Text-Type: Travel Writing

After studying a variety of different fiction and non-fiction text-types, you may decide to write a WT1 assignment using travel writing genre. Understanding the conventions of this text-type will therefore be important.

What exactly is travel writing? Here is one definition:

“Writing of a non-fiction type, typically recording the experiences of travellers in some interesting places and circumstances. It includes vivid descriptions, illustrations, historical background, and

possibly maps and diagrams."

Though an accurate description of the genre, how helpful is it for distinguishing this genre from other, very similar ones? Memoir, for example is a personal account which may feature travel or life in a particular location. Many journalistic essays feature interesting circumstances and vivid description.

There is indeed, a "grab-bag" quality to travel writing, which makes it difficult to define but which makes it a very rich one to write in. Let's have a look at a rather more detailed and perceptive description of this genre in an effort to tease out what makes it a distinct category:


“The travel book [....] 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.” (Thomas Swick, “Not a Tourist.” The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2010)


Note three words: "alien", "displacement" and "revels in the particular". There is a distinct sense in all travel writing of encountering "the other", a key element of the genre and also one of the main sources of enjoyment for many readers. Three important ideas are beginning to emerge:

Voice, narrative, and the ‘other’ or alien.

Travel, journey or displacement of one kind or another is usually the most obvious feature of travel narrative — though, by itself, not a defining one. Other, closely-allied genres like memoir, narrative-journalism, personal essay, descriptive storytelling can involve travel, displacement or life in foreign or interesting circumstances. What makes travel lit distinct will become more apparent when we consider aspects and purpose of this genre.

Travel is undertaken for many purposes and many of these journeys end up being recorded in journals, diaries, and short accounts, as well as long narratives that the writers want to share with a wider audience. Of all purposes, the writing impulse may be the strongest force of all. Here are a few more reasons for writing in this genre:

• to find oneself. As Iyer notes in the epigraph above, some journeys are about finding something about oneself, or ‘finding oneself’. Very often, the writer will reveal that the journey has elicited or pushed them to some new perception about their own life, choices and history. Paradoxically, the self is treated and discussed as 'the other'.

• curiosity. Very early in the history of travel narratives, a great many accounts were driven simply by curiousity and fascination with places not yet experienced by outsiders or even described. Wanting to know, or even to understand, the ‘other’ certainly produces as vast an array of travel accounts as does the search for the self.

• religion. Spiritual journeys also account for a good many travel narratives. Whether to the Christian Shrine of Compostela or on the Islamic haj to Mecca, travellers follow their devotional impulses and often record them. 

• the search for family roots. Another for travel and for accounts of them arises from the desire to search out the roots of one’s family and origins. Often, this search is allied with genealogical research, the study of family connections and beginnings. Allied to this form is the ‘return to roots’ account, such as can be found in Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta

• to write in an informed way. This is writing which involves travel and (in many cases) emerges from a political angle on the place visited. A good example of this is Elisabeth Hardwick’s ‘Sad Brazil’ from Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays, which combines vivid and concrete impressions of place with acute political analysis.

One central feature of travel-writing is voice. Most often the travel narrative will be told by the ‘I’ who makes the journey. This univocal voice can sometimes be joined by another. Sometimes the voice takes on a persona. In The Adventures of Geoffrey Crayon (1835) Washington Irving employs the persona of Mr Crayon to describe a 19th century American travelling in Europe. Mark Twain does much the same in A Tramp Abroad, but goes one step further and combines his persona with a companion by the name of Joseph Harris. Together they explore the continent, presenting their views of the people and cultures they meet.

As we saw from the extracts, travel-writing can be presented in something as short as an essay or as long as a substantial novel. Longer examples of travel lit can usually be described as having a defined beginning, middle, and end. These narratives tend to be circular: they begin at home, embark on and pursue an itinerary which may be highly organized or somewhat spontaneous, and are completed by a return home. It can entail an ongoing journey with stops and descriptions or reflections along the way — or one that involves a journey to a particular place in which the bulk of the work is centered.

Finally, the issue of subjectivity, objectivity, and whether an account is a mix of fact or fiction is also likely to arise when looking at this genre. Whereas a tourist brochure or guide concentrates on the factually accurate and true, travel lit is not bound by such convention.

Below is a passage taken from a popular travelogue. Which of the elements discussed so far can you discern?

