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Great Travel Writing Examples from World Renowned Travel Writers

Are you ready to be a better travel writer? One of the best ways to do this is to read great travel writing examples from great travel writers.

Writing about travel in a way that keeps your reader reading is not always easy. Knowing how to write an irresistible first paragraph to entice the reader to keep reading is key. Writing a lede paragraph that convinces the reader to finish the article, story or book is great travel writing.  This article features travel writing examples from award-winning travel writers, top-selling books, New York Times travel writers, and award-winning travel blogs.

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The writers featured in this article are some of my personal favorite travel writers. I am lucky to have met most of them in person and even luckier to consider many friends. Many I have interviewed on my podcast and have learned writing tips from their years of travel writing, editing and wisdom.

11 Great Travel Writing Examples

Writing with feeling, tone, and point of view creates a compelling story. Below are examples of travel writing that include; first paragraphs, middle paragraphs, and final paragraphs for both travel articles as well as travel books.

I hope the below examples of travel writing inspire you to write more, study great travel writing and take your writing to a higher level.

Writing Example of a Travel Book Closing Paragraphs

Don George is the author of the award-winning anthology The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George , and the best-selling travel writing guide in the world: How to Be a Travel Writer .

He is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Travel, and has been Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, Salon, and Lonely Planet.

I had the wonderful opportunity to see Don speak at Tbex and read from one of his books as well as interview him on the Break Into Travel Writing podcast. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Below is the closing of Don’s ebook: Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus: Dispatches from a Year of Traveling Close to Home

I continued hiking up to Lost Trail and then along Canopy View Trail. Around noon I serendipitously came upon a bench by the side of the trail, parked my backpack, and unpacked my lunch. Along with my sandwiches and carrot sticks, I feasted on the tranquility and serenity, the sequoia-swabbed purity of the air, the bird and brook sounds and sun-baked earth and pine needle smells, the sunlight slanting through the branches, the bright patch of blue sky beyond.

At one point I thought of shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, the Japanese practice that has become widely popular in the U.S. This was a perfect example of shinrin-yoku, I thought: Here I am, alone in this forest, immersed in the sense and spirit of these old-growth redwoods, taking in their tranquility and timelessness, losing myself to their sheer size and age and their wild wisdom that fills the air.

I sat there for an hour, and let all the trials, tremors, and tribulations of the world I had left in the parking lot drift away. I felt grounded, calm, quiet—earth-bound, forest-embraced.

In another hour, or two, I would walk back to the main paved trail, where other pilgrims would be exclaiming in awe at the sacred sequoias, just as I had earlier that day.

But for now, I was content to root right here, on this blessed bench in the middle of nowhere, or rather, in the middle of everywhere, the wind whooshing through me, bird-chirps strung from my boughs, toes spreading under scratchy pine needles into hard-packed earth, sun-warmed canopy reaching for the sky, aging trunk textured by time, deep-pulsing, in the heart of Muir Woods.

• You can read the whole story here: Old Growth: Hiking into the Heart of Muir Woods
• Please also download Don’s free ebook here:  Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus
• In addition to writing and editing, Don speaks at conferences, lectures on tours around the world, and teaches travel writing workshops through www.bookpassage.com .

Writing Example of a Travel Book Intro Paragraphs

Francis tapon.

Francis Tapon , author of Hike Your Own Hike and The Hidden Europe , also created a TV series and book called The Unseen Africa, which is based on his five-year journey across all 54 African countries.

He is a three-time TEDx speaker. His social media username is always FTapon. I interviewed Francis on the Break Into Travel Writing podcast about “How to Find An Original Point of View as a Travel Writer “. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Below is the opening of Francis’ book, The Hidden Europe:

“This would be a pretty lousy way to die,” I thought.

I was locked in an outhouse with no way out. Outhouses sometimes have two latches—one on the outside and one on the inside. The outside latch keeps the door shut to prevent rodents and other creatures who like hanging out in crap from coming in. Somehow, that outer latch accidentally closed, thereby locking me in this smelly toilet. I was wearing a thin rain jacket. The temperature was rapidly dropping.

“This stinks,” I mumbled. It was midnight, I was above the Arctic Circle, and the temperatures at night would be just above freezing. There was no one around for kilometers. If I didn’t get out, I could freeze to death in this tiny, smelly, fly-infested shithole.

My mom would kill me if I died so disgracefully. She would observe that when Elvis died next to a toilet, he was in Graceland. I, on the other hand, was in Finland, not far from Santa Claus. This Nordic country was a jump board for visiting all 25 nations in Eastern Europe.

You can find his book on Amazon: The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us

For $2 a month, you can get Francis’ book as he writes it: Patreon.com/ftapon

Intro (Lede) Paragraph Examples of Great Travel Writing Articles

Michele peterson.

Former banking executive Michele Peterson is a multi-award-winning travel and food writer who divides her time between Canada, Guatemala, and Mexico (or the nearest tropical beach).

Former banking executive Michele Peterson is a multi-award-winning travel and food writer who divides her time between Canada, Guatemala, and Mexico (or the nearest tropical beach). Her writing has appeared in Lonely Planet’s Mexico from the Source cookbook, National Geographic Traveler, Conde Nast’s Gold List, the Globe and Mail, Fifty-five Plus and more than 100 other online and print publications.

She blogs about world cuisine and sun destinations at A Taste for Travel website. I met Michele on my first media trip that took place in Nova Scotia, Canada. I also had the pleasure of interviewing about “ Why the Odds are in Your Favor if you Want to Become a Travel Writer” . You can listen to the full podcast here .

Michele’s Lede Paragraph Travel Writing Example

I’m hiking through a forest of oak trees following a farmer who is bleating like a pied piper. Emerging from a gully is a herd of black Iberian pigs, snuffling in response. If they weren’t so focused on following the swineherd, I would run for the hills. These pigs look nothing like the pink-cheeked Babe of Hollywood fame.

These are the world’s original swine, with lineage dating back to the Paleolithic Stone Age period where the earliest humans decorated Spain’s caves with images of wild boars. Their powerful hoofs stab the earth as they devour their prized food, the Spanish bellota acorn, as fast as the farmer can shake them from the tree with his long wooden staff. My experience is part of a culinary journey exploring the secrets of producingjamón ibérico de Bellota, one of the world’s finest hams.

You can read the full article here: Hunting for Jamón in Spain

Perry Garfinkel

Perry Garfinkel has been a journalist and author for an unbelievable 40 years, except for some years of defection into media/PR communications and consulting.

He is a contributor to The New York Times since the late ’80s, writing for many sections and departments. He has been an editor for, among others, the Boston Globe, the Middlesex News, and the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

He’s the author of the national bestseller “ Buddha or Bust: In Search of the Truth, Meaning, Happiness and the Man Who Found Them All ” and “ Travel Writing for Profit and Pleasure “.

Perry has been a guest on my podcast twice. He gave a “ Master Class in Travel Writing ” you can listen to the full podcast here . He also shared “ How to Find Your Point Of View as a Travel Writer ” you can listen to the full episode here .

Perry’s Lede Travel Article Example from the New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — A block off Grant Avenue in San Francisco’s Chinatown – beyond the well-worn path tourists take past souvenir shops, restaurants and a dive saloon called the Buddha Bar – begins a historical tour of a more spiritual nature. Duck into a nondescript doorway at 125 Waverly Place, ascend five narrow flights and step into the first and oldest Buddhist temple in the United States.

At the Tien Hau Temple, before an intricately carved gilded wooden shrine and ornate Buddha statues, under dozens of paper lanterns, Buddhists in the Chinese tradition still burn pungent incense and leave offerings to the goddess Tien Hau in return for the promise of happiness and a long life.

You can read the full article here: Taking a Buddhist pilgrimage in San Francisco

Elaine Masters

Elaine Masters apologizes for pissing off fellow travelers while tracking story ideas, cultural clues, and inspiring images but can’t resist ducking in doorways or talking with strangers.

She’s recently been spotted driving her hybrid around the North American West Coast and diving cenotes in the Yucatan. Founder of Tripwellgal.com, Elaine covers mindful travel, local food, overlooked destinations and experiences. Elaine was a guest on my podcast where we spoke about “ How to Master the CVB Relationship “. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Elaine’s Lede Example

I jiggered my luggage onto the escalator crawling up to the street. As it rose into the afternoon light, an immense shadow rose over my shoulder. Stepping onto the sidewalk, I burst into giggles, looking like a madwoman, laughing alone on the busy Barcelona boulevard.  The shadow looming overhead was the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. It had mesmerized me forty years earlier and it was the reason I’d finally returned to Spain.

You can read the full article here: Don’t Miss Going Inside Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s Beloved Cathedral

Along with his wife, photographer Mary Gabbett, Bret Love is the Co-Founder/Editor In Chief of Green Global Travel and the Blue Ridge Mountains Travel Guide.

He’s also an award-winning writer whose work has been featured by more than 100 publications around the world, including National Geographic, Rolling Stone, American Way, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Bret’s Lede Example

Congo Square is quiet now. Traffic forms a dull drone in the distance. A lone percussionist taps out ancient tribal rhythms on a two-headed drum. An air compressor from Rampart Street road construction provides perfectly syncopated whooshes of accompaniment.

Shaded park benches are surrounded by blooming azaleas, magnolias, and massive live oaks that stretch to provide relief from the blazing midday sun. It’s an oasis of solitude directly across the street from the French Quarter.

Congo Square is quiet now. But it’s here that the seeds of American culture as we know it were sown more than 200 years ago. And the scents, sounds, and sights that originated here have never been more vital to New Orleans than they are now, more than a decade after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

You can read the full article here: Treme, New Orleans (How Congo Square Was The Birthplace Of American Culture)

Middle Paragraph Examples of Great Travel Writing Articles

Mariellen ward.

Canadian travel writer and blogger Mariellen Ward runs the award-winning travel site Breathedreamgo.com , inspired by her extensive travels in India.

She has been published in leading media outlets worldwide and offers custom tours to India through her company India for Beginners. Though Canadian by birth, Mariellen considers India to be her “soul culture” and she is passionate about encouraging mindful travel.

Mariellen’s Middle Paragraph Example

While the festival atmosphere swirled around me, I imbued my  diya with hope for personal transformation. I had come to India because a river of loss had run through my life, and I had struggled with grief, despair and depression for eight years. I felt I was clinging to the bank, but the effort was wearing me out. Deciding to leave my life and go to India was like letting go of the bank and going with the flow of the river. I had no idea where it would lead me, what I would learn or how I would change. I only knew that it was going to be big.

