Keeping in Touch on the Road
It's Getting Easier Every Day

Keeping in touch is a good idea, wherever you travel.

It may be tempting to cut ties and wander off into the blue yonder, but contact is often part of that journey - either to keep those ties back home warm, or maybe for safety's sake.

If you're a woman backpacking on your own you should make sure someone, somewhere knows where you are.

I still remember the excitement of checking for mail at the poste restante every time I reached a city, of leaving messages at the American Express office, picking out postcards and handing in films to develop.

Today, these habits may seem quaint and reaching out to friends and family back home is downright easy - nearly instant, in fact.

The times they are a-changin'

Many of today's modern communications haven't been around that long. Long distance calling from some countries even a decade and a half ago was a complex affair, before the use of calling cards became widespread.

Email followed quickly, but in the mid-1990s, not that many people had it yet. In some countries, my early version laptop caused commotions, and dozens of young people gathered for a peek at the screen.

Even using email meant wrapping a strange-looking implement around a phone receiver and waiting endlessly for two or three emails to make their way down the line. Compuserve was the email of choice, and we used numbers to identify ourselves rather than names.

Pretty soon Internet cafés popped up along the backpacker trail and the electronic age evolved from a few daring pioneers to the mainstream. It's easy to create a travel blog and share your trip as you move from country to country.

You don't even need an Internet cafe - you can take yours with you! The best travel laptop are now sturdy and light - and you can be in immediate contact by using a webcam or chatting on Skype.

These days, keeping in touch may mean taking your own phone with you, texting back and forth, or even better (or worse!), tapping your message on your Blackberry or iPhone from the bottom of your tent. If you're worried about being cut off - and yes, that can still happen in some parts of the world - you can always buy a satellite phone. They're coming down in price every day.

Today, keeping in touch is a cinch.

You can post your whereabouts on Facebook or My Space or any other social networking site, along with photos - and even videos - you've taken with your phone.

Quality not good enough? If you want something just a bit better, digital travel photography will do the trick. If you're not an expert photographer, a few beginners photography tips should get you started. If you still want more, visit travel and scenic photography 101 for some must do's and don'ts.

You can even go one better and use Google Maps for sightseeing and posting your itinerary, photos, videos - and plenty of additional information you might want to share with your friends and family back home.

Not everyone loves new technology, however.

Are you the old-fashioned kind?

There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned! And sometimes, old-fashioned works best.

If you're not the blogging kind, one way to record your travels is to keep a travel journal. I've kept several dozen journals over the years - unfortunately, they don't cover my earlier trips. If I'd realized how much pleasure I would get from opening their gritty and often waterlogged pages, I would have started writing them far earlier.

Journals are often more scrapbooks than journals, with bits of leaves, cloth, feathers, menus, articles, business cards picked up along the way - anything that jogs your memory about a time or place or adventure

Keeping in touch isn't only fun - it's often a necessity. The only question is how.

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.women-on-the-road.com