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

‘Our village was famous for its sweets,’ said Punjab Singh. ‘People would come for miles to taste the jalebis our sweet-wallahs prepared. There were none better in the whole of the Punjab.’
     We were sitting on a charpoy at International Backside Taxi Stand. For weeks I had been begging Balvinder’s father to tell me the story of how he had come to Delhi in 1947. A stern and sombre man, Punjab would alsways knit his eyebrows and change the subject. It was as if Partition were a closed subject, something embarrassing that shouldn’t be raised in polite conversation.
      It was only after a particularly persistent bout of badgering , in which Balvinder took my side, that Punjab had agreed to relent. But once started, he soon got into the swing of his story.
     ‘Samundra was a small and beautiful village in District Lyallpur,’ he said. ‘It was one of the most lovely parts of the whole of Punjab. We had a good climate and very fertile land. The village stood within the ruins of an old fort and was surrounded on four sides by high walls. It was like this.’
      With his hands, the old man built four castle walls. From the details that he sketched with his fingers you could see he remembered every bastion, every battlement, every loophole.
      ‘Our village was all Sikh apart from a few Hindu sweepers. Our neighbours were Mahommedan peoples. We owned most of the land but before 1947 we lived like brothers. There were no differences between us …’ Punjab stroked his beard. He smiled as he recalled his childhood.
      ‘On the 15th August 1947 the Government announced Partition. We were not afraid. We had heard about the idea of Pakistan, but we thought it would make no difference to us. We realized a Mahommedan government would take over from the Britishers. But in our Punjab governments often come and go. Usually such things make no difference to the poor man in his village.
      ‘Then, quite suddenly, on the 10th of September, we got a message from the Deputy Commissioner in Lyallpur. It said: ‘”You people cannot stay. You must leave your house and your village and go to India.” Everyone was miserable but what could we do? All the villagers began loading their goods into bullock carts. The old men were especially sad: they had lived their whole lives in the village. But we were young and could not understand why our grandfathers were crying.

                                                                  — William Dalrymple (1993)

Notice the use of setting, narrative, dialogue and voice to convey a vivid sense of the ‘other’. The sense of the new and exotic is both explicit and implicit -- from the foreign-sounding words to Punjab himself (a rather Marlowe-like figure, would you not say?) and the sense that we readers in the rest of the world are being introduced to another time and place, remote from our everyday lives and concerns. We are also learning some history of a place (India just at the moment of Partition, and more particularly, Delhi) conveyed through the eyes of others, doubly so, as this is a frame-narrative. In this way, Dalrymple maintains his authorial presence (a voice and perspective) as he gives Punjab the floor. 

Toward Assessment

You will need to demonstrate a good grasp of this text-type in your WT1 as well as a clear purpose for using it -- you are, after all, demonstrating knowledge and understanding of a particular topic learnt from the course. Here are some practical considerations as you write:

- Travel literature includes the traditional trio found in all narratives: plot, character and setting. The plot in many of these works is the story of movement and then of discovery. Is the discovery of a place, a people or a deeper sense of the self, is something else?

- Who are the characters of the narrative? How many are there? Do the characters hope to explore the landscape, the people and their ways, architecture, the influence of colonialism or imperialism and the possibilities for trade? There can be a multitude of such purposes, giving a frame or structure to the writing.

- Will the voice be singular, univocal? Will more than one voice be heard? There are many opportunities in travel writing. 

- Tone, tense. Tone, so much a part of voice, will have a significant role in any travel narrative. There is a great range of possibilities here, and the traveller’s attitudes toward what he experiences will critically affect the reader’s impressions and judgments both of the voice and of the treatment of the ‘other’. Such tones, conveying these attitudes, can cover a whole spectrum from admiration and wonder, to irony, self-deprecation and even dismissiveness. Through tone the writer may well convey a desire to identify, or at least empathize, with people they encounter, or they may objectify them. In addition, whether the narrative is in the present or the past tense can affect the reception of the travel tale.

- Travel takes people places and so, of course, the handling of setting will be a crucial element to such narratives, whether the travel is to a single place or a succession of places. Within the place, will the self be foregrounded? Or will the speaker recede into the background and give way to the presentation of people and/or setting? Different people will also foreground different aspects.

Tips for writing

• center on a key event. 
• use background information that builds up to this event.
• incorporate research to enhance the background information
• describe vividly the location and focuses on elements that are key to the story or experience.
• describe clearly any important people so that readers feel as if they know them a little.
• use dialogue where possible to help the story “happen” for the reader.
• mix reflections on the experience with the retelling to help the reader see the importance of the experience.

If you need more guidance in this convention or for your assignment, contact us.