You can read the full article here: The River: A tale of grief and healing in India

Joe Baur is an author and filmmaker from Cleveland currently based in Berlin. His work has appeared in a variety of international publications, including BBC Travel, National Geographic, and Deutsche Welle.

He regularly reports for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and is the author of Talking Tico detailing his year of living in Costa Rica and traveling around Central America. I interviewed Joe about “ How to Find Unique Travel Stories “. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Joe Baur’s Middle Paragraph Example

I first became aware of the Harz mountains and the Brocken when reading the works of some of Germany’s great writers, like Goethe and Heinrich Heine. Legends of witches congregating with the devil being the main theme of the mountain’s mythology. I, however, was more interested in a refreshing time spent in nature rather than reveling with the devil.

The first stage from Osterode to Buntenbock was a warm-up to the more rigorous stages ahead. It began on sidewalks before sliding into the forest sporting a healthy shade of green — a gentle jaunt that made my hiking boots feel a bit like overkill given the dry, pleasant weather.

You can read the full article here: Follow the witch through the forest: 5 days hiking Germany’s Harz

Samantha Shea

Samantha is a freelance travel writer with bylines in Matador Network, GoNomad and more. She also runs the travel blog Intentional Detours which provides thorough guides and tales related to offbeat adventure travel in South Asia and beyond.

When she’s not writing she enjoys cycling, hiking, the beach, as well as language learning.

Samantha Shea’s Middle Paragraph Example

Suddenly, the spark of a match pulsed through the early-fall afternoon and my head snapped towards the men. Amir touched the flame to an unidentifiable object that seconds later made itself known by the deep earthy scent of Pakistani hashish.

Amir’s ice blue eyes focused intently on his creation: a combination of tobacco and nuggets of greenish-brown charas. He forced the mixture back into the cigarette, before bringing it to his pursed lips, flicking the match, and setting flame to his high.

I reached out from the cot to take my turn and took a deep inhale, acutely pleased. I savored the familiar burn of the drag, the rows and rows of corn and apple plants in front of me, the stuttered cacophony of animal exclamations behind me, and the generosity of the men to my left, some of whom we had just met an hour before.

You can read the full article here: Thall Tales: A Hazy Afternoon in Thall, Pakistan

Final Paragraph Example of Great Travel Writing Articles

Cassie bailey.

Cassie is a travel writer who has solo backpacked around Asia and the Balkans, and is currently based in Auckland. Alongside in-depth destination guides, her blog has a particular focus on storytelling, mental health, and neurodiversity.

Cassie’s Final Paragraphs Example

So my goal is to feel, I guess. And I don’t mean that in a dirty way (although obvz I do mean that in a dirty way too). This is why we travel, right? To taste crazy new foods and to feel the sea breeze against our skin or the burn on the back of our legs on the way down a mountain. We want to feel like shite getting off night buses at 4am and the sting of mosquito bites. We know we’re going to feel lost or frustrated or overwhelmed but we do it anyway. Because we know it’s worth it for the ecstasy of seeing a perfect view or making a new connection or finding shitty wine after a bad day.

My goal is never to become numb to all of this. To never kid myself into settling for less than everything our bodies allow us to perceive. I’m after the full human experience; every bit, every feeling.

You can read the full article here: Goals inspired by life as a solo backpacker

Lydia Carey

Lydia Carey is a freelance writer and translator based out of Mexico City who spends her time mangling the Spanish language, scouring the country for true stories and “researching” every taco stand in her neighborhood.

She is the author of “ Mexico City Streets: La Roma ,” a guide to one of Mexico City’s most eclectic neighborhoods and she chronicles her life in the city on her blog MexicoCityStreets.com .

Lydia’s Final Paragraphs Example

Guys from the barrio huddle around their motorcycles smoking weed and drinking forties. Entire families, each dressed as St. Jude, eat tacos al pastor and grilled corn on a stick. Police stand at a distance, keeping an eye on the crowd but trying not to get too involved.

After this celebration, many of the pilgrims will travel on to Puebla where they will visit some of the religious relics on display in the San Judas church there. But many more will simply go back to their trades—legal and illegal—hoping that their attendance will mean that San Judas protects them for another year, and that he has their back in this monster of a city.

You can read the full article here: San Judas de Tadeo: Mexico’s Defender of Lost Causes

I hope you enjoyed these examples of travel writing and they have inspired you to want to write more and write better! The next article that will be published is a follow-up to this and will include travel writing examples from my first travel writing teacher, Amanda Castleman. This article will include travel writing tips from Amanda and travel writing examples from her students as well as one from her own writing.

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Alexa Meisler is the editorial director of 52 Perfect Days. Born in Paris, France she has since lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. She currently resides in San Diego with her husband and son where they enjoy exploring California and Mexico.

Travel has always been a part of her life; traveling to such places as Morocco, Tangiers and Spain as a young child as well as taking many road trips to Mexico with her grandparents as a young girl. Since then, she has traveled abroad to locations such as Russia, Taiwan and throughout Europe.

Prior to working at 52 Perfect Days she was a freelance travel writer; focusing on family and women’s adventure experiences.

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What You Should Know About Travel Writing

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Travel writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator's encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject. Also called  travel literature .

"All travel writing—because it is writing—is made in the sense of being constructed, says Peter Hulme, "but travel writing cannot be made up without losing its designation" (quoted by Tim Youngs in  The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing , 2013).

Notable contemporary travel writers in English include Paul Theroux, Susan Orlean, Bill Bryson , Pico Iyer, Rory MacLean, Mary Morris, Dennison Berwick, Jan Morris, Tony Horwitz, Jeffrey Tayler, and Tom Miller, among countless others.

Examples of Travel Writing

• "By the Railway Side" by Alice Meynell
• Lists and Anaphora in Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There"
• Lists in William Least Heat-Moon's Place Description
• "London From a Distance" by Ford Madox Ford
• "Niagara Falls" by Rupert Brooke
• "Nights in London" by Thomas Burke
• "Of Trave," by Francis Bacon
• "Of Travel" by Owen Felltham
• "Rochester" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Observations About Travel Writing

Authors, journalists, and others have attempted to describe travel writing, which is more difficult to do than you might think. However, these excerpts explain that travel writing—at a minimum—requires a sense of curiosity, awareness, and fun.

Thomas Swick

• "The best writers in the field [of travel writing] bring to it an indefatigable curiosity, a fierce intelligence that enables them to interpret, and a generous heart that allows them to connect. Without resorting to invention , they make ample use of their imaginations. . . . "The travel book itself has a similar grab bag quality. It incorporates the characters and plot line of a novel, the descriptive power of poetry, the substance of a history lesson, the discursiveness of an essay , and the—often inadvertent—self-revelation of a memoir . It revels in the particular while occasionally illuminating the universal. It colors and shapes and fills in gaps. Because it results from displacement, it is frequently funny. It takes readers for a spin (and shows them, usually, how lucky they are). It humanizes the alien. More often than not it celebrates the unsung. It uncovers truths that are stranger than fiction. It gives eyewitness proof of life’s infinite possibilities." ("Not a Tourist." The Wilson Quarterly , Winter 2010)

Casey Blanton

• "There exists at the center of travel books like [Graham] Greene's Journey Without Maps or [V.S.] Naipaul's An Area of Darkness a mediating consciousness that monitors the journey, judges, thinks, confesses, changes, and even grows. This narrator , so central to what we have come to expect in modern travel writing , is a relatively new ingredient in travel literature, but it is one that irrevocably changed the genre . . . . "Freed from strictly chronological , fact-driven narratives , nearly all contemporary travel writers include their own dreams and memories of childhood as well as chunks of historical data and synopses of other travel books. Self reflexivity and instability, both as theme and style , offer the writer a way to show the effects of his or her own presence in a foreign country and to expose the arbitrariness of truth and the absence of norms." ( Travel Writing: The Self and the World . Routledge, 2002)

Frances Mayes

• "Some travel writers can become serious to the point of lapsing into good ol' American puritanism. . . . What nonsense! I have traveled much in Concord. Good travel writing can be as much about having a good time as about eating grubs and chasing drug lords. . . . [T]ravel is for learning, for fun, for escape, for personal quests, for challenge, for exploration, for opening the imagination to other lives and languages." (Introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2002 . Houghton, 2002)

Travel Writers on Travel Writing

In the past, travel writing was considered to be nothing more than the detailing of specific routes to various destinations. Today, however, travel writing has become much more. Read on to find out what famous travel writers such as V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux say about the profession.

V.S. Naipaul

• "My books have to be called ' travel writing ,' but that can be misleading because in the old days travel writing was essentially done by men describing the routes they were taking. . . . What I do is quite different. I travel on a theme . I travel to make an inquiry. I am not a journalist. I am taking with me the gifts of sympathy, observation, and curiosity that I developed as an imaginative writer. The books I write now, these inquiries, are really constructed narratives." (Interview with Ahmed Rashid, "Death of the Novel." The Observer , Feb. 25, 1996)

Paul Theroux

• - "Most travel narratives—perhaps all of them, the classics anyway—describe the miseries and splendors of going from one remote place to another. The quest, the getting there, the difficulty of the road is the story; the journey, not the arrival, matters, and most of the time the traveler—the traveler’s mood, especially—is the subject of the whole business. I have made a career out of this sort of slogging and self-portraiture, travel writing as diffused autobiography ; and so have many others in the old, laborious look-at-me way that informs travel writing ." (Paul Theroux, "The Soul of the South." Smithsonian Magazine , July-August 2014) - "Most visitors to coastal Maine know it in the summer. In the nature of visitation, people show up in the season. The snow and ice are a bleak memory now on the long warm days of early summer, but it seems to me that to understand a place best, the visitor needs to see figures in a landscape in all seasons. Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. You see that the population is actually quite small, the roads are empty, some of the restaurants are closed, the houses of the summer people are dark, their driveways unplowed. But Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. Boats are repaired, traps fixed, nets mended. “I need the winter to rest my body,” my friend the lobsterman told me, speaking of how he suspended his lobstering in December and did not resume until April. . . ." ("The Wicked Coast." The Atlantic , June 2011)

