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What is a Travel Essay (Article) in Journalism: Definition, Features, and Travel Essay Examples

• by Anastasiya Yakubovska
• 24.03.2023 23.06.2024
• How to write ...

The travel essay allows to tell readers about impressions, interesting human types, new things happening in the world, and to share thoughts about what the author saw and experienced in a relaxed and free form. Journalists actively use the possibilities of this genre. 

In this article, you will learn:

Types of Essays

What is a travel essay, features of the travel essay, what makes a travel essay (travel article) attractive for a journalist, what write about in the travel essay, travel essay examples.

An essay is one of the most versatile and multifaceted literary forms.

What Is Essay: Definition

An essay is a short narrative that briefly describes events, facts, and people.

An essay is considered one of the varieties of a story that combines elements of literature and journalism. This type of text belongs to a special kind of author’s or writer’s journalism, which is considered the pinnacle of journalistic skill.

The essay refers to the journalistic writing style , namely to its artistic and journalistic genre.

The “sketching” of such texts is expressed in the fact that the author strives to outline the portrait and character of the hero or to display the main points and contours of the problem situation. Therefore, very often the form of presentation of information is quite rough, and free.

There are several types of essay classification. But I propose to study the following four in more detail:

• Portrait or biographical essay. The portrait essay focuses on a person, and not fictional, but taken from real life. The author’s main task is to reveal the inner world of the hero, his values, and his personality.
• Problem-solution essay. The purpose of this essay is to study some problematic situations. A problem essay can be compared to an article. As in the article, the essayist explores the problem and finds out the causes of its occurrence, further development, and solutions. The difference between an essay and an article is that in an essay the author engages in a dialogue with the reader: he shares his thoughts, explores conflict situations, tries to get to the heart of the problem, and comprehends what is happening. Such observation of the development of the conflict often causes feelings and various emotions, both in the readers of the essay and in its author.
• Travel essay . The travel essay is a description of the events, meetings, and incidents that happened to the author during his creative journey. More often, a journalist already has the main idea for a future essay and the purpose of the trip, and the impressions and facts received during the trip are already “working” for this idea. For example, the goal of a journalist is to study what traditions have been preserved among people living in different settlements or explore how the state solves certain social problems in various cities of the country.
• Historical essay . In such an essay, the author presents historical facts and events related to the subject of research in chronological order, analyzes historical information, and gives his interpretation. 

A travel essay is a diverse genre; it is both travel notes, sketches, and the author’s travel diary.

Therefore, in its structure, a travel essay is similar to diary entries: the events are described sequentially, as the author gets acquainted with them.

In addition to the fact that the travel essay allows the reader to get acquainted with real events and people, as well as to see what is happening through the eyes of the author, the essay contains the author’s analysis of what he saw and learned.

The author of the travel essay is faced with the task of holistically recreating a picture of reality. Most often, a travel essay reflects a rather long time process.

The travel essay, apart from its literary form, is actively used in advertising journalism and on television (television travel journalism). Most travel programs are written in the form of a travel essay.

The main features of the travel essay are:

• Artistic imagery.
• Emotional richness.
• Dynamism and adventurism.
• The presence of elements of journalistic and artistic writing styles.
• The author’s opinion.
• The events and characters described in the essay are taken from real life.
• The structure of a travel essay is similar to the structure of diary entries.
• Urgency and relevance of the researched problem.
• Slang , jargon words, or special terminology. 
• To confirm a personal point of view, the author uses facts, evidence, quotations, statistics, etc.

The most striking stylistic features of the travel essay are:

• First of all, this is the expressed position of the author . All narrative is connected with the author’s opinion and view of the situation. Often, the author of the essay acts as a protagonist, interconnected with the main character.
• Dialogue with the reader. Using various stylistic devices, the journalist seeks to arouse the reader’s interest and emotionally involve him in the plot of his essay, thus making the reader a participant in the described events.

Writing a Travel Essay

The process of writing a travel essay is quite time-consuming. To write an essay, it is not enough just to choose a topic, to collect and analyze information.

The author’s task is to rethink the information received and transform it into a special essay form.

The degree of the artistry of the essay may vary depending on its purpose: one text may be more specific and documentary, while the other may be as creative as possible.

Thus, in each essay, there should be both artistic creativity and facts in various proportions (depending on the purpose and subject matter). Often the material for the plot is so rich, unpredictable, and sensational that the journalist only needs to present all the information received in the essay, without resorting to additional methods of artistic expression.

Read post “How to Write a Persuasive Essay and Article: Complete Guide.”

First of all, this genre is attractive for a journalist because it makes it possible to speak out on almost any occasion: from studying the culture of the countryside to a global demographic problem.

In addition, the travel essay is designed for a mass audience, and due to its writing style, as well as persuasiveness and reliability, it is effectively perceived by the public.

A travel essay is not an entertaining read. And all because in this genre, the center of the plot will be the study by the author of some socially significant problems during his journey.

The subject of the travel essay is the human character, various conflict situations, as well as socially significant phenomena.

The travel article incorporates elements of both science and art: these are documents, figures, statistics, and, at the same time, the author’s artistic world with portraits, landscapes, and interiors.

Read post “How to Write a Persuasive Article or Essay: Examples of Persuasive Argument.”

An early example is the writing of Pausanias (2nd century CE) who produced his Description of Greece based on his observations. James Boswell published his The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1786 and Goethe published his Italian Journey , based on diaries, in 1816. Fray Ilarione da Bergamo and Fray Francisco de Ajofrín wrote travel accounts of colonial Mexico in the 1760s. Fannie Calderón de la Barca, the Scottish-born wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico 1839–1842, wrote Life in Mexico , an important travel narrative of her time there, with many observations of local life.

