Travel Journal Writing Ideas

Interesting travel writing ideas are all around you – all you need to do is look in the right direction. You can train yourself to notice great ideas and mention them in your notebook. If you are writing a travelogue, it’s completely normal if you frequently have no idea what to write about.

Traveling articles and posts are popular not only among travel bloggers. Bloggers that write articles for lifestyle magazines and other platforms also like to write travelogues. But all of them have the same question: what to write about?

You can create a guide for every country or city you have visited. At the same time, you can write about traveling without traveling itself. If you want to create a popular travel journal, you need to know that competition on the internet in the traveling sphere is extremely high. Blogs with pictures and text about “Hey, look, what a nice trip” are not popular anymore. Users are searching for quality information that contain universal and specific recipes. For example, you can write about the best place to rent a room, how to get to the railway station, what transport is the best to choose, where to take a lunch, or where is the best coffee in the area.

After traveling to another country, and getting close to another culture, cuisine, and tradition, we all are full of impressions. But how can you organize information and make it more interesting to the reader (read here about travelogue meaning and examples)? What travel writing topics are better to write about? What approach is the best? Here we share great travel diary ideas that you can use in your own travel blog or diary. Try a few suggestions and see whether it fits your mood today.

13 Travel Topics to Write About

As our world is big, it can give thousands of travelogue ideas. Explore the world and try the following approaches in describing your experience.

1. Write about your homeland. There is no need to spend thousands on traveling around the world to write a travel blog. Think of what you can write about your own town, or any city you have visited recently in your country. You can tell the reader what places are good to visit, tell the history of the town, and make a list of places to eat with a street food guide. You can find historical photos and make real-time photos to compare how the city has grown.
2. Visit and describe one of the sights in your area. Even if it’s a popular place, you still have a chance to describe this place from your own point of view. You can give a detailed description of how to get there, what transport to choose, where to stop for lunch, etc. As an option, you can describe your trip to this place in detail or focus more on its history.
3. Get an interview. It can be a popular travel blogger, a representative of travel agency, or anyone connected with tourism. Make a list of questions and contact a person that is fond of traveling. Frequently, travel bloggers ask for a return favor – to answer some questions for their blog too.
4. Look through the keywords. Define the topic you want to write about, the country, city, or town, and start searching on Google Adwords or other keyword planners to find out the most frequently searched words. You may be surprised with the result and eventually find a good topic to write about.
5. Share your experience. Tell information that will be significantly important to the reader. How much does riding the bus cost? What restaurants are the most popular among locals? Write the prices that you have encountered, the attitude of locals, detailed maps with marked places on it, tourist routes, etc. This will help transfer the experience to the reader.
6. Make a top-10 list. You can choose any number of points. This is a great method when you don’t know what to write about. In this category you have a great field of ideas. Such topics are interesting and eye-catching. As a bonus, a list is a great way to organize information and it’s very easy to read. All you need to is to define the destination and a topic (for example restaurants, places to visit, free entrance, clubs, etc.). Check similar lists over the internet and make your own unique list. And don’t limit yourself with a certain amount of points – write as many points as you can.
7. Write a step-by-step guide. Guides are a popular way of presenting information and may become a great tool for gaining new visitors to your website. You could write about how to travel for 100 dollars in the pocket or how to survive a week in Rome with little expenses. If we turn to the classics of this genre, you can write about how to pack your clothes or prepare for the flight. Share any information connected to traveling that was helpful to you.
8. Tell a story. You can collect your epic-fails from your trips or funny moments. You can describe how to speak with locals without knowing their language. Or just describe an event that you have faced on the way to your work. Imagine that you are the main character and describe your trip as an adventure or story.
9. Talk about history. Talking about history cannot be enough. Discover new facts and interesting historical moments about a certain country or city. You can share both common and exclusive information about the history, but try to present it in an interesting and easy-to-read manner. No one is interested in reading boring text from an encyclopedia.
10. Get inspired with travel blogs of popular bloggers. Always keep your hand on the pulse with traveling trends. Look at what places popular bloggers visit and analyze destinations that will be more preferable to visit.
11. Visit traveling websites. Look at the most popular destinations, the cheapest tickets, and the best tours. People are interested in keeping to their budget, so your regular posts about discounts and prices may be highly appreciated by the public.
12. Talk about cuisine. Everyone loves to eat. Some people visit other countries to enrich their taste receptors. You can visit the most extraordinary restaurants, make a guide about street food in a particular city, make an overview of the strangest dishes around the world, or describe national food in a particular country or area.
13. Make a guide to museums, theaters, and various excursions. You can share your experience about visiting the most popular museums, or write about unfairly forgotten places to visit.

