Travel Journal

She was a young woman who had been trapped in a cubicle for eight years, often leafing through her coworkers' travel journals. One person had watched stars fall into a sand pit in the desert; another had gotten lost chasing the northern lights in Iceland. Every page seemed to flutter with little wings. The day she had saved up enough vacation time, she finally booked a one-way ticket to Yunnan. Walking alone through the old town of Dali, she saw an elderly flower seller sharing her breakfast with a stray cat. Sitting by Erhai Lake, she felt the wind lift her hair and a freedom she'd never known before. She took out her notebook and wrote on the first page: "It turns out I don't have to wait for someone else to see the world with me. I can go a long way on my own." Life is like a journey. Along the way, you encounter things that move you and things that thrill you, beautiful scenery and places that can hardly be called scenery, where all there is is wind. A solo travel journal records more than landscapes. It records finding the person you haven't seen in a long time: the one who dares to try and face the unknown.