Travel Writers Need Compelling Reasons To Travel

J ust think of the greatest        writers dream up to focus their    adventurers who ever lived      journeys range from the absurd to  and the greatest journeys       the sublime. Take that             ever undertaken: the Jews, Marco      outstanding wordsmith Bill         Polo, Christopher Columbus and        Bryson. This man literally         Charles Darwin come to mind. All      thought up journeys he could       of them had compelling reasons        take, to create fodder for his     for setting off on dangerous          witty irony and superb humorous    journeys into the unknown. What       descriptions. A walk along the     they found (in their cases the        Appalachian Trail with an old      Promised Land, China, America and     school friend (do you remember     evolution respectively) soldered      Katz?) became much more than 'A    them into history and made them       Walk in the Woods' as it was       famous, but also opened the world     entitled. It was a humorous        to travel as never before.            ramble through the American                                              nature tourist culture and a       Travel writing ever since has         lambasting of the authorities      echoed the odysseys of these          responsible for the national       great people. Writers still feel      parks of the United States. It     it incumbent on them to have some     did not matter that Bryson         higher purpose to their journeys      completed only a tiny part of the  beyond mere self-indulgence or        trail. This incredibly long hike   curiosity. On the rare occasions      (Bryson spends a few pages         when travel writers break this        embarrassing all the authorities   rule they tend to fall ill or         who cannot agree on its exact      become irredeemably cranky when       length) served one purpose and     they sit down to put their            one purpose only; it gave Bryson   experiences on paper.                 something to write about.                                                                                   The range of reasons travel           Similarly Bryson's book about      rural America entitled 'The Lost      Britain, giving down under the     Continent' has a very thin basis      thumbs down. Just too many snakes  to it: Bryson vaguely travels the     per square kilometer I suppose.    roads his parents followed, when                                         they took their children on           Now we come to the sublime         madcap long haul treks across the     reasons for travel. There are      United States to see the sights       tales of pilgrimage, such as       (and sites of famous battles and      Shirley MacLaine's account of her  historical occurrences) and           walk the length of the Santiago    generally scrounged their way         de Compostela Camino in northern   along on a shoestring budget, to      Spain, the ancient 500 mile        the mystification of the Bryson       pilgrimage route initiated by St   children. Again Bryson gets his       James de Compostela ending at      teeth into a subject without much     Santiago. 'Camino: a journey of    justification. Not that he needs      the spirit' never reaches any      it, you understand.                   conclusions and elicits no                                               discernible greatness of spirit    Bryson made a career of taking        in the writer, but it surely gave  whole continents and wrapping         Ms MacLaine fodder for a           them around his tongue, as in         bestselling book in the bland      'Down Under', his dry yet             genre of Californian               informative take on Australia. He     spiritualism.                      went there because he had always                                         wanted to see it and, as the          Ineffably more substantial is the  subtext suggests, he was looking      marvelous book by William          for an alternative place to live.     Dalrymple 'From the Holy           He and his family had already         Mountain' in which this handsome   done England and New England. As      young Scot journeys to the places  it happened, the Bryson family        visited by John Moschos some 1500  returned from New Hampshire to        hundred years before. His          beautiful journey through the         describes this travel mode of a    dying remnants of Byzantium in        bygone age and these               our own age (he traveled in 1997)     out-of-the-way places, but I       is an unforgettable book by a         always feel that Theroux travels   marvelously intelligent Catholic      and writes under duress rather     probing the embers of Eastern         than from compulsion, rather like  Orthodox religion.                    Shiva Naipaul in 'North of                                               South'.                            Between the absurd and the                                               sublime reasons for travel lie        Naipaul visited the insalubrious   many others. In 'African Rainbow'     African countries: Zambia,         Lorenzo and Mirella Ricciardi         Tanzania and Kenya, where Asians   traveled along the waterways in       have been personae non grata in    Africa, evidently searching for       the past, and in some places       the ultimate noble savage in the      still are, to find out what makes  European mold. They never found       Africa tick. Of course no one      him or her but their book was         does know what makes Africa tick,  published. It ends up being an        not even Naipaul.                  uneasy journey of a couple to a                                          continent they didn't understand.     Never mind that these men seem to                                        have been uncomfortable about      In 'The Great Railway Bazaar'         their journeys. Both are renowned  Paul Theroux travels on the           travel writers, not least due to   Orient Express, the Khyber Pass       their dogged purposefulness. The   Local, the Golden Arrow, the          point, it seems, is to have some   Mandalay Express, an odyssey on       intention when moving across the   great trains from London through      landscape. A traveler without      Europe and Asia, across Siberia.      intention is merely a wanderer.    And his eye misses nothing as he       About the Author: Justine has been a journalist for 20 years and is a contributor to Just The Planet, the online luxury travel magazine for independent travelers. Published At: www.Isnare.com