Susan Orlean

• - "To be honest, I view all stories as journeys. Journeys are the essential text of the human experience—the journey from birth to death, from innocence to wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, from where we start to where we end. There is almost no piece of important writing—the Bible, the Odyssey , Chaucer, Ulysses —that isn't explicitly or implicitly the story of a journey. Even when I don't actually go anywhere for a particular story, the way I report is to immerse myself in something I usually know very little about, and what I experience is the journey toward a grasp of what I've seen." (Susan Orlean, Introduction to My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere . Random House, 2004) - "When I went to Scotland for a friend's wedding last summer, I didn't plan on firing a gun. Getting into a fistfight, maybe; hurling insults about badly dressed bridesmaids, of course; but I didn't expect to shoot or get shot at. The wedding was taking place in a medieval castle in a speck of a village called Biggar. There was not a lot to do in Biggar, but the caretaker of the castle had skeet-shooting gear, and the male guests announced that before the rehearsal dinner they were going to give it a go. The women were advised to knit or shop or something. I don't know if any of us women actually wanted to join them, but we didn't want to be left out, so we insisted on coming along. . . ." (Opening paragraph of "Shooting Party." The New Yorker , September 29, 1999)

Jonathan Raban

• - "As a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where different genres are likely to end up in the bed. It accommodates the private diary , the essay , the short story, the prose poem, the rough note and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality. It freely mixes narrative and discursive writing." ( For Love & Money: Writing - Reading - Travelling 1968-1987 . Picador, 1988)
• - "Travel in its purest form requires no certain destination, no fixed itinerary, no advance reservation and no return ticket, for you are trying to launch yourself onto the haphazard drift of things, and put yourself in the way of whatever changes the journey may throw up. It's when you miss the one flight of the week, when the expected friend fails to show, when the pre-booked hotel reveals itself as a collection of steel joists stuck into a ravaged hillside, when a stranger asks you to share the cost of a hired car to a town whose name you've never heard, that you begin to travel in earnest." ("Why Travel?" Driving Home: An American Journey . Pantheon, 2011)
• A List of Every Nobel Prize Winner in English Literature
• 100 Major Works of Modern Creative Nonfiction
• What is Nature Writing?
• Defining Nonfiction Writing
• Creative Nonfiction
• First-Person Point of View
• Sports Writing as a Form of Creative Nonfiction
• Tips on Great Writing: Setting the Scene
• Point of View in Grammar and Composition
• An Introduction to Literary Nonfiction
• John McPhee: His Life and Work
• 11 Things You Should Know About Trees
• Definition and Examples of Humorous Essays
• The Life and Travels of Ibn Battuta, World Explorer and Writer

IB Language and Literature 2.0

Group 1 english higher and standard level, faraway places: travel writing.

“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home?” Elizabeth Bishop, poet (1911–1979)

In this section you’ll come to understand the conventions of travel writing , learn a bit about the history of the genre, question why people are compelled to travel – and to write about it – and investigate the overlap between language and literature that exists in the wide and varied genre of travel writing. You’ll read non-fiction texts that feel like stories and see imaginary scenes presented as fact. You’ll learn to decode elements of travel writing and question texts more closely, finding analysis points and learning to evaluate various pieces of writing. These kinds of skills underpin your success in Paper 1 at the end of your course. Begin your study by reading The Travel Narrative from the list of articles below, and then choose one or two more pieces of wider reading to enrich your study:

• The Travel Narrative (IB Textbook)
• A Short History of Travel Writing (Traveltester article)

Reading Challenge

This is a longer and more challenging piece of reading, but spending time on this piece, and discussing it with your teacher, will help you master this topic:

• The Elasticity of Place (an interview with a travel writer)

Class Activit y 1: why do we travel?

As you will have learned by now, people travel – and write about the places they visit – for a variety of reasons. the most common are:

• to find the self
• curiosity about the ‘other’
• religious or spiritual reasons;
• to search for one’s roots;
• to be informed
• to experience ‘awe’

In this activity, you’ll practice identifying these purposes in travel writing. Visit Travel Tales, a collection of stories and articles curated and edited by Lavinia Spalding. Slowly scroll down the home page of her site, reading the titles and blurbs of the various stories you find there. Can you infer the purpose of travel from these snippets of information? Refer to The Travel Narrative (above) for more information of the purposes of travel writing.

Class Activity 2: seven travel stories

The travel genre is wide and varied – and this small collection of travel stories will give you a little taste of some famous (and not-so-famous) writers’ work. You may recognise one or two of these names, such as Bram Stoker and Bill Bryson.

Inside the booklet you’ll find seven short travel tales: either read them yourself, or divide them amongst the people in your class. Use this powerpoint to record your observations about the genre of travel writing. However many extracts you attempt, feed back what you’ve done to the rest of the class.

Areas of Exploration Guiding Conceptual Question

‘Cultural practices’ refers to traditional or customary practices of a particular ethnic, national or cultural group. They can be considered in the same way as symbolism in literary texts; physical manifestations of abstract beliefs and values . One reason we travel is to discover the beliefs and values of different people, as practiced in rites and traditions which have often been passed down from generation to generation. Before you work through the resource below, can you think of any practices that are special in your culture? These may include religious, medical, artistic, culinary, political, family or any other behaviour that reveals underlying beliefs and values:

• H ow do texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

Discussion Points

After you’ve got your head around the material in this section, pair up, pick a question, spend five minutes thinking and noting down your thoughts – then discuss your ideas with a friend and report back to the class:

• Why is travel writing important? How is it different from other kinds of journalism?
• In the twenty-first century, is travel writing still necessary? Given that technology can connect us with people and places all around the world, and we can watch videos, read blogs, and browse the social media of people who live in other places, what is the point of reading first person accounts of travel by outsiders to those places?
• Is there a difference between a traveller and a tourist? What makes a person one rather than the other? Is it preferable to be one over the other?

Learner Portfolio

Watch Livinia Spalding’s Tedtalk (above) and, if you have not done so already, visit Travel Tales to browse some of the stories from her collection. Near the end of this talk Lavinia issues a challenge: to write your own literary travel story, inspired by a place you’ve been or a person you’ve met on a journey you have taken. Take her up on this challenge by writing a piece of literary non-fiction about a place you have been ora journey you have taken in your life. Make the purpose of your writing clear: is it to find the self; discover the ‘other’; become informed; search for your roots; take a religious or spiritual journey, experience ‘awe’ – or some combination of purposes?

Paper 1 Text Type Focus: travel writing

At the end of your course you will be asked to analyze unseen texts (1 at Standard Level and 2 at Higher Level) in an examination. You will be given a guiding question that will focus your attention on formal or stylistic elements of the text(s), and help you decode the text(s)’ purpose(s). Travel writing is an extremely fluid genre and you could be presented with a text that contains a variety of tropes (such as maps, photographs, itineraries, reported or direct speech, humour, metaphors… the list goes on) and may even share similarities with literary texts. Use these practice texts to familiarise yourself with the different features of Travel Writing and add them to your Learner Portfolio; you will want to revise text types thoroughly before your Paper 1 exam. You can find more information – including text type features and sample Paper 1 analysis – by visiting 20/20 . Read through one or two of the exemplars, then choose a new paper and have a go at writing your own Paper 1 analysis response:

• A Fish with Hair
• The Mangyan of Mindanao
• Enter Tasmania’s Labyrinth ( Past Paper)
• Cycling Tips (Past Paper)
• Taj Mahal (Past Paper)
• Long Enough in Jo’burg (Past Paper)
• Travel Tales (Past Paper)
• Hunting Moose (Past Paper)

Key features of travel writing

• Viewpoint: travel writing often documents the personal experiences of someone exploring a new place or country so is often first person.
• Perspective: an outsider’s perspective is common when reading travel writing, particularly if the destination is new, exotic or remote. Alternatively, the piece might be written from an insider’s perspective and is inviting you to visit or share an experience in a different part of the world.
• Structure: look out for chronological timelines, past – present structures or a linear journey of discovery. Guidebooks will have clear headings and subheadings and will probably include box-outs and the like.
• Information: travel writing often seeks to be informative and can present you with facts and figures, names and dates, historical or architectural or geographical information and more.
• Description: if the writer is trying to make the destination tantalising, or to help transport the reader, you might find examples of visual imagery, vivid description , even figurative comparisons , helping you visualise a far-off place.
• Visuals: photographs, maps , or floor plans of famous locations are all visual features that you might encounter in travel writing, particularly guidebooks.

Body of Work: Alison Wright Photography

Alison Wright is an author, photographer and speaker who has published several collections of photo-essays including  Faces of Hope: Children of a Changing World  and  The Spirit of Tibet: Portrait of a Culture. Her most recent collection from 2018 is titled Human Tribe . Her mission is to document endangered cultures and traditions from around the world, including raising awareness of human rights and other issues. Alison has won numerous awards and accolades including the Dorothea Lange Award in Documentary Photography for her photographs of child labor in Asia and a two-time winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award. She was named a National Geographic Traveler of the Year in 2013. Here is a small selection of her photography to use in class, or you can explore Alison’s complete body of work here .

The presentation of beliefs and values through images is a powerful tool that can help preserve minority cultures in the face of globalisation and help to balance historical injustice by educating those who have lost touch with the past or with alternative ways of living. Texts of all kinds – written, spoken, visual – can help protect cultural heritage that might otherwise be lost. Alison Wright’s work can be seen in the wider context of cultural preservation , an important global issue in our increasingly homogenised and globalised world.

Towards Assessment: Individual Oral

“Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work, students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt:  Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied. (40 marks) “

Alison Wright’s photography would make a good text to consider using in your Individual Oral. Here are two suggestions as to how you might use this Body of Work to create a Global Issue. You can use one of these ideas, or develop your own. You should always be mindful of your own ideas and class discussions and follow the direction of your own thoughts, discussions and programme of study when devising your assessment tasks:

• Field of Inquiry: Culture, Identity and Community
• Global Issue: Cultural Preservation

Though the colonial era has passed, its legacy lives on in the education systems, laws, political systems and other cultural practices that have displaced indigenous traditions and beliefs. In this context, the reassertion of minority cultures through texts is a powerful tool that can help balance out historical injustices and educate those who have lost touch with alternative ways of life. You could easily pair her work with any literary text that reveals aspects of culture, describes cultural practices, or reflects cultural beliefs and concerns.

