Use any of these best travel captions for Instagram, or inspiring travel quotes on your travel photos.
150 Best Travel Captions for Instagram
Famous Travel Captions for Instagram
If you ever find yourself joy-scrolling travel posts on Instagram (who hasn’t?), you’ll also have noticed many inspirational and clever wanderlust-influenced travel captions.
Some travel quotes are more famous than others, for example, who hasn’t come across an excess of IG travel photos of people gazing into the distance with a “Not all those who wander are lost” by J.R.R. Tolkien caption attached?
(Yep, that one’s in here too).
If you love solo adventures, you might enjoy 100 Best Quotes on Solo Travel to Inspire You to Travel Alone for more inspiring captions.
So let’s start with some of the better-known and more famous travel captions for Instagram.
Best travel captions for Instagram and inspiring travel quotes.
“Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times.”
— Asian Proverb
- “People don’t take trips, trips take people.”
— John Steinbeck
- “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu
- “Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”
– Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings - “It is a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us.”
– Oberyn Martell, Game of Thrones - “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.”
– Dalai Lama
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
—David Mitchell
- “Wherever you go, go with all your heart!”
– Confucius - “A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.”
– Herb Caen - “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. A good tour is one of the best ways to achieve this.”
– Mark Twain - “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”
– Anita Desai
“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.”
– Aristotle
- “I travel because I become uncomfortable being too comfortable.”
— Carew Papritz - “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”
— Susan Sontag
“Of all the books in the world, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport.”
— Unknown
- “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
– Jack Kerouac
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent at work. Inspiring travel captions for Instagram by Jack Kerouac.
“Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.”
— Paulo Coelho
- “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfilment.”
— Hilaire Belloc - “A year from now, you will wish you had started today.”
— Karen Lamb - “New York is not a city. It’s a world.”
— John Steinback - “Wherever you are, be all there.”
— Jim Elliot
- “Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
— Erol Ozan - “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.”
— Robyn Yong
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
– Anthony Bourdain
Inspirational travel captions for Instagram like this one from Anthony Bourdain, are perfect for adding to your travel photos.
- “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.”
– Anonymous
“To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
— Freya Stark
- “Adventure is worthwhile.”
— Aesop - “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, and other souls.”
— Anais Nin - “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”
— H. Jackson Browne Jr.
“He who would travel happily must travel light.”
— Antoine de St. Exupery
- “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
— Mary Anne Radmacher - “Traveling is a lot like being in a relationship. You have to take the good with the bad, and learn from each experience. Here are some tips: keep an open mind, embrace the local culture, and enjoy the journey.”
— Rick Steves - “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
— Saint Augustine
“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.”
– Susan Heller
- “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
— Andre Gide - Every great journey starts with a solid base, but the true adventure begins when you step beyond it.
– Unknown - “The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.”
— Sir Richard Burton
“With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.”
— Sandra Lake
- “Travelling – It leaves you speechless, and then turns you into a storyteller.”
— Ibn Battuta - “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds. When you’re travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”
— William Least Heat Moon - “Travelling is brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all the familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things — air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky. All things tend towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
— Cesare Pavese
“The journey, not the arrival matters.”
— T.S. Elliot
- “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.”
– Aldous Huxley - “Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.”
– Matthew Karsten
- “He who returns from a journey is not the same as he who left.”
— Chinese Proverb
“A tourist doesn’t know where they have been, a traveller doesn’t know where they are going. ”
– Paul Theroux
- “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
— Mark Twain
“And at the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.”
— Shanti
Use these travel captions for Instagram for more engagement on your travel photos.
- “And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
— Randy Komisar
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
— Jack Kerouac
- “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson - “Two roads diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less travelled by.”
– Robert Frost - “New York City is a place where you can be whoever you want to be, where you can reinvent yourself and find new opportunities. It’s a city that never stops moving, and neither should you.”
— Bill de Blasio - “Take only memories, leave only footprints.”
– Chief Seattle
“I learned a long time ago that trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times.”
– Anthony Bourdain
- “Remember that happiness is a way of travel — not a destination.”
– Roy M. Goodman - “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the trip.”
– Babs Hoffman - Traveling—it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. All rights reserved for those who take the journey.
– Unknown - “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
– Gustave Flaubert
“Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown”
– Anthony Bourdain
- “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”
– Leonardo da Vinci - “Travel as much as you can, and travel as far as you can.”
– Unknown
“Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times.”
– Asian Proverb
Best Short Travel Captions for Instagram
When you need some short yet inspirational Instagram travel captions and light-hearted puns to add to your vacation photos, try these best short travel captions:
Catch flights, not feelings.
- Collect moments, not things.
- Vacation state of mind
- Wake up in paradise.
- Life’s a beach.
- I decided to skip ahead to the part of my life where I travel the world.
What’s on my bucket list? Everywhere.
- BBN, be back never.
- I do believe it’s time for another adventure.
- I need a six-month-long vacation twice a year.
- Let’s wander where the wi-fi is weak.
- Beachy.
- Seek to sea more.
- Tropic like it’s hot!
Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.
- I’m a travel addict on the road to recovery. Just kidding, I’m headed to the airport.
