7 Travel Traditions in Danger of Being Lost or Forgotten ...

I am old enough and have traveled enough to have been able to amass a large collection of travel photos that are in print and have pride of place on a bookcase in albums. I love to leaf through the albums. I’m no expert but my photos bring back fabulous memories. I think that albums full of glorious photos are one of the travel traditions that is endangered by the digital age. I do believe that many millions of travel photographs are still being taken but how many of them are simply downloaded into online folders and forgotten?

One of the fun times of old style travel was the newspaper. And in two ways: First was the local or national paper of the location you were in. It didn’t matter if you could understand the language or not; just flicking through a local paper would give you a little insight into the culture. And secondly, was being able to get your hands on a national newspaper from home. Even if it costs 5 times as much as at home and was 3-4 days late, it was a way of keeping in touch with what was going on – even if it was only usually the football scores and the weather I looked at. Newspapers are no longer needed for info or keeping up with the news and few will see this as one of the travel traditions that will continue into the future.

I’ll happily admit I am a dinosaur when it comes to books. I have a Kindle but hardly ever use it. I still love to hear the rustle of pages of books as they turn and when it comes to travel guide books (some would call this sacrilege), I scribble notes on pages and make plans about what I want to see. Going to the bookshop to buy a travel book so you can bone up on your destination before you go is one of the great travel traditions that is in danger of dying out, thanks to the digital age.

While a little frightening and intimidating, there is also some joy in the art of getting lost in a strange place. You never know what you might find around the corner. I always used to carry a map with me and a small phrase book and it was exciting finding my way back to where I wanted to be (most times). These days, however, you use GPS on your iPhone. Whilst extremely useful, to me, that’s one of the simple travel pleasures foregone.

You may not even be old enough to know what a cassette tape is. These predate the CD and MP3 players. If you wanted to take your music on your travels, there was a delightful practice whereby you recorded your vinyl records onto cassette and they went into your luggage with a cassette player. This was made easier when the Walkman came along and then recordable CDs and players. But now, you have MP3 players and with random play, who needs a mix tape? Death to one of the quaintest travel traditions.

I love postcards. I still send myself a postcard on the day I leave a destination to see how long it takes to arrive at home. And, I still send postcards to family. My older relatives still love to receive them and let’s face it, they do look good on a fridge. The death knell of the postcard has long been sounded thanks to email, Facebook updates and Twitter.

This was never one of my travel habits, but looking back, I wish it had been. I have to rely on my memories and photographs and as time goes on, I remember less. Fewer and fewer travelers are keeping daily journals nowadays. Even travel writers and bloggers are more likely to tap their entries into a laptop or a tablet than to write them in a journal.

Are you a frequent traveler who sticks to some of the old travel traditions? I’d love to know.