• Field of Inquiry: Beliefs, Values and Education
• Global Issue: Encountering the ‘Other’

An important purpose of travel writing is for us to encounter ‘other’ people and make connections with people who may be very different to ourselves. In a world of suspicion and insularity, it is through building bridges between cultures and learning to understand different ways of life that we can settle our differences peaceably. In this context, Alison Wright’s photography invites us to ‘meet’ individuals from cultures that are very different to the urbanised or westernised cultures a lot of us may be more familiar with.

Sample Individual Oral Here is a recording of the first ten minutes of an individual oral for you to listen to. You can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this talk as a way of improving your own oral presentations. Be mindful of academic honesty when constructing your own oral talk. To avoid plagiarism you can: talk about a different global issue; pair Alison Wright’s photography with a different literary work; select different passages to bring into your talk; develop an original thesis.

Possible Literary pAirings

• Broken April by Ismail Kadare – you might like to consider the idea that some cultural traditions are worth preserving, while others should rightly be consigned to the dustbin of history and Kadare subtly implies the Kanun is a dying tradition.
• John Keats’ poetry – In Ode on a Grecian Urn , the speaker tries to imagine what life might have been like for the people engraved on the surface of an urn.
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw – the play is awash with peculiar Victorian mores revealing all kinds of beliefs and attitudes about class, poverty, prudery, morality and more. Doolittle’s speeches, Mrs Higgins’ at-home or conversations between Higgins, Pickering and Mrs Pearce could all be passages that you might like to select for this activity.
• Border Town by Shen Congwen – written just as China was beginning to modernise, and recently rediscovered by a new generation of Chinese readers, Congwen’s novella paints a picture of the lives and traditions of local Miao people in West Hunan, and can be valued as a record of a way of life that has largely disappeared in one of the world’s fastest-changing countries.
• The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami – these stories are set in a world traumatised by history, and most of the characters are victims of a peculiar kind of ‘collective amnesia’. They seem stuck in the present and can’t move on in their lives. Some critics have interpreted Murakami’s writing as a response to the tumultuous events of Japan’s history – a past that many would like to simply forget. Approaching this activity from this unusual angle would be a challenging, but possibly very interesting, way to pair a literary and non-literary body of work.
• Charlotte Mew’s poetry – writing at the start of the twentieth century, what does Charlotte Mew reveal about the lives, attitudes and values of the people in her poems? What kind of society did she live in? What was life like for ordinary people – and for women, disabled people and those who were mentally impaired?
• Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee – the ‘civilised’ world’s encounter with the fearsome ‘other’ is a major theme of Coetzee’s novel and could make an ideal piece with which to compare Alison Wright’s photography.

Towards Assessment: HL Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length. (20 marks) .††

If you are an HL student who enjoyed this section of work, and find the topic of travel writing interesting, you might consider this Body of Work to write your Higher Level Essay. You could extend your research beyond Human Tribe to include some of her other published collections. Angles of investigation might include: to what extent you think she is successful in her aim of bridging the gap between different cultures; whether her photography constitutes a modern form of travel writing; to what extent her photography reveals and represents cultural practices; whether you feel the photographs form or impose an identity onto people from an outsider’s perspective. Here are some suggestions for you – but always follow your own lines of inquiry should your thoughts lead you in a different direction:

• How is colour and composition used to present ideas about identity in Alison Wright’s photography?
• How does Alison Wright imply a close connection between people and the natural world in her photography collections?
• How does Alison Wright use metonymy in her photographic work?
• Explore the symbolism of eyes in Alison Wright’s photographic collections.
• In what ways does Alison Wright’s photography meaningfully negotiate our encounter with unfamiliar people and places?

Wider Reading and Research

• Outpost Magazine – a Canadian adventure-travel publication published six times a year, Outpost is known for its long-form adventure narratives from across the world.
• My Favourite Travel Book – six famous travel writers nominate their favourite travel books.
• The Most Inspiring Talks on Travel – a selection of the best Tedtalks about travel, including Lavinia Spalding’s talk.
• The Truth About Tribal Tourism – visit this Rough Guide blog to discover how your sustainable tour may not be as friendly to people or places as you might have thought…

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Posted on Jun 21, 2017

12 Types of Travel Writing Every Writer Should Know

So, you want to be a travel writer?

There are plenty of reality doses out there already, so we’re going to focus on the positives, and what you can do to maximize your chances of travel writing professionally. One of the first steps: you should absolutely know your markets, and what types of travel writing are popular in them. In today’s competitive market, this knowledge can both help you structure your article  and target the right audience.

In this post, we break down modern travel writing into three distinct categories: freelance journalism , blogging, and book writing. Then we identify the prevalent types of travel writing each category is known for, to give you an initial sort of compass in the industry.

Freelance Travel Journalism

The truth is this: the travel sections in major publications (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal) are slimmer now, so competition will be tall. But there are other outlets. Local newspapers are sometimes open to travel pitches from freelancers. Certain websites pay for travel articles, while magazines can be great for targeting niche audiences.

So what are the common types of freelance travel journalism?

Destination articles

Here, the game’s in the name: destination articles tell readers about a place they might want to travel one day. One of the most standard type of travel stories, these pieces act as the armchair reader’s bird-eye view of a place. Useful or interesting facts pepper the writing. History, points of interest, natural scenery, trendy spots: a destination article can touch upon them all within the framework of a broad narrative.

Where the average article gives readers a sense of the destination, the best of the best convinces readers that this is a destination they want, nay, need to visit. As such, though some destination articles are written in first person, the focus is rarely on the writer. Instead, the destination is the star of the show.

For examples of destination articles, check out:

• Besalú, the most interesting Spanish village you probably don’t know (LA Times)
• In Indonesia (Washington Post)
• 36 Hours In The Finger Lakes Region of New York (New York Times)

Special-interest articles

Special-interest articles are offshoots of destination articles. Instead of taking the reader on a tour of an entire country or city, these pieces cover one particular aspect of the destination. This kind of writing can cover anything from art in Colombia, ghost towns in the U.S., trekking in Patagonia, alpaca farms in Australia, motorbiking in Brazil, railroads in France, volunteering in Tanzania — you get the gist.

Since special-interest articles are narrower in topic, many writers tailor them for niche magazines or websites. Before you start pitching, we recommend flipping through the Writer’s Handbook , one of the most useful guides to the freelance publishing market, to see which publications fit your target audience.

For a taste of some special-interest articles, see:

• Exploring Portugal — From Pork To Port (epicurious.com)
• This Unsung Corner of Spain is Home to Fabulous Food (Washington Post)
• Karsts of China's Getu River region attract rock climbers, other travelers (CNN Travel)

Holiday and special events

Holiday and special events travel articles ask writers to write about a destination before the event takes place. The biggest global events are magnets for this type of travel writing, such as the World Cup, the Olympics, the World Expo, fashion weeks, and film festivals. Depending on the publication, regional events work just as well.

Want to see what special events pieces look like? Have a read through these:

• This summer’s solar eclipse is southern Illinois’ chance to shine (Chicago Tribune)
• How To Plan A Trip To The 2016 Rio Olympics (Travel & Leisure)

You’ll recognize a round-up article when you see one, as it’ll go, “40 best beaches in West Europe,” or, perhaps, “20 of the greatest walks in the world!” It’s a classic tool in any magazine or newspaper writer’s toolbox, taking a bunch of destinations and grouping them all under one common thread.

Ultimately, a clear motif makes this type of article a breeze to read, as they’re a play on the ubiquitous List Format. But, OK, before you jump at this excuse to sacrifice your belly at 99 food trucks in New York City, remember that your premise should be original, not to mention practical. What’s tough is coming up with X ways to do Y in the first place, as that demands you put in the travel and research to produce a thorough write-up.

Want even more examples of round-up articles? Here you go:

• 12 new art exhibits to see this summer (Smithsonian)
• 21 ways to see America for cheap (Huffington Post)
• 41 places to go in 2011 (New York Times)

Personal essays

Publishers are experiencing something of a personal essay fatigue , so the market for more might be scarce these days. However, quality trumps all, and a good personal travel essay is just plain good writing in disguise: something that possesses a strong voice while showing insight, growth, and backstory.

Just don’t make it a diary entry. In an interview with The Atlantic , travel writer Paul Theroux said: “The main shortcut is to leave out boring things. People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I’m not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don’t want to hear about it.”

Here’s a jumping-off point for personal travel essays:

• Taking the Great American Roadtrip (Smithsonian)

Have a burning opinion to share? Sometimes publications end up giving op-eds to staff, but there are always open calls for opinion pieces.

Travel op-eds are much rarer than political opinion pieces, but there’s a pattern to the ones that make the cut: good persuasive writing. If you can come at a topic from a unique angle (and argue your case clearly) then you may be able to publish your opinion.

If you’re in the mood for travel op-ed articles, see:

• The West Coast Is The Best Coast For Food In America (Food & Wine)
• Why Climate Change Is Actually Relevant To Travel (Conde Nast)

Travel Blogging

When typing “travel blog” into Google returns 295 million results, we can guess it’s a fairly competitive market.

Here’s the plus side: bloggers get to write what they want and go where they please. When it comes to blog posts, there are no editors, no gatekeepers. Only you and the “PUBLISH” button.

We won’t go revisit the types of travel writing we covered earlier (such as the roundup format). Instead, we’ll explore some of the other formats bloggers use to tell their travel stories. Since the rules of travel blogging are next to non-existent, our tally below is by no means definitive. And, again, our best advice is to note what your favorite bloggers do on their blogs.

Already running a successful travel blog? You might consider turning it into a full-length book !

How-to articles are already fairly popular in magazines, but they’re positively omnipresent in the travel blogging world. Blogs provide a direct communication platform, allowing trust to build up quicker with the readers. As a result, for the search query, “How to travel Europe on a budget,” six out of the top ten results are posts from trusted independent blogs.

A How-To article is the most standard form of advice column a travel blogger can produce. It’s intrinsically useful, promising that it’ll teach something by article’s end. A blogger’s challenge is delivering fully on that promise.

How to read more How-To articles? We got you covered:

• How To Start A Travel Blog (Nomadic Matt)
• How To Travel Solo To A Party Destination (Adventurous Kate)
• How to Visit Penang’s Kek Lok Si Temple (Migrationology)

Itineraries

Itineraries reveal the schedule that the writer took at a given destination, city-by-city or sight-by-sight. They’re meant for the traveler who’s embarking on a similar trip and needs a template. Typically, you’ll find that an itinerary post is an easy place for you to slip in recommendations, anything from the accommodation you used or the restaurants you tried.

