The Soundtrack of My Travels

I didn’t set out to create a playlist for each trip I’ve taken, but somehow the music always found its way in. Sometimes it was through my headphones on long train rides; other times, it spilled out of café speakers, bus radios, or the open windows of passing cars. Travel has a way of imprinting songs onto memory, weaving them into the fabric of places like threads of sound.

Now, when I hear certain melodies, I don’t just remember the tune—I remember where I was, what the air smelled like, how I felt. Each track is a timestamp, a sensory echo of motion, stillness, awe, or heartache.

The Songs I Chose (and the Ones That Chose Me)
Before a trip, I often craft a playlist. Something ambient for plane rides, something rhythmic for city walks. I pick songs that match the mood I hope the journey will bring. But more often than not, it’s the songs I didn’t plan—the ones I heard by accident—that stick.

A mournful ballad drifting from a street musician in Lisbon. A dusty pop hit looping on a bus ride through rural Mexico. A French love song I couldn’t understand but felt anyway. These accidental soundtracks etched themselves into my experience, transforming background noise into emotional landmarks.

When Music Becomes a Map
Sometimes, music tells me more about a place than a guidebook can. It holds the collective emotion of a culture—joy, nostalgia, resistance, rhythm.

In Istanbul, it was the haunting cry of the call to prayer, layered with the pluck of a saz from a nearby apartment. In Seoul, it was upbeat synths colliding with street chatter and late-night laughter. In New Orleans, it was brass—alive, unapologetic, always in motion.

I started listening not just with my ears, but with my whole presence. Because music is the pulse beneath the pavement, the quiet hum of identity, waiting to be heard.

Long Walks, Looped Tracks
There are songs I’ve played on repeat, sometimes for hours. Not because I needed distraction, but because the repetition became meditative. Walking through unfamiliar cities with a single track on loop is like setting your thoughts to rhythm.

It becomes your anchor—the thing that moves with you while everything else is new. It can hold space for reflection, for feeling, for processing whatever you're not ready to say aloud.

I’ve cried to Bon Iver in alpine towns. Danced down back alleys to Robyn. Let Tracy Chapman walk me through heartbreak in ancient cities. These songs weren’t just companions—they were mirrors held gently to my experience.

Coming Home With More Than Souvenirs
After a trip, it’s always the music that sneaks back in first. I’ll be cooking, walking, half-listening to a shuffled playlist when that song plays—and suddenly I’m back:

On a ferry crossing choppy water, hair tangled by wind.

Sitting alone in a park at dusk, watching locals walk their dogs.

Spinning slowly under café lights, wine-drunk on freedom.

Those memories live in the chords, the beats, the layered harmonies. They return not just as thoughts, but as feelings—vivid, uninvited, welcome.

The Takeaway: Let the Music Follow You
You don’t need to choreograph a soundtrack for your travels. Just listen. Let the place offer you its sound—through your headphones, your surroundings, the voices of people living their days beside yours.

Pay attention to what moves you. What calms you. What makes you pause and turn your head. Those are the songs you’ll carry with you—not just in playlists, but in your body, in your memory, in the story you’ll one day tell when someone asks, “What did that place feel like?”

Because sometimes, it sounded like Nina Simone and the wind. Or a sad indie song and morning light. Or the heartbeat bass of a club at midnight.
The soundtrack of my travels is the story I didn’t write down, but remember every time I press play.