Every traveller takes photos. Almost nobody looks at them again. They sit in a camera roll, thousands deep, unsorted and untouched. The experience was real, but the record of it disappears into digital storage alongside every other photo you’ve ever taken.
Travel journaling is different. Not because it’s better than photos — but because the act of creating it is part of the trip itself. You slow down. You notice more. And you end up with something you’ll actually pick up and flip through years later.
Here are a few approaches worth trying.
The Illustrated Journal
You don’t need to be able to draw. Small, rough sketches of buildings, meals, street corners, and landscapes capture a feeling that photos miss entirely. A wonky sketch of a French bakery you loved says more about the experience than a perfect photograph of the same building.
Start with a pocket-sized sketchbook and a single pen. Watercolour pencils are good for adding colour later if you want it. The barrier to entry is deliberately low — the less precious you are about it, the better it works.
The Collage/Scrapbook Journal
This one is for collectors. Ticket stubs, receipts, napkins with restaurant logos, postage stamps, dried flowers, fragments of maps — all of it goes in.
You’ll want a journal with thick pages (thin paper buckles under glue). Washi tape and a small glue stick are all the tools you need. Some travellers prep their journals before the trip with pages dedicated to each city. Others just fill it as they go.
This kind of tactile, hands-on travel documentation has a lot in common with the broader DIY and creative lifestyle movement. Blogs focused on creative living and lifestyle inspiration often feature exactly this kind of project: blending craft, personal expression, and practical skill into something genuinely useful.
The Written Journal
The classic. A notebook and a pen, writing down what happened, what you thought, what you felt. No sketches, no collage, just words.
The trick that makes travel writing work: be specific. “We had a nice dinner” tells you nothing in five years. “Small restaurant near the harbour, the owner brought us free dessert because we tried to speak Portuguese, the fish was the best I’ve ever eaten” — that brings the evening back entirely.
Write at the end of each day, even if it’s just five minutes. Memory is unreliable. The notes you take on night one will be more vivid than your recall of the same evening a week later.
Digital Journals
Apps like Day One, Notion, or even a simple Google Doc can work for people who won’t carry a physical journal. The advantage is integration; you can embed photos, drop pins on maps, and search your entries later.
The disadvantage: it feels less like a keepsake and more like a document. But if the alternative is not journaling at all, digital is absolutely better than nothing.
Start Before You’re Ready
Don’t buy the perfect journal and the perfect pens and wait for the perfect trip. Grab whatever notebook you have, bring it on your next weekend away, and write one page while exploring the Scottish highlands. That’s the whole starting point.