These are some of the best short travel captions for Instagram.
- We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.
- Selfies or the trip didn’t happen.
- Beach more. Worry less.
- Tan lines fade, but memories last forever.
- Vacation mood: on.
Beach hair, don’t care.
- On the road again.
- Paradise isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.
- Tired travel feet, happy heart.
- We’re not in Kansas anymore.
- Rome stole a pizza my heart.
- I mean, I’m just China have a good time.
- Eiffel in love in Paris.
You told me it was Chile in South America. But I don’t Bolivia.
- Let’s taco ’bout going to Mexico.
- Left my heart in Morocco.
- Beach, please.
- What the shell?
- Czech out the view!
- I need some vitamin sea.
- Don’t worry, beach happy.
Don’t worry, beach happy!
- I’ve found my happy place.
- Work, save, travel, repeat.
Don’t listen to what they say, go and see it for yourself.
- Always say yes to new adventures.
- Maybe you can’t buy happiness, but you can buy plane tickets (and that’s kind of the same thing).
- This is my resting beach face.
- Seas the day, travel now.
- I only collect one thing: stamps on my passport.
Find me under the palm trees.
- Favourite colour: sunset.
- Time to explore.
- Friends that travel together, slay together.
- We vacation not to escape life but for life not to escape us.
- It’s not about the destination, but the journey.
- Take only pictures, leave only footprints.
I travel so my life isn’t disrupted by routine.
- The only trip you will regret is the one you didn’t take.
- What is life but one grand adventure?
What is life but one grand adventure?
- High tides and good vibes.
- Suns out, buns out.
- Collecting memories, one passport stamp at a time.
- Travel more, worry less.
- Take only pictures, leave only footprints.
- Chasing sunsets and new adventures.
- Escape the ordinary, embrace the extraordinary.
Wander often, wonder always.
- Life is not meant to be lived in one place.
- Good vibes roll with the tides.
- In a relationship with my passport.
- The journey, not the arrival, matters.
Incurable wanderlust.
- Work hard, travel harder.
- Swap your five-star hotel for a million-star view of the sky.
- Ocean air, salty hair
Planning a road trip? Don’t miss 140 Best Instagram Captions for Road Trips — perfect for your next adventure on the open road.
The best travel captions for Instagram. Share this image, it’s the ideal size for an IG feed post.
Best Travel Captions for Instagram From Famous Authors
As with the more famous travel captions, there are also plenty of travel quotes from famous authors, doing the rounds on Instagram.
Some of these are from famous travel writers whom I admire, like Ernest Hemingway, Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson.
There are also a few great novelists and poets, such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Hans Christian Andersen, whose famous travel quotes still feature in our modern travel lives today.
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give, to roam the roads of lands remote: To travel is to live.”
— Hans Christian Andersen
- “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain - “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
— Ernest Hemingway - “I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert
- ‘To travel is to live.”
— Hans Christian Andersen
- “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfilment.”
– Hilaire Belloc - “Not all those who wander are lost.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
“Not all those who wander, are lost”. As common as this Tolkien travel quote is, this is still one of the ultimate best travel captions to use.
- “I never knew of a morning in Africa, when I woke up and was not happy”
– Ernest Hemingway
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
– Jack Kerouac
- “Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.”
– Seneca - “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, we can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends.”
– Maya Angelou - “You need not even listen, just wait…the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.”
— Franz Kafka - “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by.”
— Robert Frost
“There are no foreign lands, it is the traveller only who is foreign.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
- “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.”
— Oscar Wilde
Another great travel quote from Robert Louis Stevenson.
“Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.”
– Michael Palin
- “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”
— T.S. Eliot - “The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveller.”
— Franz Kafka - “The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”
— Bill Bryson
- “I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with different points of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”
— Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - “Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.”
— Viktor E. Frankl
And that wraps up this post of 150 Best Travel Captions for Instagram.
I hope this collection of best travel captions has been helpful, and you’ll find something that makes your Instagram travel photos stand out and hopefully get more engagement.
Want even more travel quotes for quick inspiration? Check out 200 Short Quotes for Travel: Perfect Instagram Captions for Quick Inspiration.
Let me know in the comments if you have any other travel captions for Instagram or trip captions that I should add to my list.
Looking for More Travel Captions and Quotes for Instagram?
Explore more hand-picked collections to help you find the perfect caption or quote for any trip or adventure:
- 💬 100 Best Quotes on Solo Travel to Inspire You to Travel Alone — perfect for those solo adventures when you want captions that speak to independence and wanderlust.
- 🤝 110 Epic Travel With Best Friends Quotes for Your Next Adventure — fun, witty, and relatable captions for all your group trips.
- ⚡ 200 Short Travel Quotes: Quick Instagram Caption Inspiration — ideal when you need a punchy, scroll-stopping caption in a hurry.
- 🚗 140 Best Instagram Captions for Road Trips — road-trip vibes, adventure quotes, and clever captions for every mile you travel.
Each collection is packed with creative captions and quotes that will make your travel photos stand out on Instagram and add a little extra story to every post.
Happy & Safe Travels
Alial 🙂
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