My head against the train window, i gaze out towards the horizon. A dusty terracotta village looms into view in front of a setting sun that slings a thin layer of gold over the edges of everything, framing every angle like a pile of oil paintings, resting in a pile, one on top of the other. Weary locals walk home in the autumn sun. I spot a young couple in tears embrace, and then walk away from each-other. My Ipod shuffles up a song at random – it’s Elephant Gun by Beirut. The song with its mournful horns and melancholy lyrics (“If i was young I’d flee this town”) pair perfectly with the scene and my eyes well up with hot, unexpected tears. The exquisite loneliness of that moment – so far away, so much at the mercy of the world – were crystallised in that song, and when i hear it now, i’m straight back there. It puts me in that train seat, with it’s bristly fabric and table so low i couldn’t cross my legs without banging my kneecaps almost entirely off, and that endless golden village with all of life happening in front of me.

It does more than just remind me. Something in the sound of that accordion seems to take me not just back to where i was all those years ago, but who i was. Photographs don’t do that because they force you to be an observer on your memory and distance you from it. A song is somehow more internal and recreates the mental space you were in more acutely. It’s the closest thing we have to time travel. Smell does it to an extent, but not like this.

In that way I’ve come to think of songs as tickets to destinations more than just things to pass long journeys and they have become an essential part of my travelling experience. If you are lucky enough that a moment fuses completely with a song, you have a ticket back to that time, back to that place for life. Rarely can you force it but when it happens, it’s a gift. Here are three stories of three places, in three songs.

1. s’Rothe Zauerli – Ose Schuppe – Innsbruck

Anyone who has seen The Grand Budapest Hotel will know that this yodelsome mountain song is already a pensive, melancholy tune. Imagine listening to it as you look up at the Snow-capped Austrian skyline after a short but eventful descent in which it looks and feels like your plane is trying to land in a circle of sharks-teeth mountains only inches wider in circumference than the plane itself. Maybe it was gratitude for another day of life when it had felt so touch and go, but as soon as i was on the airport bus destined for the city centre, that song came on and i knew i had captured the mood of the moment in a way i’d be returning to for years. Innsbruck is pretty remarkable – ringed on all sides by jutting mountain tops it feels like you’re on top of the world, and the city itself is perfect for a couple of days exploring. I found myself at a quiet church near the Alpine Zoo, and walked ever higher up towards the mountains. But i’ll never forget that first glance at the horizon, a ring of flinty blue mountains against the white sky while that song played. Couldn’t have set the scene better if i’d tried.

2. Job 2 Do – Doo Doo Doo – Thailand

I can’t remember how this Thai song – the lyrics of which I’ve never looked into – ever came into the picture on this trip or how i ever heard it, but my first serious effort at backpacking is contained within it, like a snow-globe. All i have to do to go back those nine years to my exploration of that amazing country is to listen to this song. The strange faux reggae takes me back to the the riot of colour that was Kho San road, the sleazy youthful hedonism reminding me of the island in Pinocchio where all of the out of control youths turn into Donkeys. One night i sat in a corrugated iron shack with other confused looking travellers as hot rain fell down and the street filled with rainwater up to our knees. I sat there listening to a radio, smoking and watching the tendrils of my smoke escape from under the tin roof and weave lazily upward through the raindrops. When the water level connected with a sparking cable at the back of the T.V i thought it a good time to wade out into the crowd – fish swimming between my legs – and i could hear this song coming out of an unseen, tinny radio somewhere in the night. I heard it again when i got off a train in Koh Lanta, and once more on a nearly empty island coming form the only other inhabited hut. Like many of the songs that come to be a soundtrack to an experience, they almost always make themselves known – it’s rare that you can get one to stick deliberately – and this one wouldn’t leave me alone.

3. Mike Oldfield – Moonlight Shadow – Seville

There are many reasons not to go on trips. Not necessarily always good ones, but the sheer weight of them can sometimes win out. I’m constantly coming up against them and the one that will put me off most consistently is if the flight back is so early that i’ll have to get a taxi at a ludicrous hour back to the airport. One time during a 3am January taxi trip back from Seville in Spain, this ethereal tune began to play. The nonsense lyrics and po-faced whimsy perfectly fit my sleep deprived state and i really took in the city around me, still sleeping soundly while i was half way between awake and asleep myself. I don’t recommend sleep deprivation as a prism through which to experience a destination, but for whatever reason some alchemy happened in that moment and that tune has hard wired that taxi journey into my memory, and i’ll always think of a twinkling nocturnal Spain laid out in front of me, whenever i hear it.

I could fill a playlist with songs like this, but it’s not the songs that fascinate me, it’s the stories that they are attached to.

I look forward to the next jaunt to see what tunes present themselves to me.

Have a song that takes you to a special place? Feel free to share your tunes/destinations in the comments below