You can use itinerary posts to reinforce your blog’s brand. For instance, an itinerary posted on a blog focused around budget travel will probably maximize cost-saving chances.

For more itineraries, see:

• My Trip To Japan (A Complete Japan Itinerary)
• Backpacking Vietnam on a budget: 2-3 Weeks Itinerary + Tips

Longform posts

Longform travel blogging tells a travel story through extended narrative content, as it takes a week’s worth of adventure and shapes it into a story. Longform blog posts about travel often end up being creative nonfiction : a way to present nonfiction — factually accurate prose about real people and events — in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner.

Photography can add another dimension to the form, as Emmanuel Nataf (our co-founder!) shows on his travel blog . And Reedsy's very own Arielle provides a glimpse into why she prefers longform travel writing on her blog, Steps, a Travel Journal :

My favourite kinds of stories are the ones that give you a real sense of place. That’s why I enjoy longform travel blogging: I get to describe the character of a place through the experiences I encountered there.

If you want to dip your toe into the sea of longform posts, you can also read:

• The Cow Head Taco Philosopher King of Oaxaca (Legal Nomads)
• The Best Worst Museum In The World

When it comes to writing a book, you can take all the challenges about travel writing from above and magnify it times 2,000. If you’re asking readers to commit to you for more than 100 pages, you’d best make sure that your book is worth their while.

As far as examples go, travel writing’s boomed in the mainstream book market recently. But there’s much more to it than Eat, Pray, Love and its descendants.

Travelogues

In travelogues, authors record their adventures in a way that illustrates or sheds insight upon the place itself. Travelogues possess a storied past, from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters in 1763 to Mark Twain’s 1867 The Innocents Abroad , which paved the way for the sort of comic travelogues that Bill Bryson’s perfected today.

Up for some travelogues? Check out:

• Notes From A Small Island , by Bill Bryson
• In Patagonia , by Bruce Chatwin
• Travels with Charley In Search of America , by John Steinbeck

Travel memoirs

Nowadays, travel memoirs are practically synonymous with Elizabeth Gilbert’s wildly popular Eat, Pray, Love and Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling Wild , both of which were recently adapted into Hollywood blockbusters.

That said, be aware that you’ll need a pretty exceptional personal story for your memoir to compete in today’s market . If you’re still set on writing or self-publishing a travel memoir, it’s tricky to balance personal backstory and travel for 400 pages, so think about taking on a professional for a second pair of eyes.

Did you know? You can find Nicki Richesin , a top Bloomsbury editor who’s edited for Cheryl Strayed, on our marketplace.

In addition to Eat, Pray, Love and Wild , you can read:

• Under the Tuscan Sun , by Frances Mayes
• Coasting , by Jonathan Raban
• Wind, Sand, and Stars , by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

As Oscar Wilde said, “I never travel without my diary. One should always keep something sensational to read in the train.” But these days, people are replacing diaries with travel guides — the ubiquitous Lonely Planet becoming one of the more common sights on transit.

Travel writing in guidebooks is straightforward, informative, and fact-filled. In addition, a certain amount of responsibility comes with the job. Lonely Planet alone is read by millions of travelers worldwide.

General Tips and Guidelines

As we mentioned before, the trick to producing great travel writing is ultimately simply writing well . To that extent, you should make sure to follow all the guidelines of good writing — not least, spell-checking your article before submitting or publishing it anywhere. You don’t want an editor or reader to see it while it stilll reads lik edis.

Also, keep in mind the tone, style, and vibe of the publication and platform (and by extension, your audience). A story about a moon-rock could go into a kid's magazine or it could go into Scientific America .

Finally, some category-specific tips:

• If you’re freelance writing, always check submission guidelines. Publications may accept only pitches or they may welcome articles “on spec” (pre-written articles). Some sources only take travel articles that were written within 6 months of the trip.
• If you’re blogging, brand your website (same advice if you’re an author who’s building a homepage ).
• If you’re writing a book, get a professional editor! An unedited book is an unwieldy thing, and professional eyes provide direction, continuity, and assonance. ( Layout designers can be important if you’re publishing a travel photography book, in the meanwhile.)

Travel writing isn't a cinch. In fact, it's a long and often hard grind. But by figuring out what type of travel writing you want to try your hand at, you're taking the crucial first step.

7 responses

Amanda Turner says:

20/03/2018 – 16:20

Thank you, this was very helpful. Here's one of mine: http://vagabondingwithkids.com/every-mothers-guide-to-piranha-fishing-in-the-amazon/

Travalerie says:

24/05/2018 – 18:42

I landed on this page Googling for one thing and coming up with another. Haha! But what I found instead was helpful as I'm devouring as much as I can on travel writing. A few months ago, I started a new travel business, revamped my website including a new blog, and am in the process of writing, writing, writing. I took 2 trips this year so far and wrote what seemed like a mini-novella. Burning out in the process. I know I can do better. But I had no idea what I was writing could be re-worked to fit a certain category of travel writing -- which is what I found helpful in this post above. Thanks https://www.travalerie.com/blog

Surya Thakur says:

04/03/2019 – 12:39

Very good information. Lucky me I discovered your blog by chance (stumbleupon). I’ve saved as a favorite for later! KuLLuHuLLs

David Bishop says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Thanks for this good article. I'm in my third year on the road and recently started my senior solo adventure travel website. I think my site has some pretty good stuff, of course. Take a look and tell me what you think. www.davidhunterbishop.com

Iris C. Permuy says:

23/05/2019 – 18:03

Thank you very much for all of these useful pieces of advice. I will make sure to implement them all on my travel blog, which is a combination of travel and gastronomy and uses the memoir and itinerary types, apart from recipes. Come check it out if you feel like it! I am more than open, eager for some professional feedback :)

Serissa says:

26/10/2019 – 14:53

This post is the perfect diving board for aspiring travel writers. I plan to link to this page from my travel blog if that is alright! ?? The link on my website will appear as "[title of this post] by Reedsy Blog". I assume this is alright, but if not, please email me directly to let me know! Thanks so much!

↪️ Martin Cavannagh replied:

29/10/2019 – 10:11

We'd be absolutely delighted if you shared this article on your blog :)

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Pros talking prose: the experts’ advice on how to improve your travel writing

May 25, 2018 • 7 min read

In search of some top tips to take your travel writing skills from proficient to prodigious? We chat to a selection of authors appearing at this year’s star-studded Hay Festival about how to cultivate captivating travel writing, their favourite destinations to write about, and the travel tomes that inspired them to hit the road.

Horatio Clare – beach resort despiser and one-time Arctic sailor

Horatio is a Welsh-British author who has published a glut of literary works, from acclaimed children’s books to personal memoirs. His latest travel-focused text, Icebreaker: A Voyage Far North , details his time aboard a Finnish icebreaker ship traversing the Bay of Bothnia.

What's your top tip for producing compelling travel writing?

You have to find somewhere that lights you in order to write well. If beach resorts aren't your thing it's very difficult to produce a good piece about one. I personally look for a mixture of culture and nature; so for example, the east coast of Madagascar is easy, because the people, landscapes and animal and bird life are all so rich with interest and diversity. For me, combining history and local legends with the mystery and drama of the natural world enables me to produce my best work.

What's your favourite destination to write about?

Anywhere that is not a beach resort! I love writing about sub-Saharan Africa : Zambia and Tanzania are tremendous. But then Algiers is one of my favourite cities and Sicily is beautiful, and historically rich, and its culture and politics are a whirl of splendour and horror.

What's your favourite work of travel literature?

It changes but I am a great fan of Norman Lewis. His Naples ‘44 is peerless, but all of his works are wonderful. Voices of the Old Sea , about southern Spain before development and tourism got to it, is the very model of how you need to understand and submerge yourself in a place in order to produce a masterpiece. Of recent writing, Michael Jacobs' The Robber of Memories , about a journey up the Magdalena river in Colombia , is fabulous.

Patrick Barkham – history buff and anglophile

Born in Norfolk, England, Patrick is Natural History Writer for the Guardian and author of several travel titles, including The Butterfly Isles , which was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize, and Islander , which delves into daily life on some of Britain's smaller islands.

When I am writing about a place I'm travelling around, I put my phone away and try to get completely in the moment, taking out my pen and notebook and writing obsessively about everything I see, hear, taste, touch, smell and think about. Attention to the small details of a place hopefully makes for more evocative writing.

I like writing about Britain because even in a supposedly homogenised and globalised society my home country has noticeable differences between even the most proximate places. It also has so much depth and complexity, and so many untold stories still to tell. Writing about 'home' also reduces some of the hazards of cultural imperialism, although the Welsh and the Scots have had to endure a long tradition of enraptured English visitors (such as me!) writing about them.

It's an obvious choice but I was very taken with Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between the Woods and the Water – for romance, chutzpah and warm-heartedness. I also admire what must be a fairly creative reconstruction of vivid memories, with the author writing more than four decades after he made his journey across Europe .

Dylan Moore – familiarity seeker and hispanophile

Dylan Moore is an English teacher, writer and editor from Newport, Wales. He is the Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellow 2018/19 and author of Driving Home Both Ways , a book that is part essay collection, part travelogue through life.

Find equivalence. It may sound like a highfalutin concept, but wherever I go in the world, and however different it is from my home in Wales , I am on the lookout for relatability. Where’s the Cardiff Bay? What do they have instead of Welsh cakes? Who’s the Gareth Bale? More often than not, the practice of holding home and abroad up to each other like a pair of mirrors sheds unusual light on the sense of a place. Once you’ve seen the parallels, it’s often easier to examine the smaller, more interesting ways in which places are different.

Spain . Some might stray little further than sun, sand and sangria or a city break in Barcelona , but for me the Iberian peninsula is a subcontinent. From the pilgrimage trail of the Camino de Santiago along the green Basque coast in the north to the majesty of the Alhambra palace in the south, from the intricate Moorish tile designs of Seville to the futuristic architecture of Santiago Calatrava, and from the art of Goya and Picasso to the noise and glamour of La Liga, Spain has it all, and more.

Abroad by Paul Fussell is a work of literary criticism about travel writing between the wars that touches upon many classics of the genre, including works by D.H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and Robert Byron. Though I love the work as a whole, I don’t agree with the author’s argument that the twenties and thirties represented ‘the last great age of travel’; the fact that airplanes have largely replaced ocean liners and long-distance sleeper trains may mean we travel differently now, but for me the pull of elsewhere has lost none of its romance, and if anything the greater accessibility of ‘abroad’ has opened travel – and travel writing – to a wider range of voices.

