We have shared a couple of musings from our travels (here & here). We are continuing that theme today but from a different perspective. We have mentioned previously that we are not diary-type people but that we do enjoy chronicling our adventures. In fact, we make it a priority. On our way home, we pen our final thoughts: the good, the bad & the ugly. It is our way of summarising the cliff notes - or the key events & experiences, if you like - while they are still fresh.
On our way home from Europe, we interviewed each other with some of the following prompts:
Our holiday in review:
Most exciting moment
Most depressing
Most notable
Most life-changing (neither of our answers were very philosophical, by the way!)
Most confronting
Most relaxing
Most stressful
Most awkward
Most challenging
Most humbling
Places we must revisit
Most interesting people
Best hotel moment
Worst hotel moment
Strangest food
Best sugary treat
Biggest highlight
Favourite city
Least favourite city
When we visited India, we adopted a different approach. We made a list of things we would not miss about India and things we would. Here are just some of the things we listed that we would miss:
Friends/adopted family (both)
Curry for breakfast (Pete)
Organised chaos (both)
Polite hospitality (both)
Colours (both)
Masala chai tea (Em)
Architecture & art (both)
Roti, garlic naan & paratha (both)
Constantly exploring (Em)
Nat Geo in person (both; wonderful experience to see places we had only read about previously come to life)
Beeping horns (both; we actually adapted to the background noise and, in the end, it grew on us)
Eating with your hands (Pete; we were really nervous about this aspect of Indian culture upon arrival but we ended up adjusting within days and grew to enjoy this further tactile extension of the eating experience and found it hard to believe that we had been concerned in the first place)
Just reading through this list makes us want to go back to India stat. We are so glad that we recorded these feelings & thoughts while they were still fresh. The following two sentences sum up how we feel about documenting our travels. If you do not record these adventures, you may regret it one day. If you do record your adventures and you never look at your writings again, at least you had the choice. Do future you a favour and write it all down. Furthermore, you just might find that your trip home feels that little bit shorter. Or it could just be the “return trip effect” but that’s a different story. Happy & safe travels! :)