Taking a break from the usual photo-stream, I've decided to participate in an initiative which the travel blog BootsnAll has created. Starting November 1, they launched a project called 30 Days of Indie Travel. They’re inviting bloggers from around the world (including you!) to join us in a daily blogging effort reflecting on our past travel experiences. Each day, they'll post a new prompt on BootsnAll articles. Bloggers can follow the prompts as strictly or loosely as they like, interpreting them in various ways and responding via text, photos or video posted on their own blogs.
Today's theme: Music
Music and travel memories often go hand in hand. A song can inspire our explorations, or it can take us back to a specific place and time. Tell us about your travel playlist and what it means to you.
Today's theme: Music
Music and travel memories often go hand in hand. A song can inspire our explorations, or it can take us back to a specific place and time. Tell us about your travel playlist and what it means to you.
Gauchos dancing in Buenos Aires
Music plays a big part in many people's lives, and of course can trigger an emotional or nostalgia when associated with a certain event or time in your life where the song had some relevance or significant value. When looking at it from the perspective of travel, a song can bring you back to a place and time, as mentioned quite accurately in this theme. It has almost more power to trigger certain memories and feelings than a photograph can.
For me, music has always played a big part in my travels. Be it listening to my walkman (I might be dating myself with that statement) while wandering the rainy streets of Amsterdam, to going to a massive Samba party in Rio De Janeiro, to having a large group sing-a-long to the Toto song, Africa while cruising past Mt Kilimanjaro on an Overland vehicle. There are so many memories associated with songs and genres of music which will always take me back to those places when I hear that music again.
I remember the first time really experiencing it, and I mean like full on taking me right back, was when I was about 20 years old, sitting in a bungalow overlooking the ocean on Koh Pangang, Thailand. I had been on the road for about 4 months at this point and still had most of a year to go. Though I was in somewhere most would consider paradise, I was in the process of going through a little bit of homesickness. So many amazing friends met along the way, even right there in Thailand, at those bungalows, but almost all of which I had said goodbye to, knowing we would probably not see each other again. Right after the sun had set and the moon was glistening over the water, I heard a familiar chanting coming from a couple bungalows down. It was a Hare Krishna chant I had heard repeatedly while at a festival just outside Varanasi, India, only a few months back. It's familiarity was comforting, and brought me back to that village where 100+ travellers and locals alike were celebrating a full moon at a Rainbow Gathering - a monthly festival which travels around India. It's memories brought me to this place where I was surrounded by friendly faces and everyone worked together as a single unit, preparing the food, gathering wood for the campfires, and singing songs. That feeling of solitude slowly crept away as I lay in my bed listening to the nearby chants from the neighbouring bungalow. This is just one instance of many which have occurred since where music has provided comfort and triggered emotion and nostalgia.
On my own personal playlist, there is a ritualistic song I have listened to since my first international flight, whenever the plane has taken off and is soaring above the clouds. It's the Gangstarr song "Above the Clouds". It can bring me back to the excitement I felt during my first flight, as I set forth on a journey into the unkown, while looking down at the world passing by 30,000 ft below.
Music will always play a large part in my travels and life, be it through triggering old memories or creating new ones. An inspirational video which was sent to me by a member of our Global Guild, Mittie Roger, discusses how life is a song and to fully appreciate it, we are intended to sing and dance along with it:
For me, music has always played a big part in my travels. Be it listening to my walkman (I might be dating myself with that statement) while wandering the rainy streets of Amsterdam, to going to a massive Samba party in Rio De Janeiro, to having a large group sing-a-long to the Toto song, Africa while cruising past Mt Kilimanjaro on an Overland vehicle. There are so many memories associated with songs and genres of music which will always take me back to those places when I hear that music again.
I remember the first time really experiencing it, and I mean like full on taking me right back, was when I was about 20 years old, sitting in a bungalow overlooking the ocean on Koh Pangang, Thailand. I had been on the road for about 4 months at this point and still had most of a year to go. Though I was in somewhere most would consider paradise, I was in the process of going through a little bit of homesickness. So many amazing friends met along the way, even right there in Thailand, at those bungalows, but almost all of which I had said goodbye to, knowing we would probably not see each other again. Right after the sun had set and the moon was glistening over the water, I heard a familiar chanting coming from a couple bungalows down. It was a Hare Krishna chant I had heard repeatedly while at a festival just outside Varanasi, India, only a few months back. It's familiarity was comforting, and brought me back to that village where 100+ travellers and locals alike were celebrating a full moon at a Rainbow Gathering - a monthly festival which travels around India. It's memories brought me to this place where I was surrounded by friendly faces and everyone worked together as a single unit, preparing the food, gathering wood for the campfires, and singing songs. That feeling of solitude slowly crept away as I lay in my bed listening to the nearby chants from the neighbouring bungalow. This is just one instance of many which have occurred since where music has provided comfort and triggered emotion and nostalgia.
On my own personal playlist, there is a ritualistic song I have listened to since my first international flight, whenever the plane has taken off and is soaring above the clouds. It's the Gangstarr song "Above the Clouds". It can bring me back to the excitement I felt during my first flight, as I set forth on a journey into the unkown, while looking down at the world passing by 30,000 ft below.
Music will always play a large part in my travels and life, be it through triggering old memories or creating new ones. An inspirational video which was sent to me by a member of our Global Guild, Mittie Roger, discusses how life is a song and to fully appreciate it, we are intended to sing and dance along with it:
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