Jasper Winn – slow adventurer and extreme kayaker

Jasper Winn is a self-titled ‘slow adventurer’ who has spent most of his life travelling the world and now serves as the Writer in Residence for the Canal and River Trust. Jasper has written two books focused around long-distance kayaking: Paddle and upcoming title Waterways: A thousand miles along Britain's canals .

It seems to me that the most important commodity for the modern travel writer is having time. Committing a serious amount of time to researching a subject, to talking to people, to travelling slowly, to waiting around just to see what happens, to reading tens of books on a destination, is the key to producing great travel writing.

I miss being totally out of touch. For my first long distance trip across the Sahara and through West Africa in the early 1980s, initially hitchhiking and then pedalling a 20 quid bike I bought in a market in Ouagadougou , I had one phone call back to Europe in five months; apart from that and a few poste restante letters I was totally out of touch with friends and family. The internet has changed everything, and mostly for the better, but a good trip is still anywhere that feels wild, where I have lots of time and few plans.

Laurie Lee's As I Walked Out One Summer's Morning was the book that sent me off as a teenager, hitchhiking from Ireland to Andalucía , playing guitar on streets and in cafes to eat. Meanwhile, Irish travel writer Peter Somerville-Large's The Coast of West Cork , about a cycle trip along Cork 's coast where I grew up, made my own corner of the world both more familiar and much richer. That book showed me how writing could travel through time as much as through a landscape, weaving history, nature, social observation and quirky humour into one compelling narrative; an excellent example for anyone hoping to one day produce a great travel tome of their own.

You can hear more insights from all of these authors and many more at the Hay Festival, which runs from 24 May to 3 June. Find out more at hayfestival.org or follow @hayfestival

https://shop.lonelyplanet.com/products/how-to-be-a-travel-writer-4

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How to Write a Travelogue: 8 Tips To Write Better Travel Stories

As I wrote in a previous article , a travelogue is a truthful account of an individual’s experiences traveling, usually told in the past tense and in the first person. In that article, I focused on how travelogues compared to modern travel books. In this article, I will offer tips on how to write a captivating travelogue. You will learn how to avoid writing a traditional (and boring) “Dear Diary” travelogue and craft a modern and compelling travel story. 

What does a travelogue contain?

A travelogue contains vivid descriptions of the place you’re traveling in, descriptions of the subjective experiences of visiting a place (your thoughts, blunders, fears), informed commentary about a place (its history and culture), and accounts of your interactions with local people. Above all, a travelogue must tell a story.

A travelogue is not academic writing, so you need not make a formal argument and present evidence—keep formal language at bay. A travelogue is not a write-up for a tourism board or a marketing agency, so don’t try to “sell” the destination to your readers. A travelogue is not a guidebook or a blog post, so you need not be helpful, list “the top 10 best restaurants,” or offer practical travel tips or suggestions.

Rather, a travelogue is a creative narrative of your experiences traveling. 

Tell one specific story

Traditionally, travelogues were mundane accounts of what a person saw, did, and ate while traveling. But try to avoid giving a “Dear Diary” account of your travels. You will bore your readers if you write a step-by-step report of what you did, ate, and saw.

Instead, a travelogue will be more effective if it focuses on one interesting story from your travels. A destination is not a story. Neither is simply traveling from point A to point B.

Now that you’ve returned from your travels and want to write an essay or an article about your trip, review your notes and reflect on your experiences. Does a particular story stand out? Is there an experience that you can’t stop telling people about? Did you have a haunting, transformative, or enlightening experience? Did something bad or unexpected happen? If so, it might be a good candidate to write about.

Be descriptive

Now that you have your travel story in mind, think about the setting. 

Details and descriptions are essential in travel writing. They will make your writing and story more vivid. What sounds, scents, tastes, and textures did you experience? 

Give your readers a sense of what it is like to be there. Transport your reader to that specific time and place.

Be forthcoming

A travelogue is special because it gives us a glimpse of a foreign place, but it does so through the lens of the writer. We want to know your specific take on things. 

We are all human. We all think, have opinions, and get scared. What did you feel? Did your experience stir up old memories? Were you frightened? Did you embarrass yourself? Was there a misunderstanding? What did you learn?

Be honest with your own flaws, biases, and assumptions. Give your reader subjective and emotional insight.

Be engaging

We travel (and read travel stories) to engage with and learn about other cultures. And our best travel stories almost always involve interactions with local people you’ve met.

So, while it is good that your reader gets a glimpse into the subjective world of the author, we will want to hear other voices in your story too. 

What conversations did you have with the locals? Did anyone tell you something interesting, alarming, or enlightening? Who did you meet? Who were they? What did they look like? Did they have a particular manner of speaking? A distinctive feature?

Be informed

The point of a travelogue is to entertain, but sometimes it is good to inform. Sprinkle relevant information into your story.

Is there historical or cultural details that will help your reader understand why something is so? Did a local person reveal something interesting about the politics or history of a place?

How do you start a travelogue?

If a travelogue is a narrative account of your travels, then consider starting the travelogue with an inciting incident. Begin your travel story with something that will draw your reader in. Highlight a problem, conflict, struggle, or tension that will propel your story along. 

As Seth Kugel says, the best travels stories are when things go wrong.

For example, you can begin your travelogue by stating your quest or mission, and then complicating that with an obstacle that gets in the way. Or, you can start with an intrigue, curious statement, declaration, or observation. You can start  in media res , and then fill in the story later. 

The trick is to hook your reader.

How do you end a travelogue?

Like any story, a memorable travelogue will offer a resolution. Consider ending your story with a transformation or a resolution, a return to the beginning, a moral, a message, or a revelation. 

You want to give your reader a sense of closure, that the specific story has ended.

Tips to write a better travelogue

• Tell a specific story
• Describe the outer world using vivid descriptions
• Reveal the inner world (your thoughts, mistakes, missteps, blunders, excitements, etc.)
• Provide informed commentary (historical, political, cultural, etc.)
• Talk to locals and describe your interactions with them
• Use a conversational tone and avoid fancy/big words, marketing jargon, and guidebook speak
• Begin with an intrigue, something going wrong, or a compelling or captivating moment
• End with a resolution, a moral, a message, or a revelation

Do you have any other tips on how to write a better travelogue?

Last Updated on 29 November 2020 by Travel Writing World

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Travel Writing World

With an emphasis on travel books and long-form travel literature, host Jeremy Bassetti talks with the world’s most inspiring travel writers about their work and about the business and craft of travel writing in this award-winning podcast and website. In addition to the podcast, the site also features travel writer profiles, book reviews, and articles.

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What I want to know is how to write your thoughts? In Italics so the readers knows that’s your thoughts or constantly writing “I remember thinking…” “I thought to myself”. I prefer just writing my thoughts as italics but is this the accepted way? Will an editor hate it and want me to rewrite is what I’m asking.

You’re talking about “internal dialog.” Do a google search to see what others think, but here is my take. Italics and quotes are both accepted forms. There is also a third way: don’t use italics, quotes, or thought/dialog tags at all. While this depends on the point of view of the work, I’m assuming that that you’re writing in the first-person present or past if you’re writing a travelogue. Why not use italics, quotation marks, or tags if you’re writing in the first-person? It will be implied that the narrator who says “I” or “me” is the one doing the thinking. So, instead of writing Why did the man steal my purse , I thought… You could simply write: Why did the man steal my purse? as it will be implied that the narrator is the one having the thought.

Just finished my travelogue book

Great. What is it about?

Just starting up and very much enjoyed this article.

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FULLCIRCLE COURSES

Travel writing.

The Travel Writing Course from Fullcircle Courses clearly defines successful writing and shows you how to get there with a hands on approach that allows you grasp important points quicker than other providers. Excellent job. Thank you. Highly recommended!

The Oxford English Dictionary defines travel writing as a genre of writing in which the author describes places they have visited and their experiences while travelling.

This can include writing for guide books, websites, blogs, magazines and 600-page novels.

Travel writing celebrates the people, places, experiences and cultures that make this world so truly diverse and amazing.

Some travel writers do it for enjoyment but many also do it for a living, which is the type of travel writing on which we are going to focus. Notable contemporary English-language travel writers include Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Mary Morris, Dennison Berwick, Jan Morris, Tony Horwitz and Tom Miller, among others.

With a bit of work you can soon become a high quality travel writer too and get paid for doing so.

Career Development

As a travel writer for a publication like Lonely Planet or National Geographic the rewards are limitless as many travel writers go on to produce other forms of media. A travel writer can expect a salary of $50k++ as experience and reputation grows.

01 Module 1: Key Reflections on Travel Writing

• Module Objective
• How do you become a high quality travel writer?
• The 4 Critical Elements for Success
• When will you know when you've succeeded?

02 Module 2: Critical Element 1: Knowledge

• Know how to make a sound decision
• Six Thinking Hats
• Know how and what to research
• Read, read, read
• Check out the competition
• Keep an eye on your finances
• Know how to achieve your goal by setting SMART objectives
• Know everything there is to know about the country/place you will be writing about
• Know how to write well
• Know how to get the best out of your camera and produce high quality images
• Know how to make money from your hard work
• Know the importance of reflection
• True Story: Changying

03 Module 3: Critical Element 2: Abilities

• Keep fit and well
• Be ready to adjust to the weather
• Identify and avoid insects and other biting/stinging creatures.
• See the big picture and give a balanced view
• Soak up the pressure
• Be empathic when chatting with others on your travels
• Be descriptive and non-judgemental
• Be optimistic
• Listen without judging
• Ask questions
• Embrace surprise
• Make time for it
• Don't be afraid to admit you don't know something
• Be motivated
• You need to be motivated to motivate your readers
• Everyone can be motivated in some way or another
• Motivation doesn't last
• Think outside the box

04 Module 4: Critical Element 3: Skills

• Writing Skills
• Clarity is crucial
• Work on your tone
• Use simple sentences and short paragraphs
• Use a writing frame
• Let it flow
• Entice with your title
• Humour is welcome...in small doses
• Grammar, spelling and punctuation are fundamental
• Evaluate your piece (before presenting it to publishers)
• Seek out help if need be
• Time management and planning skills
• Observation skills
• Influencing skills
• Blogging skills (potentially)
• Photographic Skills
• Networking skills
• Credibility
• Profitability
• Have the tools to network with you at all times
• Listen and ask questions
• Give help whenever possible
• Manage your time efficiently

05 Module 5: Critical Element 4: Habits

• Tools at the ready
• Look after your tools
• Always have a backup plan
• Don't look like a tourist
• Respect national laws at all times
• Get up early and go to bed early

06 End of Course Assessment

• Take the End of Course Assessment and get rewarded with your Accredited Certificate

07 Conclusion and Personal Development Plan

• Constantly develop yourself
• TEFL Fullcircle
• My Five-Point Personal Development Plan

It's a lot of information to take in. Be prepared to study hard.

