Think of one of your favourite travel memories. Is it a memory you have a photo of? Or does it exist only in your head?

Posted by felinfine8@reddit | travel | View on Reddit | 10 comments

Curious about the above. Please share your thoughts, and feel free to share what that memory is! My working theory is that our richest travel memories aren't the ones on our iPhones, they're in our head, where we actively 'curate' them.

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10 Comments

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justuslemmings@reddit

Only in my head. In Cambodia, we were invited to have dinner with the family of a local friend we made on the trip. We agreed it would be incredibly rude to pull out a camera or phone and start snapping pictures. It is by far my best and sharpest memory of the trip.

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49N123W@reddit

I had many travel adventures in my life and they're mostly relegated to memories with no saved image file.. I'm talking travel before smartphones! I sailed a 38' ketch from Gibraltar to Halifax one summer. We had spent four days in the doldrums and the sea was mirror-smooth, we decided to motor to find wind at night. The stored memory is mind-blowing! It was a moonless cloud free night and EVERY star was reflected in the mirror-like ocean...my 22 year old self felt so small in the universe but I recognized my place in it and my perspective on life was altered forever. I had tears of joy in my eyes as I witnessed this phenomenon while my crew mates were asleep. Survival at sea requires your head on a swivel watching for freighters 24/7. The gentle wake of the prop wash was glowing green/blue behind us with the phosphors being energized by us being there...THAT tied me back to our planet as I felt I was floating in space that night! Smartphones could never capture a moment like this!

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QuelynD@reddit

I take plenty of photos, and am very glad I have pictures of my favourite experience. My memory is very poor. I can have the most amazing experience and talk about it for months after getting home, but then I will forget. I look through my travel photos regularly (usually hundreds per trip), and looking through them brings to mind the experiences and circumstances related to what the photos show. The photos are for me. I might show a few of them to friends but most are never seen by anyone other than myself.

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ChipCob1@reddit

One of mine is of standing in a dark cave in Australia surrounded in all directions by glow worms so that it gave the impression that I was floating in space. There is now way that a photo could do that justice.

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spaderr@reddit

A picture is a window to a memory I have certain memories I don’t have pictures of, and if they’re good enough memories then I won’t forget them any time soon, but I always surprise myself by the things I’ve forgotten every time I go through my old pictures and am reminded of moments

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sacramentojoe1985@reddit

2016: I wake up, and look at my girlfriend (soon to be Fiancée): she's awake too. We both sit up in bed. It's around 2 A.M. A flight attendant notices we're awake: "would you like some wine or chocolate", he asks. I only drink sweet wines, so he recommends an ice wine... one of the best I've had. We also snack on chocolates. We're flying Lufthansa First Class, on a leg from Munich to Dubai. There are 3 of us in a cabin of 8 seats. I hop across the aisle and look out the window: the stars are vibrant. I take a picture and manage to capture the Milky Way. So I have a picture that connects me to the memory. That's part of why I think taking pictures is great (to be fair, my photography hobby started before my travel hobby, so I pretty much have pictures/videos of everything in my travels) But, while the picture connects me to the memory, it can't do justice to the memory itself.

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CatFewd2@reddit

I realized you should take at least a couple photos of yourself at the places you travel to. It's far more impactful when you look back on them, and when you show friends and family.

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Mr_Spoon1987@reddit

Only in my head. Much more enjoyable.

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Ithinkyouarealucy@reddit

A lot of my memories are without photos as I didn't get a smart phone until 2016. I've pictures from film of course and journals, but it's all the thoughts you collect on the way. I'm twenty years with my partner, so he and I can talk for hours on all the small things. Things you don't take photos of, but make up the best stories. I don't think the destination is the end result either. Most of my best memories are from the journey or the moment. I've photos of the inconsequential things for when I've felt the most. There isn't many of me posing at a destination, because I know from experience that won't be a core memory.

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lh123456789@reddit

I have many favorite travel memories, almost all of which I have pictures of. The only one I can think of that I don't have a picture of is when my daughter and I were snorkeling in Hawaii and I saw a group of sea turtles and we followed them for a while as they swam around.