More often than not travel writing (and, in particular, travel Instagram) leaves out those necessary but far less glamorous moments of travel that are nonetheless essential if the travel — and travel writing — process is going to happen.
I’m thinking of those small moments of running errands, doing laundry, waiting in line at train stations, reading guidebooks and online recommendations, laboring away at the laptop. These moments, banal as they are, can be in themselves be emblematic not just of the place you’re visiting, but the era in which you’re visiting as well.
When I think back to my first Asian vagabonding journey 20 years ago, for example, I recall all the hours I spent in internet cafes – the only reliable way to get online in the dial-up era – sending emails, planning routes, submitting travel stories, reading news from back home. I wish I’d taken at least one picture in an internet café in a place like Thailand, since I spent so many accumulated hours in them during the journey.
Thus, in the name of full disclosure, I submit this picture of my room at the Hello Guesthouse in Bukittinggi, where I transcribed pages of field-journal notes and wrote many of the Dispatches I’ve posted here in recent days.
Last month on my Instagram account I posted a picture of my laptop overlooking a gorgeous vista of Lake Toba – and that was the real deal – but each carefully posed laptop-in-paradise photo you see on Instagram is likely the exception to the in-the-trenches work that happens in rooms like this one.
This, friends, is a part of travel, too.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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