Extremely good course for the price!

Travel Writing

Travel writing is designed to inform people about places. Travel is a personal luxury, so usually, people read travel writing for entertainment. Places and landscapes are visually exciting, so descriptive language is common.

Purpose of travel writing

• Travel writing for guide books like Frommers or Lonely Planet involves listing what there is to do in a country and this kind of writing will often be informative.
• Travel writing for magazines or publications is usually targeted at people who read about travel for leisure. This is more likely to be entertaining.
• The purpose of the writing will affect the kind of language used.

Tone and style of travel writing

• Travel writers in a magazine trying to entertain people are likely to use a personal tone, write in the first person to narrate their own experience and may even use humour, puns or cyclic repetition to create a relationship with the reader. These will be informal articles.
• Even travel writing to persuade people to visit a place may be quite informal because most people have an informal mindset and want escapism from a holiday. People want to relax on holiday so a formal tone may not be appropriate.

Features of travel writing

• Lots of descriptive and emotive tone and language to describe the visual and sensory experience.
• A personalised tone and a final recommendation or opinion on the place.
• A title and strapline (that builds on the title) to give the reader an idea of what the piece of travel writing is about.

1 Key Terms

1.1 Key Terms

1.1.1 Key Terms - Nouns, Verbs & Sentence Types

1.1.2 Key Terms - Words, Sounds & Language

1.1.3 Key Terms - Images, Symbols & Mood

1.1.4 Key Terms - Other Techniques

1.1.5 End of Topic Test - Key Terms

2 Language Techniques

2.1 Language Devices

2.1.1 Metaphors

2.1.2 Similes

2.1.3 Metaphors & Similes HyperLearning

2.1.4 Personification

2.1.5 Pathetic Fallacy

2.1.7 Oxymoron

2.1.8 Hyperbole

2.1.9 Alliteration

2.1.10 Sibilance

2.1.11 Onomatopoeia

2.1.12 Emotive Language

2.1.13 All Language Devices

2.1.14 End of Topic Test - Language Devices

2.2 Writing Structure

2.2.1 Narrators

2.2.2 Paragraphs

2.2.3 Tense

2.2.4 Present vs Past vs Future

2.2.5 Foreshadowing

2.2.6 Structure

2.2.7 End of Topic Test - Writing Structure

3 Paper 1: Reading

3.1 Structuring Your Answer - Section A

3.1.1 Overview - Section A

3.1.2 Answering Question 1

3.1.3 Answering Question 2

3.1.4 Exam-Style Questions - Paper 1: Reading

3.1.5 Answering Question 3

3.1.6 Answering Question 4

3.1.7 End of Topic Test - Section A

3.1.8 Exam-Style Questions - Paper 1: Reading

4 Paper 1: Writing

4.1 Structuring Your Answer

4.1.1 Overview - Section B

4.1.2 Answering Section B

4.1.3 Answering Section B - Checklist of Techniques

4.1.4 End of Topic Test - Writing Section

4.1.5 Exam-Style Questions - Paper 1: Writing

5 Paper 2: Reading

5.1 DAFORESTER

5.1.1 Direct Address

5.1.2 Alliteration

5.1.3 Facts

5.1.4 Opinions

5.1.5 Repetition

5.1.6 Exaggeration (Hyperbole)

5.1.7 Statistics

5.1.8 Triples (Rule of 3)

5.1.9 Emotive Language

5.1.10 Rhetorical Questions

5.1.11 End of Topic Test - DAFORESTER

5.2 Structuring Your Answer

5.2.1 Overview - Section A

5.2.2 Answering Question 1

5.2.3 Answering Question 2

5.2.4 Answering Question 3

5.2.5 Exam-Style Questions - Paper 2: Reading

5.2.6 Answering Question 4

5.2.7 End of Topic Test - Section A

5.2.8 Exam-Style Questions - Paper 2: Reading

6 Paper 2: Writing

6.1 Structuring Your Answer

6.1.1 Overview - Section B

6.1.2 Answering Section B - Punctuation & Plans

6.2 Types of Writing

6.2.1 Article

6.2.2 Essay

6.2.3 Leaflet

6.2.4 Letter

6.2.5 Speech

6.2.6 Review

6.2.7 Travel Writing

6.2.8 Diaries & Journals

6.2.9 End of Topic Test - Types of Writing

6.3 Writing to...

6.3.1 Writing to Inform

6.3.2 Writing to Inform - Example

6.3.3 Writing to Explain

6.3.4 Writing to Explain - Example

6.3.5 Writing to Persuade

6.3.6 Writing to Persuade - Example

6.3.7 Writing to Argue

6.3.8 Writing to Argue - Example

6.3.9 Writing to Persuade vs Writing to Argue

6.3.10 Writing to Advise

6.3.11 Writing to Advise - Example

6.3.12 End of Topic Test - Writing to...

6.3.13 Exam-Style Questions - Paper 2: Writing

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Travel Writing

English Travel Writing Coursework

Jake Scrace

Truro- the busy epicentre of nothingness?

Every year, hundreds of tourists flock to Cornwall for their summer holiday. Cornwall is famous for its rain, mud, rural ways and the freezing sea. So are these people insane? Jake Scrace  goes to investigate…

As a child of seven, I remember visiting Cornwall for my summer vacation; one word constantly dominates these memories. Rain. Every single year, without fail might I add, the heavens would release enough rain to refill the Atlantic Ocean if it ever dried up (don’t ask me why it would). We would stay in small cottages; country homes that were situated near the coast (it would be hard to find one that wasn’t), and we would go out walking and exploring Cornwall, over the moors and in the rain, leaving me feeling positively suicidal.

  It was only until we moved to the city of Truro in Cornwall when I was eleven that I really warmed up to the place. Yes, I know. A city in Cornwall! A small secret; Truro is more like a large town with a huge cathedral in the middle which allows it to be called a city, so it’s nothing like the stereotypical city. Anyhow, it will be flooded within the next few hundred years according to researchers.

  In Truro, you will find signs of human life and civilization. It has been developed immensely over the past fifty years or so, and is now more thriving than ever. What is so attractive about its character and its old-style appearance? The old architecture, the theatre, the cathedral, the library, the Saturday market, the late night shopping at Christmas, the old coinage hall and the Methodist church are all crammed into an area that takes fifteen to twenty minutes to cross on foot.

This is a preview of the whole essay

  Nearby housing estates are blooming, the rush hour is getting busier and the town square increasingly claustrophobic.

  The museum will give you every fact about Truro’s history going. The gallery upstairs will leave you breathless, and the gift shop next to the reception will supply you with a memory that will keep you smiling for many, many years to come.

  I did once set myself the task to count the number of tea shops and cafes in Truro City Centre. I had been counting for approximately forty minutes when I reached my conclusion; a lot. It did make me ask myself if Truro had a main link to South America’s coffee beans industry.

  Of course, you couldn’t come to Cornwall without trying a traditional steak pasty.  There are (at least) five different pasty suppliers in Truro; it would be foolish to have to say that you are spoiled for choice. (W.C.Rowes pasties are delicious; a wide range of fillings and sizes).

  If you are perhaps wondering about accommodation, Truro River’s border holds many flats for rent. For somewhere more idealistic with space and character, the outskirts of Truro supplies tourists with many rentable cottages. These are usually cheaper at off-peak times, like February or September. These can be found easily within a copy of “English Country Cottages” with more details. Our family used this every year for holidays. Truro River also holds some of the most beautiful views in the country; many footpaths and walks can be found alongside its peaceful edge.

  For local attractions, Truro itself holds sufficient entertainment for the whole family; the RCM (Royal Cornwall Museum) the Hall for Cornwall (theatre), Truro Bowl, The Plaza (cinema), and Victoria Gardens. A local stroll along through Malpas and St. Clements is also a recommended opportunity.

  For the beach scene, there are many nearby beaches within a thirty minute radius from Truro. Praa Sands, Gwithian, Fistral, and Perranporth are to name but a few.

The local folk are certainly something to smile about; Truro’s friendly atmosphere and helpful hands make every passing stranger a friend. Few problems arise with violence, which allows Truro’s residents to sleep peacefully at night without having to sleep with a baton on their bedside table!

  In the way of education, Truro has an outstanding attainment. Three of its secondary school’s are the top three in Cornwall, and one of these is a state school; Penair. Truro College is also rated an outstanding college by OFSTED inspectors and is still improving today. Not that this is particularly useful for a holiday, but if the magic wears off on you and you decide that you want to live here then you know a bit about its suitability factor at least.

The Truro Police Station and Hospital is right in Truro, easy access with plenty of community officers wandering around to enquire about any minor issues.

   So what does Truro not provide? Well, sky scrapers won’t be found, but anyone considering a trip to Cornwall looking for sky scrapers would be better off in Las Vegas.

  So there it is. Truro in its full light, and what a bright light it is! So don’t wait for the sun to shine. Put a smile on your face and come out to play.  You’ll love  it.

Document Details

• Word Count 865
• Page Count 2
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject English

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IB DP Language A Language and Literature – sample text analysis – travel writing

Before you read the “spoiler” bullet points below take a careful look at the text. Imagine it is a text you are using for one of your DP Language A Language and Literature assessments: the individual oral, the HL essay, or Paper 1 and analyze it accordingly. (This text would not be appropriate for Paper 2).

Some elements of the text to consider:

• The characteristics of this particular kind of travel writing
• “Tokyo” written in English and in kanji (Chinese characters)
• The map of Japan on the top right with Tokyo marked on it
• The first three paragraphs of the text which differ somewhat from the rest
• The highlights located in a box separated from the rest of the text and the use of bold, a map, and pages numbers with additional information
• The occasional use of first and second person in the text (“we,” “you”)
• The suggested itinerary in the orientation section which gives detail that would appeal to a broad range of readers
• The amount of detail in the history section of the text and what this indicates about the audience and purpose of the text
• Information about additional resources available in the Maps section of the text

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Mr Hanson's English

Discovering english and film, travel writing for gcse english language paper 2.

