The Problem With Travel Writing

Travel writing has, for the most part, become increasingly irrelevant, at least the writing that is featured in the mainstream travel magazines, and to some degree, in the book industry as well.

To understand this, you need to go back to the origins of travel writing — where explorers such as Ibn Batuta would travel for the pleasure of travel, and record their impressions, often at the behest of the person who funded these journeys.

Another milestone in travel literature was the emergence of the aristocracy — people with the money and leisure time to take ‘grand tours,’ with the goal of recording the art and culture of other societies.

Other forms of travel writing were diaries, written by explorers, traders and adventurers, who recorded their impressions in minute detail. One notable example of this is Captain James Cook’s Diaries of the South Pacific (published in 1784), which became a best seller, eagerly lapped up by those at home fascinated by foreign shores they would never visit.

Go back to what is one of the most iconic travel books, The Adventures of Marco Polo, and you will see unflinchingly honest writing, brutal assessments of people, tribes and geography. For sure, Marco Polo was in prison when he dictated the book to his cell-mate; he was not trying to sell the destinations he reported on, he was simply recording what he saw. Take his description of Kashgar:

They have handsome gardens, orchards and vineyards. [An] abundance of cotton is produced there, as well as flax and hemp. Merchants from this country travel to all parts of the world; but in truth they are a wretched, sordid race, eating badly and drinking worse.

Or his views on Kashmir:

They exhibit themselves in a filthy and indecent state, and are devoid of respect for themselves, or those that see them. They suffer their faces to continue, always unwashed and their hair uncombed, living together in a squalid style.

While this may be a bit too honest for the modern reader, the point is that his book was a record of his travels, (literally) warts and all. Of course, his views of savages and nobles can be seen through the prism of colonialism, and it’s doubtful if he believed he would be around to see the publication of his book, and even if he was, who was going to contradict him?

More recently, Robert Byron, the adventurer and travel writer, in his 1937 book, The Road to Oxiana, portrayed the people he met and places he traveled through in a vivid and uncompromising light. His famous line about Afghanistan — “At last Asia without an inferiority complex” — sets the tone for his acerbic, often hilarious musings.

Travel writing was largely confined to books until the mid to late-eighties when the rise of cheaper air travel and an affluent middle class led to titles such as Conde Nast Traveler. The aim now was not to inform, but to persuade. Travel writing degenerated into brochure copy — saccharine, cliché-ridden prose designed to sell flights and hotel rooms and tours. Pick up any mainstream travel title and you will be bombarded with articles about Istanbul’s hidden gems or Japan’s best spas — ‘listicles’ and PR-copy masquerading as travel writing. It is not, of course. It’s marketing, designed to get the reader to do something, preferably something that benefits the advertisers who have paid thousands of dollars to be in the magazine.

If you move from the magazine rack to the book shelf, things get only marginally better. Much of what is published can be filed under ‘A Fish out of Water’ — where someone (preferably a comedian or B-list celebrity) goes somewhere exotic and does something bizarre. They may go round Ireland with a Fridge, or travel across Asia on the directions of their Twitter followers, or, they may jog through Basra in an inflatable sumo outfit (possibly), but the end result is the same — a throwaway book that gives all travel writing a bad name.

There are of course exceptions to this, but depressingly, most of the great travel books seem to have been written years, or even decades ago. Sven Lundquist, Jan Morris, Eric Newby — written by adventurers, for whom the act of traveling was the point, not the book deal or the number of retweets.

Luckily, recent years have seen a new crop of independent travel magazines emerge, titles that are borne out of passion and not a media agency. Titles such as The Travel Almanac, Boat, Makeshift,Granta’s travel issue, and, dare we say it, We Are Here, have raised the bar and put editorial quality over advertiser considerations.

The fact is, it’s hard to see how sustainable magazines such as Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler are. Their reliance on commoditised content (lists, generic city guides, boiler plate ‘journey’ articles, ‘fish out of water’ essays, and, er, this) means that the same content can be found online, in a much more elegant way. And with sites such as Wikitravel to Tablet Hotels offering new ways to research trips, their content is only going to get less relevant.

So as more and more travelers use way-finding devices and online pre-trip research, the demise of the glossy, PR-saturated travel magazines seems assured. This may not be good news for ad agencies, sales teams or junket-addicted travel hacks, but for those who love travel, and quality travel writing, this day can’t come soon enough.