology, art, cocktails, gardens, politics, traditions, to name just a few). Explore their catalogue and enjoy: https://www.contextlearning.com/collections/seminars.

• Tip: if you find a teacher you love, you can hire them as a guide at your destination.

Movies: can anyone watch Mamma Mia without dreaming of Greece? What films highlight your destination?

Music: type in a location name in any music streaming service and see what you get.

Photography websites: look at images of where you plan to travel. Which ones are you drawn to? Do any spark your interest to develop a “shot list” and plan time around making an image your own?

Restaurants: food reflects culture. Go to a local restaurant featuring your destination’s cuisine. Looking at the menu, tasting the food, what hypothesis can you develop about the role food plays in that culture that might be different from your own?

• Beverages: does your destination have a special drink? Wine? Whisky? Yerba Mate?

Bonus: do any of these preparation ideas give you inspiration for what you will prioritize on your trip?

• For example, if food is a large interest, how about connecting with local foodies on your trip through the organization Eat With (https://www.eatwith.com/).

Step 3: Photography. Capture the moments that are meaningful to you.

“To study and at times put your learning into practice, is that not joy?” – Confucius

Preparing for a trip to Japan, I read a principle of the tea ceremony that happens to express everything that matters to me about photography. The expression originated with Zen-master, Rikyū, who in the 16th century designed the ritual that is still performed today. He encouraged his disciples to focus on the moment, saying “ichi-go, ichi-e.” This translates to “one time, one meeting.”

You, on a trip, photographing something that captures you, will never happen again. Bring your attention to the moment.

With steps one and two, you created a scaffolding of ideas and expectations to support you in a new place. When you know what you want to gain from that trip and you when prepared to be there, I guarantee that you will capture additional depth in your photos. You will be quicker to recognize something that interests you. You will see more in the moment and be more mindful to create interesting images.

Didn’t prepare with steps one and two? Don’t fret. You can still drop in somewhere and give your environment your complete attention. Be present. Start where you are in that moment, with your unique point of view.

Here are some prompts to help you slow down and see more when you want to take great photos:

• How do I feel?

• Where is the light coming from?

• What is the action?

Now take a deep breath and harness that moment with a composed photo that you make on purpose and that will have meaning to you for years to come.

India Example:

One of my favorite photos from India is not technically good.

The scene in Jaipur stunned me with a deluge of inputs. Donkeys loaded with bricks jostled for space along with scooters and cows. The heat made me feel faint and I hadn’t shaken jet lag. The cacophony of horns, the whirl of dust, and the kaleidoscope of saris, spices, and sadhus overwhelmed me.

I took a deep breath. Focused. Failed. I have a blurry photo of the woman walking by.

There are a zillion “Instagram” shots. How many “perfect” sunset photos does anyone really need? Try telling a story with pictures that is your story about why you travel and what a moment means to you.

Exercises:

Take people pictures.

This can feel intimidating, especially when you adopt a mindset to “make” a picture with someone, which requires interacting with them to acknowledge the camera, instead of “taking” a picture of them.

There are opportunities that lend themselves more easily to people photos. Here are a few:

• Street performers. They are already putting themselves out in public and often enjoy the camera. Of course, contribute to the kitty as a good exchange.

• Festivals have the same idea. People are out, with music and costumes and often ready to pose.

• “Local” tourists. Some countries will embrace you as a photographer. On that same India trip, local tourists approached me and asked me to take their portraits. Look at this guy hamming it up trying to plant a kiss on his lady’s cheek. She squealed with embarrassment. The ladies were more comfortable kissing each other’s cheeks.

• Take a class. Any topic you like – cooking, dancing, drinking – or, of course, photography. This will put you in an environment to photograph people.

• Buy something. Then ask the seller if you can make a photo with them and your purchase.

Shoot wide and shoot tight.

I love detail shots, close in and tight to the subject. I love asking to make that kind of picture knowing I will have a conversation about how I admire the skill of the craftsperson who carves their name on each hand-crafted knife, or whips up free-form flowers in thread, or plucks a song on a bouzouki without extinguishing their cigarette. I feel emotion and connection with close-ups.

I remind myself to pull back and capture a broader environment. Then I have something that, when I get home, helps me recall the big picture and puts the detail in context. This creates visual storytelling and coherence later when your memory fades.

Many people shoot wide or tight. One probably feels “right” to you. Try incorporating both.

The ugly or comical picture.

Take the “ugly” picture. I feel pleased to capture the sunset picture that everyone wants in Santorini. However, as we’ve said, there are better images on Instagram.

How many people have a shot of the donkey dung that covers the streets before they are cleaned each day for the influx of cruise ships? Or this shot of spectacularly tacky souvenirs? Or the unexpected moment a monk massaged rose water all over our driver Manu’s head? These photos ground me in my unique experiences and moments far more than the sunset.

Take “scrap book” pictures.

We think we won’t forget. A camera makes it easier. In any new town, take a photo of the place name. You will know exactly where you are on your “film” roll and will capture local font and style.

You can leverage this idea with other artifacts, like museum signs, maps, or newspapers. By photographing the English language newspaper in Phnom Penh, I remember the shocking stories that would never appear at home, like one about a local reaction to cooking cats.

Step 4: Writing a journal.

“Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep us alive as when one has just fallen in love.” – Pico Iyer

If travel is about discovery, then so is writing. Travel benefits from a deliberate effort to synthesize and make sense of the new inputs coming at us. Even if you don’t journal at home, please consider the practice on the road. With travel, there are gifts of unstructured time, with no routine behaviors to turn to (especially if we work to put down our phones and minimize any mindless scrolling). You can find time waiting for a travel companion to wake up and get ready. You may need a break from walking and enjoy having your journal while you linger at a café. There are hours of sitting on a plane or train that can be used for reflection. Explore your words and wake up to a deeper level of your thought. Capture and describe what a photograph cannot.

There is a density of experiences when we travel. Writing helps us slow down and actively shape our travel. It barely matters what we write. The act of picking up a pen (old school) or a screen (just stay focused on your words instead of scrolling) to integrate our ideas makes us more mindful travelers.

Even 10-minutes of writing can capture memories. If that feels like too much, try finding the one word that encapsulates your day. Fun? Fascinating? Cheese? Church? Market? Mischief? Then explore why you chose that word and you will be off and running.

Here are some other prompts.

Exercises:

• Review all your senses: What did you see / hear / taste / feel / smell?

• How do you feel?

• Note: Are there negative emotions? Frustrated, angry, scared, lonely? Exorcise them in your journal. Writing it out clears my head to be a better traveler, with more patience and humor again.

• What made you laugh?

• What were the “pictures not taken?” Those are the moments you want to remember, but didn’t want to interrupt with a camera?

Each trip is singular. Your creative expression of it is unique, from where you choose to go, how you prepare, the photographs you make, and words you use to remember. I hope you feel motivated to memorialize your journey in some way.

In class, we explore tools, such as Blurb, https://www.blurb.com/ to create a book that you can share and enjoy for years to come.

We also share feedback on exercises we tried during the week (since we are traveling during this workshop) and make commitments of what we plan to do next along with ways we can support each other.

Thank you!

If travel is important to you and you seek authentic connections with locals, photographs that remind you of moments with spark, and written notes that capture the essence of your trip, then I hope you enjoy this system to travel more consciously.

Bringing your attention and intention to travel will reward you. We get what we give.

Happy trails!