In the summer, I came across Rebecca Lowe’s compelling account of her recent bicycle ride across Europe and the Middle East: you can read her fascinating blog, The Bicycle Diaries, here . Her writing is evocative, personal but also accessible. Some of the content might be a little adult, so a little editing might be in order! Lowe’s story led me to try and find a similar resource from 19 th century travel writing to act as a companion/comparison piece. There is a great deal of nineteenth century travel writing by women and this is available for free on Project Gutenberg amongst other places. I have been reading some of the work of Isabella Bird, a prolific traveller and writer and I chose an extract from her book Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan – available here:  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38827/38827-h/38827-h.htm#i082

The reason for my choice was obvious, I suppose. I wanted a companion piece to Lowe’s description of Tripoli and chose Bird’s description of the bazaars of Baghdad, then a city in Persia. I felt both were accessible and also might help open up a discussion with students about misconceptions, prejudices and attitudes towards people, places and customs.

I’ve included the two extracts below. On Dropbox I’ve included the word documents too: see here . I’ve also included a brief PPT that you can add to. It includes a recap of how to answer Q2.

The extracts

Source A: The Beautiful and The Damned from ‘The Bicycle Diaries’ by Rebecca Lowe

In 2015, Rebecca Lowe embarked on a 12 month long bicycle trip across Europe and the Middle-East. Here she describes her first night in Tripoli.   

Tripoli at dusk is a dispiriting place. As I cycle from the boat into the city centre, around me loom a series of sombre, grey tower blocks, rising like skeletal sentinels among a wasteland of debris. Several are sprinkled with bullet holes, I note with mild alarm, and I nudge Maud (my bike) along a little faster. I’m fairly sure the local mercenaries have downed tools for the time being, but I’m already far too far behind schedule to risk being shot on my first day (though it would admittedly do wonders for my social media profile).

I’m hoping to stay with the friend of a friend of a friend, but am yet to hear back from him. It’s worrying, as the motels look poky and miserable, oozing an aura of indecency and regret. I distract myself from my plight by buying a tea in a grimy café and counting the perplexing number of passing Mercedes and BMWs, which seem by far the most popular car in this far-from-affluent city.

Two hours later, I finally hear from my contact, B. I am hugely relieved, and almost immediately the city’s shadowy nooks seem sunnier, its sharp edges softer. Within ten minutes, I’m being warmly welcomed by B and his Filipino housekeeper (apparently all houses have one) in his carpet shop just half a mile away. The sectarian conflict in the city is under control now, I’m told, and I feel a little foolish for conjuring spectres out of the undergrowth. How different everything seems when you’re no longer alone and abandoned in the dark!

B is a 27-year-old Australian who moved to Lebanon seven years ago. He enjoys the ‘freedom’ here, he says, which seems to boil down to driving without a licence and not paying his taxes. I ask him about the cars and he tells me it’s due to people’s idolisation of Germany and their superficiality. Plastic surgery is reportedly huge, and often deliberately conspicuous. Everyone wants to flash their cash and status.

In Tripoli, curiously, this showiness goes hand in hand with a strong social conservatism. Most women wear hijabs, and B tells me he wouldn’t want to be seen drinking in public. Another friend later tells me that the city is surprisingly tolerant, despite its image. ‘You sometimes get burkinis and bikinis on the same beach, and nobody minds,’ she says. ‘But all people remember are the jihadists splashed across the papers.’

The next morning, as I prepare for my cycle to Beirut, B warns me that ‘the biggest storm of the year’ is due to hit today. … As I stand drowning under a lashing sheet of rain that soaks me instantly to the core, following yet another puncture 30km down the road, I can’t help feeling that it may have been the wrong decision. For half an hour I wait, helpless and sodden, as the sky turns leaden and swampy and slowly engulfs the entire Mediterranean Sea. Then, just as I’m losing hope of rescue, a car finally stops beside me and two textbook murderers (dirty trousers, rakish facial hair) get out and offer me a ride – an offer I know I should on no account accept.

Minutes later, we’re zooming down the road to Byblos. The men give me a satsuma, which I devour like somebody who hasn’t eaten for ten years (it’s been about ten minutes), and stop every mile or so to check Maud hasn’t fallen out the back (she hasn’t). They then drop me directly outside the restaurant where I’ve arranged to meet a friend; and, with a wave, they’re gone. Once again, human kindness trumps doom-laden distrust, I think relievedly. Is the world really crawling with as many psychopaths as the media would have us believe?

Maud – the name of Rebecca Lowe’s bicycle

Byblos – a city in Lebanon

Source B: The Bazaars of Baghdad by Isabella Bird

Isabella Bird was a famous 19 th century traveller who wrote about her experiences. In this extract, she describes the bazaars (or markets) in Baghdad, which was then a city in Persia (now it is the capital of Iraq).

Baghdad’s bazaars, which many people regard as the finest in the East outside of Istanbul, are of enormous extent and very great variety. Many are of brick, with well-built domed roofs, and sides arcaded both above and below, and are wide and airy. Some are of wood, all are covered, and admit light scantily, only from the roof. Those which supply the poorer classes are apt to be ruinous and squalid—” ramshackle ,” to say the truth, with an air of decay about them, and their roofs are merely rough timber, roughly thatched with reeds or date tree fronds. Of splendour there is none anywhere, and of cleanliness there are few traces. The old, narrow, and filthy bazaars in which the gold and silversmiths ply their trade are of all the most interesting. The trades have their separate localities, and the buyer who is in search of cotton goods, silk stuffs, carpets, cotton yarn, gold and silver thread, ready-made clothing, weapons, saddlery, rope, fruit, meat, grain, fish, jewellery, muslins, copper pots, etc., has a whole alley of contiguous shops devoted to the sale of the same article to choose from.

At any hour of daylight at this season, progress through the bazaars is slow. They are crowded, and almost entirely with men. It is only the poorer women who market for themselves, and in twos and threes, at certain hours of the day. In a whole afternoon, among thousands of men, I saw only five women, tall, shapeless, badly-made-up bundles, carried mysteriously along, rather by high, loose, canary-yellow leather boots than by feet. The face is covered with a thick black gauze mask, or cloth, and the head and remainder of the form with a dark blue or black sheet, which is clutched by the hand below the nose. The walk is one of tottering decrepitude. All the business transacted in the bazaars is a matter of bargaining, and as Arabs shout at the top of their voices, and buyers and sellers are equally keen, the roar is tremendous.

The Arab women go about the streets unveiled, and with the  aba  covering their very poor clothing, but it is not clutched closely enough to conceal the extraordinary tattooing which the Bedouin women everywhere regard as ornamental. There are artists in Baghdad who make their living by this mode of decorating the person, and vie with each other in the elaboration of their patterns. I saw several women tattooed with two wreaths of blue flowers on their bosoms linked by a blue chain, palm fronds on the throat, stars on the brow and chin, and bands round the wrists and ankles. These disfigurements, and large gold or silver filigree buttons placed outside one nostril by means of a wire passed through it, worn by married women, are much admired. When these women sell country produce in the markets, they cover their heads with the ordinary  chadar .

The streets are narrow, and the walls, which are built of fire-burned bricks, are high. Windows to the streets are common, and the oriel windows, with their warm brown lattices projecting over the roadways at irregular heights, are strikingly picturesque. Not less so are latticework galleries, which are often thrown across the street to connect the two houses of wealthy residents, and the sitting-rooms with oriel windows, which likewise bridge the roadways. Solid doorways with iron-clasped and iron-studded doors give an impression of security, and suggest comfort and to some extent home life, and sprays of orange trees, hanging over walls, and fronds of date palms give an aspect of pleasantness to the courtyards.

The best parts of the city, where the great bazaars, large dwelling-houses, and most of the mosques are, is surrounded by a labyrinth of alleys, fringing off into streets growing meaner till they cease altogether among open spaces, given up to holes, heaps, rubbish, the slaughter of animals, and in some favoured spots to the production of vegetables. Then come the walls, which are of kiln-burned bricks, and have towers intended for guns at intervals. The wastes within the walls have every element of decay and meanness, the wastes without, where the desert sands sweep up to the very foot of the fortifications, have many elements of grandeur.

Istanbul – now the capital of Turkey

Aba – a loose over-garment which covers the whole body except the head, feet and hands

Bedouin – a nomadic tribe

Chadar – a long garment worn by Muslim women which covers the body and obscures part of the face

Bazaar – a market

Oriel window – a type of bay window that juts out from the wall

Here are some exam style questions to accompany the two extracts

Read again the first two paragraphs of source A.

Choose four statements below which are TRUE.

• The writer thinks that Tripoli is gloomy and depressing
• She arrived in Tripoli on a boat
• There are guards at the tower blocks
• She feels a little scared by the environment
• The writer’s journey has been delayed
• The writer has been shot at
• She has driven a Mercedes around the city
• Tripoli is a rich city

You need to refer to Source A and Source B for this question.

The writers in both sources describe different things about the cities they visit.

Use details from both sources to write a summary of the different things the writer describes in Source A and the things described by the writer in Source B.

You now need to refer only to the final paragraph of Source B.

How does the writer use language to describe this part of the city?

For this question, you need to refer to the whole of Source A, together with the whole of Source B.

Compare how the writers convey their different perspectives and feelings about the places they visit.

In your answer you could:

• Compare their different perspectives and feelings
• Compare the methods the writers use to convey their different perspectives and feelings
• Support your response with references to both texts.

Question 5 (a choice)

“Travelling alone to faraway countries is dangerous and should be banned.”

Write an article for in which you argue for or against this statement.

“Travel is the best form of education”.

Write an article explaining your views on this statement.

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4 thoughts on “ travel writing for gcse english language paper 2 ”.

• Pingback: Film, travel writing and the flaneuse. – Mr Hanson's English

Came across this lesson as I was looking around for extracts for my students. Thanks for including. Just wanted to inform you that the first text is set in Lebanon, not Libya as you’ve written in your intro. Can be tricky as there is a Tripoli in both, but riding from Libya to Beirut would be tough.

Thank you Sam. I will amend accordingly. The importance of proof reading!

Thank you for your resources! They really helped a lot and they are very interesting!

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