Whither the Travel Writer in the Age of GPS and ChatGPT?

When there are few places left undocumented in words, film and on the web a travel writer must find other ways to make the journey new and interesting.

For those of us who take Francis Bacon’s advice (see ‘Three for Friday’, July 21) and never leave home without a notebook and pen (or digital equivalent) the question arises of how to write about our travels.

My attempts to capture the sights, sounds and incidents of a day on the road, or in a new place, invariably lie flat on the page. I’m not quite sure why this is so unless it be that the persona, or voice, of a fictional narrator and imagined characters come more easily to me than my own. I find myself needing to weave a story around what I have seen, or to set the experience, like a photograph or a shell from the beach, in a context. The frame of moi is not sufficiently interesting to set off the sight or view, and making word pictures makes me self-conscious.

Dervla Murphy (this photograph illustrated my interview in traveller, issue 3, 1997)

The late Dervla Murphy, who preferred to travel by bicycle in “places without motor roads, such as Peru or Baltistan”, told me in interview that the hardest part of her physically arduous days was filling in her diary at night. Her books are like herself, humorous, wise and rich with unusual encounters fostered by her openness and tact. Her chosen reading for these excursions were sturdy Victorian three-volume novels which she felt lasted the pace better than modern works. Indeed, she herself followed a line of doughty Victorian women travellers who traversed continents often on horse- and camel-back, such as Alexandra David-Néel, Isabelle Eberhardt, Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark.

Arriving on the heels of that generation Rebecca West produced a fascinating account of the former Yugoslavia , Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) , incorporating an account of the history and culture of its component countries which have since painfully regained independence. Olivia Manning’s autobiographical novels, set in the 1940s and which form The Balkan Trilogy (1960-65) dramatically complement West’s book.      

Boka Bay, Montenegro (Photo by Despina Galani on Unsplash)

By contrast with Murphy the modern travel writer is somewhat thwarted by the dearth of novelty in their travels. Once upon a time a writer could say they had been to such a place, met such people, witnessed such marvels, and be believed. Or mostly.

One of the earliest and most renowned of these books, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (first current between 1356-66 and translated into several European languages by 1400) may well have been a work of imagination.  It was written in French but the narrator purported to be an Englishman. He often insists on the truth of his tales by saying “I, John Mandeville saw this”. The book became a popular guide for those going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and for European rulers keen to plunder the wealth of the fabled ‘East’. Here is Mandeville on the diamonds to be found in India:

The diamond gives to the man who carries it boldness (if it is freely given to him) and keeps his limbs healthy. It gives him grace to overcome his enemies, if his cause is righteous, in both war and law. It keeps him in his right mind. It protects him from quarrels, fights, debauchery, and from evil dreams and fantasies, and from wicked spirits.

He continues in this vein for another page, ending with the caveat, But it often happens that the good diamond loses its powers because of the failings and dissoluteness of the man who carries it.”

  What would Mandeville have made of Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’?

Men grow cold
As girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end

But square-cut or pear-shaped
These rocks don't lose their shape
. . .

Today’s wonders are less beguiling. Later generations of travellers may have disputed much of Mandeville’s account, and scientific and technological advances altered our understanding of physical geography but his stories continue to entertain. The path to wonders today most likely lies in outer space. Even Byron, in 1822, had speculated about this possibility:

For ever since immortal man hath glowed

With all kinds of mechanics, and full soon

Steam-engines will conduct him to the moon.

(Don Juan, canto X, v 2, ll 6-8.)

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when travel was still the preserve of the wealthy, the scientific or the foolhardy, archaeologists’ and naturalists’ accounts of distant lands and ancient cultures were popular. That taste is now satisfied by television or cinema documentaries. Meanwhile, many places on the globe are easily and cheaply accessible, to the point of sinking under the weight of tourists aided by books and apps.

In the mid-1990s I travelled in India and whenever I sought directions people would respond by saying “You have the Bible?” meaning the Lonely Planet guidebook. So commonplace are guidebooks that Anne Tyler makes a credibly reluctant writer of them her hero in The Accidental Tourist.  

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

To make travel writing new or interesting it seems contemporary writers must either revert to Byron and Wordsworth’s model of the journey abroad as a template for personal growth, or retrace old trade routes and historical escapades. Examples of the first include Peter Mathiessen’s The Snow Leopard and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Love, Pray. (On my travels in Bali in 1981 I was guided by Bill Dalton’s Indonesia Handbook, now out of print. Ubud then was a very different place from the town where Gilbert fell in love. The Monkey Forest she mentions was signposted ‘Monkey Porrest’ and the monkeys were curious about me and eager to steal my camera. Wonders aplenty but no romance.)

  Good examples of the reconstructive journey are Thor Heyerdahl’s experimental voyages on primitive boats and Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road, which combine history and personal experience. In this post-Covid era it’s salutary to read of Thubron’s encounter with public health officials in China:

When I returned to my hotel, a phalanx of masked, white-coated men fanned out to meet me. The SARS virus had leapfrogged west to Lanzhou, bringing panic and bureaucracy. In the foyer, while passers-by crowded in to watch, I was inquisitioned about my itinerary, a thermometer stuck under my armpit and blood extracted from my earlobe by a nurse with a surreptitious needle. I might be quarantined, they said, if my temperature was up.  

Curiously, he closes this passage by saying “I feared for my journey” – not his health!

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A further modern variation on the journey of exploration, personal and historical, is John Steinbeck’s 1962 travelogue, Travels with Charley, in which he sets out with his poodle to rediscover America, in a camper van. Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland (2017) is a recent version of this adventure. The success of this travel journal or memoir depends on the narrator’s being a congenial companion for the reader.

This was what Mandeville understood when he wrote, or invented, his account of the mystical ‘East’. In addition the narrator must offer valuable insights because the book cannot rely on describing the wonders of the world for those of us back home. Maybe, like Mandeville, Italo Calvino had the right idea when he wrote Invisible Cities (1972), a fanciful dialogue between Marco Polo and an aging Kublai Kahn, describing cities of the imagination. When the journey has become banal (planes, trains and automobiles) it seems to me the travel writer must rely more and more on their own resources and creativity to win the reader’s attention.

A sharp eye, an even sharper pen, a spirit of adventure and openness, and, above all, a lively imagination are the essential items to pack on your journeys near or far this summer.

I know there are many great travel writers missing above. Add the names, and titles, of your favourites here.