Travel has always been part of our literature—a fact that reflects the nature of storytelling as a journey. Whether it is as part of history, as in Herodotus’s work, or myth, as in the ten years journey undertaken by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, travel makes a space for encounter—and encounter opens the space for difference, revelation, experience, and wonder. Even travel guides are older than you might suppose: many world religions traditionally involve pilgrimage as an important act of devotion, and pilgrim’s handbooks were early practical guides telling a traveller how to move from place to place and where to stay while on the journey. The historic and the mythic, the practical and the wondrous are all still part of secular travel writing today.
I think of travel narratives as fitting into two distinct kinds: on the one hand, there is the journey a writer undertakes and records that inspires your own. When a writer goes on their own version of what in the nineteenth century was referred to as “the grand tour”, it can fit into a reader’s sense of the journey they might themselves sometime undertake. Such a narrative—for example, Kate Langbroek’s Ciao Bella—is like a promise: walk in my footsteps and the following adventures and pleasures await you.
The second kind of travel narrative describes a journey that you as a reader cannot expect to replicate: these narratives cover journeys that are difficult, dangerous, strange or driven by some obsession that a reader might not share, though the resulting journey makes for a great yarn. This kind of work doesn’t necessarily make you sit up in your reading and want to do the same thing, but it will make you pull out the atlas and think about the huge variety of experience available. It is these books that remind me of Paul Eluard’s words: “there is another world, and it is in this one”. The writers who have undertaken these journeys have discovered worlds I likely won’t ever access but have brought word back from them.
Both types of books feed our curiosity.
Cosier Destinations
Both Kate Langbroek and Elizabeth Gilbert travel to make a commitment to a new kind of life. Langbroek takes off with her family for Italy; Gilbert travels alone.
Kate Langbroek, Ciao Bella!
Kate Langbroek takes her humour with her to Bologna, where she moves with her family—including children who didn’t want to make her dream of living in Italy come true. Told from the aftermath of her eldest son’s struggle through and remission from childhood leukemia, the book urges the reader to act on their own as-yet unfulfilled dreams—and to take an optimistic approach when things go awry.
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
Gilbert’s book was an international sensation when it first appeared and remains popular today. The three verbs of the title have their counterparts with three distinct locations (Italy, India and Indonesia—Bali in particular) in which Gilbert undertakes the deconstruction of her old life and construction of a new life. From the daily pleasures of pizza and pasta to the austerity of the Ashram, Gilbert is using her journey to highlight the way travel feeds our different needs. A reader might not undertake the exact trajectory that Gilbert does, but her example of staying put in each of three new places for a chunk of time show an example of slow travel with purpose (as well as emphasising that pleasure itself can be a serious purpose).
These books are just two of many that tell stories of places that are accessible and tie them to personal stories from their authors’ lives.
Intrepid travellers
Journey through adventurous eyes.
Erika Fatland, Sovietistan
In many ways, Erika Fatland’s Sovietistan is a travel narrative that often can be relived by a traveller—except that it takes as a subject a part of the world that remains, for many people, a blank space on the map in terms of their understanding of geography and history. Central Asia has thousands of years of history to draw upon, but the fact that the “Stans” are a group of some of the world’s youngest nations means that many have not contemplated them as potential travel destinations. At the same time that the West refers to this region under the flag of “the Stans”, these groups are geographically, historically and politically disparate. From the extremely closed off dictatorship of Turkmenistan—a country whose land is 80 percent desert, but has the advantage of a port on the Caspian Sea as well as a vast supply of natural gas—to the mountainous regions of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzhstan, this region of five nations showcases a long history. (Erika Fatland is also the author of Border, a work that visits all the countries sharing borders with Russia, and High, a journey across the nations of the Himalayas).
Rebecca Lowe, The Slow Road to Tehran
Sometimes it is the method of travel that makes a journey as extraordinary as the destination—and the timing. In 2015, Rebecca Lowe undertook a solo bicycle ride of 11,000 kilometres, traversing first Europe and then the middle east. At the same time, many were travelling in the opposite direction as refugees fleeing the war in Syria. Travelling by bicycle left Lowe vulnerable to punctures, and subject to the weather (which varied through her travels between –6 degrees and a searing 48°C), but it also gave her freedom to move on smaller roads, and thus to encounter the people living off the main thoroughfares.
Alice Morrison, Walking with Nomads
Scottish traveller Alice Morrison undertakes a journey in the Sahara desert and Atlas mountains of Morocco accompanied by a trio of Amazigh, or Berber, men. In doing so she experiences an ancient mode of life, while also observing the results of desertification in the Sahara region. Their journey follows the Draa river—a river that falls dry along a large portion of its course for much of the year—and is witness to life as lived in the past and now, as well as foreseeing a promised (or threatened future) as the Sahara continues to grow.
Colin Thubron, The Amur River
Colin Thubron’s first travel book on the city of Damascus recently turned 50. Since it appeared Thubron has continued to travel, particularly across Asia. His most recent journey along the Amur River—a river that for much of its course forms the border between China and Russia—is a feat that involves the then-78-year-old Thubron proceeding on horseback in Mongolia and later traveling by many means as he follows the course of the river. Having previously written extensively about China and Russia, Thubron has adequate knowledge of the languages spoken in these countries to communicate—but this is only one level of difficulty. Early in his journey he sustains an injury that would likely have sent any other traveller home—reason enough his journey cannot be replicated—and the border zone along the river is itself the site of centuries of contestation.
Historic narratives
Visit the past...
Women Travelers on the Nile
Travel writing can also be a window into the past, into the lives of their writers, and into the cultures that produce travelers as much as the cultures in which they travel. Often writings of past travelers are anthologised—and collections of these writings can create a mosaic that helps us understand many different things at once: in Women Travelers on the Nile the reader can understand across two centuries the challenges faced by women travellers, the attitudes they bring with them and encounter, and the ways culture is transmitted. Reading an account of unexpected kindness that is centuries old can feel just as of this moment as can encountering a different culture now feel like walking into a different period of history. Women Travelers on the Nile is organised by the different parts of the journey, so we see what successive generations of female travelers experienced in the same places in different times, forming a kaleidoscope of history.
Or just stay home
There's no place like it!
Jenny Herbert, The Art of being a Tourist at Home
Travel often refreshes our relationship not just with the world but also with our home. Travel writing can do the same: it’s possible to access the fresh eyes afforded by travel through taking a new perspective. Herbert shows readers how to be inquisitive about the places in which they live and how to recognise the richness of the communities from which they come.