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I’ve written about music a few times on this site; specifically, the music I listen to when I travel as well as a list of songs to listen to when you’re homesick. To me, music and travelling go hand in hand. I’m either surrounded by the music of the country I’m in, or, on long bus journeys or train rides, I’m listening to my own favourites through my headphones.

But there are some great songs that are about travelling themselves, ones that either capture what it feels like to be on the road, or perhaps ones that inspire you to get up and go. When I first started making this list of travel songs, or songs about travelling, these were the ones I wrote down first – perhaps inspired by the fact that I finally purchased a record player here in London (even though I have three in Canada) and brought back 30 of my favourite albums, they are all of a certain time. I don’t believe that this was intentional, but I hope you can agree that these are some damn good travel songs. In no particular order, here are some of what I consider the best travel songs.

“There she is.” The pilot’s finger, held up against the window of the cockpit, nearly obliterated the very thing I had come all this way and paid all this money to see.

“That one?” I put my own finger to the cold glass, aware that the propellers on the small airplane were swallowing my voice. Each mountain seemed roughly the same, barely varying in shape or height. I looked to the pilot for confirmation. He smiled with big, white, snowcapped teeth.

“Yes,” he mouthed over the whir of the propeller’s blades. “That’s Everest.”

On our third day in Yangon, my friend Kerri and I decided to join our new friends Uros and Jerome for a ride on the Circle Train. We had all heard that it was a great way to spend a few hours, a great way to see some of the sights of the city for ourselves. I couldn’t wait – to see a country through the window of a train is one of my favourite ways to sightsee. The train is so named because it literally circles the city of Yangon; the whole journey takes approximately three hours, and a train comes every hour.

When my mum and I first arrived in Belize, we drove along a bumpy road for about an hour before reaching the river; once there, we caught a boat that took us deep into the jungle, near the Lamanai ruins. Somewhere along that first road our driver stopped and picked us cashew apples, or cashew fruit, which I had never seen or tried or even heard of. I guess I never stopped to think where cashews come from; I certainly didn’t imagine they grew this way, one to a fruit.

Chiang Rai, Thailand Very often you encounter some bizarre things when travelling. Once in a while one of those things makes perfect sense.

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