Any trip to a fabulous destination inevitably comes to a close. You’re at your desk on a final evening in Dubai, or by the infinity pool in Rwanda, or curled beneath the covers in Los Cabos, Mexico listening to the waves crash, and you find yourself reflecting on the people you love who haven’t had the pleasure of being along for the ride—seeing what you’ve seen, feeling what you’ve felt, tasting what you’ve tasted.

Write them a letter.

For centuries, the noble, handwritten letter was the lone vehicle for staying connected. And it was an effective one: lovers traded scraps of poetry, politicos scribbled amends to constituents, and explorers spun their exotic tales of far away lands to families back home. “Most events are inexpressible,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet. But a good letter is as close as we get. Done well, it’s a direct link between heart and paper; like a well-crafted piece of music, the emotion felt by the sender at the creation of a letter is transferred to its recipient—a sort of literary telepathy.

“More than kisses,” English poet John Donne said, “letters mingle souls.” And he was right—the hit of dopamine that arrived with any letter was equivalent to a a text message from a new lover, but multiply it by dozens and you’ll arrive at the feeling of a note delivered from the front during wartime, or an entertainer’s fan club response landing in the hands of a star-struck child. “A letter always seemed to me like immortality…” wrote Emily Dickinson. Which is reason enough to take a stab at penning one. But how does one go about it?

First, you must have the materials on hand: a pen, good paper or postcard, some envelopes, a stamp or two. One&Only—as you’ll notice—has taken care of this for you. Second, you must realise that in our modern world a letter is as good an excuse as any to go above and beyond the confines of ordinary, digital correspondence, to get a little grandiose. Need a kick in the pants? Johnny Cash wrote to wife June Carter from Denmark in 1994: Once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realise how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. Now that’s a letter!

Letters written while travelling, like yours inevitably will be, have the advantage of absence, and absence creates perspective. One of adventure’s greatest gifts is seeing our circumstances back home with new eyes, and a letter is a chance to reveal our revelations to our dearest. Ansel Adams once wrote to a friend from the road: For the first time I know what love is; what friends are, and what art should be.

But letters can be casual, too. Looking for a playful exchange to aspire to? Check out the letters swapped by Ernest Heming-way and F. Scott Fitzgerald regarding the original manuscript of Gatsby. Literary gold. Looking to lead with a joke? Jimmy Buffett’s famous line, “The weather is here, wish you were beautiful” comes to mind. Or you could, if so inclined, knock them over with an anecdote: maybe you walked through a cave illuminated by thousands of glow worms, or ran alongside kangaroos at Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley. Maybe you just fell asleep in a hammock at One&Only Reethi Rah after wrangling your biggest catch yet. Write about something that happened to you, but more importantly, how it felt. I have a friend who sends postcards from her destinations. There’s one in my drawer from Paris, another from Albuquerque. The notes that accompany them have two simple components: a) I’m thinking of you b) why. That’s really all it takes to make a letter worth saving—genuine feeling.

Four or so years ago, after being gifted some tremendous personalised stationery, I began writing letters to my friends during the holidays, assessing the years we’d shared together. The writing sessions became a sort of catharsis. I threw away more than one tear-stained envelope as I penned my way into a vortex of nostalgia.

Often, I’d encounter resistance, and a bit of embarrassment dropping a particularly sentimental letter in the post. Had I revealed too much? But then, like clockwork, I’d receive a response: That meant so much to me. Author Denis Johnson used to tell his students: “Write naked. That means to write what you would never say,” which is the best damn advice for letter writing there is! Be vulnerable. Write something new, something they’ve never heard. Something risky. And mail it before you have a chance to take it back.

Notes From Afar