I enjoy looking back on my pictures from my travels. Though many are blurry and grainy and certainly don’t capture the experience, much like my scrawled, short-hand journal entries, it is enough to trigger back all the memories and feelings of that time. I laugh now at discussions with fellow travelers that we thought we were taking too many pictures–“I can’t believe I already used two rolls of film, and they were 36 exposure rolls, not 24!!”–and wouldn’t even know if we had captured the images as we hoped until we got the film developed, which may be days, weeks, or even months (had to finish the roll!)
While a part of me imagines what it would have been like to have a digital camera or a phone of today with which I could snap 1000 perfect pics a day, recording every angle and every moment, the other part of me realizes that maybe it’s just as well. I explored and experienced those temples and ruins through the physical world, not through a screen of current technology.