In the past I have understood travel writing to be commercial travel guides or the helpful snippets of user reviews on TripAdvisor. I have recently started taking a class on the history, rhetoric, and purpose of Travel Writing, and it turns out I have much to learn! In the past I have taken Anthropology classes and read accounts of interactions with unknown tribes in remote parts of the world. (I highly recommend White Man Will Eat You!) I have also read many memoirs, many of which include experiences of traveling away from home. I just never thought of Travel Writing as a literary or academic genre of its own.

This week I read a piece by Catherine Watson entitled “Where the Roads Diverged” from The Best American Travel Writing 2008. (Yes, that’s a thing!) To me it felt like reading any other memoir or personal essay, but with themes of travel and culture, rather than many other types of things memoirists write about. It was a touching account of her experience of Easter Island many years ago. The people that changed her and the reasons she can never go back.

I also read Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches, Chapter II. I was surprised to find his writing very easy to read and enlightening about the people, animals, and surroundings he passed through in Brazil, 1832. He writes, “For the few last miles the road was intricate, and it passed through a desert waste of marshes and lagoons. The scene by the dimmed light of the moon was most desolate. A few fireflies flitted by us; and the solitary snipe, as it rose, uttered its plaintive cry. The distant and sullen roar of the sea scarcely broke the stillness of the night.”

So now that I have been introduced to real travel writing, I’m hooked. No more scanning the reviews on TripAdvisor to hear about someone’s good or bad experiences, or recommendations around a city. With all the travel writing out there, both published and on blogs, I can never go back. Heading to South America? Check out Runaway Jane’s blog post: 10 Things You Should Know if You’re Coming to South America. Planning a trip to Sweden? Read Michelle’s post about Stockholm at the Diachronic Paradigm blog: Of if you are interested in reading about what Brazil looked like in 1832… Darwin can tell you!!

In this modern age, anything worth reading about travel: best restaurants, cultural studies, tips for traveling with kids, it’s out there, and someone is blogging about it. I’m excited to start discovering other travel blogs, books, and articles written by people around the world and throughout history. As for this blog, I will be sharing my stories from encounters I’ve had with people and places that I never would have had without traveling to get there.