Travel articles are among the most read articles on the web. Beautiful and interesting places are presented in travel blogs. Travel stories take you to strange and exotic views, into far away regions, and let you visit foreign cultures. They can serve in lieu of a holiday and hold attraction for just about anyone. Does that mean these places always need to be far away from your own home?
Some of us haven’t traveled a lot or not at all. Many of the places we have traveled to are places so well known that writing about them might mean we don’t have a lot to tell about them that is new or exciting. We dream about Bangkok, The Amazons, and Easter Island. And most of us forget that there is one travel destination where we are an expert in: Home. Boring to the point where we completely ignore our surroundings, what is home to us is exotic and exciting to more than 99 per cent of the rest of humanity.
Writing travel articles about home might seem a bit weird, I admit it. And quite frankly, isn't your hometown the most boring place to be? That’s why we are looking forward to traveling somewhere else to go on holiday, right? Wrong. The places we go on holiday to are home to many people. They are as excited about their back yards as you are about yours. But they might be dreaming about a holiday where you live because it is exotic for them.
When you live somewhere, excitement builds the moment you know you move to somewhere new. Once there, you almost instantly start to ignore what is around you. It’s as if your brain was programmed to put off visiting beautiful spots and interesting sites in your neighborhood. They are there anyhow, and right now there is so much else to do. Visiting them later will do; and then you move somewhere else and never got round to do it. Writing travel articles about your home will take you out of that rut. As an added plus, you can illustrate your article with your own pictures.
For you, it becomes an adventure to discover your hometown. In the process you will become the uncontested expert for the area. And you will be surprised how much more there is to your hometown than you thought. So far you barely scratched the surface; it is time you started exploring seriously.
If you are a bit of a history buff you will discover that local 'history' would better be called legend or myth. But local legends usually survive longer and have stronger roots than dry historical facts. Telling the locals that they are wrong won't make you many friends. Bring it into an article and it makes interesting reading.
If you have a problem seeing the good points (and don’t tell me there aren't any), think about what you would show to a friend who came to visit. After all, your article doesn't have to fill a four week holiday. It is entirely enough if the sightseeing tour takes a half an hour’s time.
Once you have started charting out your surroundings, you’ll find that there is a surprising lot going on or standing about that will interest people, if not everyone. And the latter is impossible to achieve, anyhow, no matter what you write about.
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