6 Travel-Themed Gift Ideas for Someone Who Has Everything

Finding travel-themed gift ideas for someone who has everything is my yearly headache because the people I love most are the ones who see something and simply buy it. Including me. (Fafa would like the record to show that I returned from one Europe trip with six blank notebooks.)

So I have stopped trying to beat them at shopping. The gifts that land are the ones they would never buy for themselves, the ones that get used up, or the ones that hold a travel memory only you two share. Here are six that have worked for me, and on me.

My Go-To Travel Themed Gift Ideas

1. A Cookbook From a Place You Both Love

A cookbook is one of the best travel themed gift ideas, because it is really a promise of dinners to come and a trip you can taste again at home. Pick one from a cuisine tied to a journey or a memory, not the bestseller they already own. Standing in Atlantis Books in Santorini, a Hellenic cookbook was one of the first things I reached for (before a journal distracted me).

KK tip Write the date and one line of why on the inside cover. That is the part they keep.

2. Bumbu

Bumbu is the Indonesian spice paste that makes everything taste like home, and no amount of money can buy the version from someone’s kitchen. My verdict on Greek food was that there was “no bumbu”, so you can tell how much I rank it. A jar of homemade bumbu, or a few good sachets from an Indonesian grocer, is a gift that carries a whole country in it and disappears into meals, which is exactly the point for people with full cupboards.

KK tip Label it with what to cook with it. Bumbu rendang, bumbu nasi goreng, bumbu soto. Don’t make them guess.

3. Spices From Your Travels

I never travel without chilli, so I know how a good spice changes everything. I carry Indonesian abon cabe, Japanese chilli and a glass bottle of Hungarian chilli flakes in my carry on. On the Sandringham Food and Spice Tour in Auckland, Mary welcomed us with her homemade roasted curry powder, which I still want to copy for winter. Spices are some of the easiest travel themed gift ideas to bring home, because they are light, small and full of place.

KK tip Bring spices back from a trip and gift them in small jars. Check your country’s customs rules before you pack them.

4. A Travel Journal With a Story

People who have everything rarely buy themselves a beautiful blank book, because it feels indulgent. That makes a travel journal one of the safest gifts on this list. For five years I was loyal to one black Moleskine, until Fafa bought me a small, locally made blue journal at Atlantis Books, stamped with the shop’s seal. He has been my official journal buyer ever since. In Amsterdam, I had a Moleskine embossed with “AMS”, which turns a notebook into a souvenir.

KK tip Get it embossed or stamped where you buy it. A name, a city code or a date makes it theirs.

5. Ornaments From Around the World

An ornament is small, cheap to post and impossible to have too many of, because each one marks a year or a place. Pick one from somewhere you travelled together, or from their heritage, and it comes out every holiday season with a story attached.

KK tip Write the year and the place on a tiny tag tied to it. Future them will thank you.

6. A Travel Photo Book

This is the gift for the person who has everything except time to sort their camera roll. Pick one trip, one year of travel or one friendship, and put the best photos in order with a few lines of captions. It costs an evening of effort, which is precisely why it means more than anything they could buy.

KK tip: Add the small, unglamorous photos too. The airport snack, the wrong train, the bad hotel breakfast. Those are the ones that make people laugh.

The best travel-themed gift ideas are not really things. They are flavours to cook with, pages to fill, and memories from the road put somewhere they can hold. If you are still stuck, give them something that gets used up and comes with a story. That one never ends up in the regift drawer.

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