The world is very visual - sighted people can see everything that surrounds you: beautiful buildings, spectacular views, the blue sky, the colours of the water, different depending on what is reflected in it. They can also marvel at the various colourful flowers whose petals have all sorts of shapes, the beautiful butterflies on which nature, more talented than the greatest painter, paints beautiful patterns.
We blind people cannot see all this, so why is traveling interesting for us?
TASTE
Let's start with what everyone enjoys and about which many could write poems loftier than “Romeo and Juliet”. I am referring to food.
Every country or region has its typical dishes, and when traveling you can try them. They can be completely different from the ones we know, such as roast guinea pigs in Peru. When discovering the world, we can also see the similarities between many cuisines. For example, stuffed cabbage is also eaten in Russia, where it is called голубчики, and in Romania, where it bears the sonorous name sarmale.
HEAR
Almost every country has a distinct language, and within a language there are a multitude of accents. For us blind people, this is often interesting. We like to listen to the different sound of a tram, a bus - depending on the engine, this sound can be very different from the one we know from where we live.
Have you ever been in a reverie, listening to the sound of the sea waves? And we can be enthralled by their whispering, sometimes passing into an even more fascinating thunder.
A visit to the national parks is extremely interesting, as this is where our ears, accustomed to catching the faintest murmurs, have a real treat. Particularly in spring, the winged males sing as beautifully as they can to attract the attention of their future heart-seekers.
TOUCH
Since we cannot see, we can touch majestic architectural creations to appreciate their uniqueness. Ideally, there are miniature models in front of monuments, whose artistry we can admire using our tactile eyes.
The same is true of nature; to understand the shape of leaves, plants, and their flowers, we simply have to view them using our hands. Of course, touch is not only the hands, but also the feet. Underneath them, we feel the unevenness of the cobblestones, the softness and looseness of the beach sand, the irregularity of the shells and pebbles we walk on.
SMELL
As well as food, each of which has a different smell, cities also smell very differently depending on where they are: coastal ones smell differently and are windier; cities with lots of rivers and where it rains a lot sometimes have a smell of dampness, especially when you get closer to a place where there is water. You feel it too, when you are near a river or stream, the smell of wet grass or seaweed reaches you.
Integration of senses
Thanks to the four senses we are lucky enough to possess, we find traveling extremely interesting, but only if we can take full advantage of them! This means we should maximize: listening, touching, smelling and tasting. Only then will we return home filled with new impressions.
What souvenirs do we bring back from our travels?
We love miniature monuments because by touching them we can understand what a church, castle or monument looks like.... We buy them in souvenir shops and many years later we can still admire the construction of the Roman Colosseum or the characteristic silhouette of the stepped pyramids. We are also very fond of coins - some of them are interesting because of their shape, or what is embossed on them. And, like you, we collect seashells or stones with an unconventional form or structure.
What's more - and I don't think I'm going to surprise you here - we simply love to make audio recordings of the places we've been. Because what we hear creates an auditory image for us, such recordings are a kind of time machine for us, enabling us to return to the place where we were.
As for me, I'm a big fan of videos, recorded for me by my friends, in which they describe what they see around them. They make me feel like I'm right there with them.
If you would like to hear more about blind travel, you are invited to the WOMAI Centre for the exhibition "Into the darkness”.
Author: Paweł Król
English (UK) 
Polski 