Travelogue Ideas That Deserve to Become a Trip

You must plan your trips in an interesting way to have a chance of writing an engaging article. State the right aim for your trip. Here we list original ideas for travel writing that you can use for your trips.

• Move from one city to another with a bicycle. You can choose several destinations (the more miles you ride, the better). Cycling is a great way to look closer to the place you visit and see the beauty of the nature. Besides, it’s a great option for travelers that have a low budget.
• Live in a foreign land for a month or more. Choose one location and try to get in with the locals. Try to forget that you are a tourist and look at the place from a local’s eyes. Try to pick different cultures to feel the difference. This experience may give you a great idea for an article.
• Learn a new language while living in a foreign country. You can tell your readers about the most common words or how to learn the language in a limited time. Besides, you can create a list of words that may be useful for interaction with locals during the trip.
• Ride across the country on a bus or train. For example, you can have a trip on Trans-Siberian Railway or make a train trip trough India. You will have an unforgettable experience and a dose of adrenaline.
• Visit a world-known carnival, parade, holiday, or music festival. You can visit Oktoberfest in Germany, Holi in India, Cascamorras in Spain, Rio Carnival in Brazil, or Tomorrowland in Belgium. You can continue the list with the most popular large-scale festivals around the world. Share your experience and the readers will like it for sure!
• Try volunteering. Join one of the worldwide volunteering organizations and go on a volunteering mission to a foreign country. Combine your traveling experience with helping those who are in need.
• Go on a trip down a river. It may be a local river or great rivers like the Mississippi, Nile, or Amazon river. You can use a boat, kayak, ship, or any transport depending on your budget, time, and strength.
• Take a cruise in one of the seas. Usually such trips have a lack of adventures, but your readers may be interested in local cruises and your overview can come in handy. If your blog is quite popular, you can ask a travel agency for a free trip for an advertising article in return.
• Participate in marathons throughout the country/world. If you are fond of running, it’s a great reason to start visiting other counties and join the rows of runners from all over the world.
• Visit places where famous movies were filmed. If you have a favorite movie or soap opera, take a chance to visit famous places. For example, if you like the movie “The Martian,” you can visit the Wadi Rum (Valley of the Moon) in Jordan and imagine that you are standing on Mars. Did you know that some scenes of “Transformers,” “Star Wars,” and “Prometheus” were also filmed in this area?

Travel Journal Writing Advice

And at last, consider the following recommendations when writing your article:

1. Always pick a topic before writing. A good text is a set of stories related to one single idea.
2. Place real photos taken by you or your friend. Try to add several photos with you to prove that you really have visited the place in question.
3. Recheck information. If you are using historical or other facts in your article, check its originality in relevant sources. Don’t share deliberately false information or facts you are not convinced are true.
4. Make long, detailed, and well-structured articles. Some readers like to read long articles.
5. Take notes during your trip. Even if you don’t have time to write or you are too tired, you always can use a dictophone or your phone to record your ideas and fresh impressions.
6. Tell your personal story. Describe your trip as a narrative where you are the main hero.
7. Remember the scents, tastes, and feelings. Then try to explain these feelings, so the reader can imagine that he or she was also there.
8. Avoid cliches. Focus your concentration on the reader and write the text for your audience.
9. Don’t forget to create a good title for your article and use keywords to attract new readers.
10. Your aim as a travel journalist is to inspire the reader to buy a ticket, pack a handbag, and go on the trip.

Hopefully, our travel journal ideas will inspire you to take another trip or give inspiration for a new blog post in your travel journal. Besides, we recommend you to check our guide on how to write a travelogue to create better texts for your blog. We know that it’s possible to write a great story about a simple trip to a neighborhood in the city. At the same time, it’s also easy to make a boring report about a month in a Buddhism temple or a volunteering mission for saving rare spices in the Pacific Ocean. All will depend on you. Choose great travel topics to write about, plan your trip, and then write an engaging story about your trip. Good luck!