“Travelling is cool, trendy... and very, very instagrammable. An exciting activity to feel and enjoy that appeals to our most instinctive emotions: the discovery of the unknown.”

1. disclaimer

As I mentioned in my previous article:

I am not a travel blogger, but a professional photographer who writes about his passion for travel and photography.

The ideas and thoughts you will find in this blog are the result of my personal experiences, meaning I take full responsibility for the information provided here.

You can find more information about my vacation photoshoots in Tallinn, Riga & Vilnius by visiting this site.

2. the meaning of travel

Travel as a necessity of life

My family comes from a little village in the Pyrenees mountains, a region full of rocky peaks and beautiful landscapes that has become a paradise for hiking lovers.

A few days ago, I asked my uncle if he had ever been to El Turbó, an iconic peak very frequented by locals:

“No, I never have”, he answered. “We didn’t just walk around for no reason when I was young”.

And that is true:

50 years ago, this beautiful countryside wasn’t the exciting place to live in as it is today.

Public transport was slow and rare, people had no cars and main roads connecting the region were only starting to get built. In that sense, to get from one place to another, people usually had to walk.

And walk a lot…

They walked long distances to get to work, to go to school or to graze cattle. Sometimes walking so far they had to stay overnight and come back the next day.

On those occasions, walking or travelling was not a personal choice, but a practical necessity of life.

A process for everyone

For previous generations, travelling was simply understood as the process of covering a distance from point A to point B for some reason that could not be avoided.

In that sense, the reasons for travelling were not related to enjoyment, experience or discovery we associate them with today.

But the opposite:

Life in the mountains was tough, and taking care of oneself meant to be in constant activity that had nothing to do with pleasure, but effort.

Therefore, as anyone can imagine, people wouldn’t travel or walk long distances just for the “sake of pleasure”, since that implied physical effort and time consumption.

As my uncle says, there always had to be a good reason to travel. A reason that could not be avoided.

The modern idea of travelling

I guess you’ll agree with me:

Nowadays, travelling is cool, trendy... and very, very instagrammable.

For most of us, travelling is an exciting activity to feel and enjoy; an experience that appeals to our most instinctive emotions: the discovery of the unknown.

Therefore, a travel journey is no longer a tough inevitable process, but an enjoyable one in which destination and itinerary are decided entirely by us.

Now we are able to discover the world from a new perspective, not having to travel far distances anymore, unless we want it.

3. meeting the real world

Travel as a unique experience

We shall insist:

Travel is not a process, but an experience.

Starting from the people we meet, the places we visit, the food we eat, the sounds we hear, the smells we feel… All these experiences provide value to our travel, as they allow us to connect with this “new reality” we throw ourselves into.

However, there is still a deeper value that can bring our travel experiences to the next level: authenticity.

In other words, travel becomes valuable not only by experiencing situations or things, but by experiencing them in a way that’s unique and meaningful to us.

A challenge for the individual

Experiences are all that matter, and the way we feel about them are, in my opinion, what makes our travel to really stand out.

I am not talking only about those experiences we may call good or bad, but the ones that make a true impact on us; testing our minds and prejudices.

There are no excuses when travelling:

We must face every situation we get into, and that’s actually the best thing about it.

In that sense, travel is a true existential challenge for the individual, the challenge of putting ourselves in a tension we can’t predict nor control.

A formidable one.

Travel to remember

Unlike animals, one of the key things that characterize ourselves as human individuals is, essentially, the capacity to remember, to have memories.

When remembering past experiences, memories are all we have. That’s why taking pictures that can somehow capture those memories is so important for us.

However, pictures have a limitation:

Like a piece of clothing, a bracelet or an old song, it is only the emotions we bring into those pictures what make them become such unique memories.

Since I started to work as a vacation photographer, I realised how important it is to capture pictures that can bring out special emotions from the subjects portraited in them.

At the end, iconic compositions with stunning backgrounds are nice, but memorable pictures will always be regarded as the ones that captured those human emotions that cannot be staged or predicted.

The real ones.

4. final thoughts

We travel to feed our need to explore, to discover, to learn... To put ourselves in this unique expectation that gives us the strength to overcome difficult situations.

What sense does it make otherwise?

“To relax”, “get time off”, “have some leisure”…

Agree.

But I like to think about a more complex, richer idea of travel; the one that takes us out of comfort, getting us involved in a wide range of experiences and discoveries.

There is nothing wrong with laying at a beach-resort or sitting all day under little-healing waterfalls in a spa hotel. But that is what I call, precisely, to be on vacation.

In my opinion, the experience of travelling involves far more than that:

Travel makes us more tolerant, less ignorant, more open-minded… It allows us to discover places, connect with people and learn things we didn’t know about. Things that were invisible to us. Until we experience them.

Is there anything better?

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