A British traveler, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, published several travelogues, ranging from Denmark (1895) and Finland (1897), to the U.S. (1913), several on Mexico (1901, 1906, 1917), and one on Russia, Siberia, and China (1926). A more recent example is Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries . A travelogue is a film, book written up from a travel diary, or illustrated talk describing the experiences of and places visited by a traveler. American writer Paul Theroux has published many works of travel literature, the first success being The Great Railway Bazaar .

In addition to published travel journals, archive records show that it was historically common for travelers to record their journey in diary format, with no apparent intention of future publication, but as a personal record of their experiences. This practice is particularly visible in nineteenth-century European travel diaries. ( Wikipedia about travel literature )

Travel Essay Example #1

Expert  

FINDING QUIET AMONG THE CHAOS IN KATHMANDU, NEPAL After a warm greeting at Kathmandu International Airport by my travel guide Nora, we rushed into a Nepali ride share car. “They don’t have traffic lights here,” Nora casually mentioned. “It can be a little unnerving.”  LET’S RIDE Groggy after traveling halfway around the world, I didn’t fully comprehend her comment until we were on Kathmandu’s chaotic streets. They were bumper to bumper with cars, trucks, and busses and in between motorcycles squeezed into every inch of space. Lanes were nonexistent and left turns a combination of luck and shear will. With the streets so congested, however, we couldn’t go much faster than 35 mph, so I was more overwhelmed by the incessant honking and smell of exhaust.  All that changed when we arrived at the Green Palm Boutique Hotel, a small family-run hotel in Budhanilkantha in the foothills above Kathmandu. My third-floor room had a queen-size bed with access to a wraparound balcony with stunning views over the terraced hills of the Kathmandu Valley. The hotel was a breath of fresh air, literally, above the city smog. SUNSET, SUNRISE That evening I had dinner with my travel companions, Nora Livingstone, founder of volun-tourism agency Animal Experience International and her business partner and wildlife veterinarian Dr. Heather Reid. In the hotel’s quaint courtyard, we enjoyed a traditional Nepalese meal of dal bhat (lentil stew over steamed rice) from the hotel’s vegetarian café.  After dinner we relaxed by sipping Carlsberg beers and watching the hazy sunset behind Chandragiri Hill. I thought Chandragiri was a Nepal mountain , but when I asked, hotel staff quickly corrected me. In the land of the Himalayas , Chandragiri was merely a hill. No need for an alarm the next morning because barking dogs and prayer bells announced the sunrise. Breakfast was included with our rooms, but when I met my travel mates down in the courtyard, the sun hadn’t climbed high enough to warm the patio yet. Our server, who was also the chef, brought us a large green thermos of hot water.  The water wasn’t hot because we were chilly, however. It had been boiled to kill germs since Nepal ’s tap water is notoriously unsafe to drink. I poured the steaming water into a glass and held it to warm my hands.  Today’s breakfast of a large veggie omelet with toast and jam was delicious, but the best part came last – slightly sweet Nepalese coffee. It would become our morning ritual the rest of our weeklong stay: lingering over warm coffee while watching the playful antics of the hotel’s house dogs, puppies Ruby and Kali, and elder stateswoman Pepper, in the courtyard.  The pastoral mornings at the Green Palm would become a peaceful contrast to our evening excursions into the city. Nora chose this hotel because it was within walking distance to the animal shelter we volunteered at during the day. However, staying in this location was possible thanks to Pathao, Nepal’s version of Uber. Nora used it to summon cars when we transformed into tourists to visit Kathmandu’s historic sites.  Full article here qoworldtravel.com

Travel Essay Example #2

The Incredible Travel Sketches, Essays, Memoirs & Island Works of R. L. Stevenson By the prolific Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped & Catriona

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What You Should Know About Travel Writing

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Travel writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator's encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject. Also called  travel literature .

"All travel writing—because it is writing—is made in the sense of being constructed, says Peter Hulme, "but travel writing cannot be made up without losing its designation" (quoted by Tim Youngs in  The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing , 2013).

Notable contemporary travel writers in English include Paul Theroux, Susan Orlean, Bill Bryson , Pico Iyer, Rory MacLean, Mary Morris, Dennison Berwick, Jan Morris, Tony Horwitz, Jeffrey Tayler, and Tom Miller, among countless others.

Examples of Travel Writing

• "By the Railway Side" by Alice Meynell
• Lists and Anaphora in Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There"
• Lists in William Least Heat-Moon's Place Description
• "London From a Distance" by Ford Madox Ford
• "Niagara Falls" by Rupert Brooke
• "Nights in London" by Thomas Burke
• "Of Trave," by Francis Bacon
• "Of Travel" by Owen Felltham
• "Rochester" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Observations About Travel Writing

Authors, journalists, and others have attempted to describe travel writing, which is more difficult to do than you might think. However, these excerpts explain that travel writing—at a minimum—requires a sense of curiosity, awareness, and fun.

Thomas Swick

• "The best writers in the field [of travel writing] bring to it an indefatigable curiosity, a fierce intelligence that enables them to interpret, and a generous heart that allows them to connect. Without resorting to invention , they make ample use of their imaginations. . . . "The travel book itself has a similar grab bag quality. It 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." ("Not a Tourist." The Wilson Quarterly , Winter 2010)

Casey Blanton

• "There exists at the center of travel books like [Graham] Greene's Journey Without Maps or [V.S.] Naipaul's An Area of Darkness a mediating consciousness that monitors the journey, judges, thinks, confesses, changes, and even grows. This narrator , so central to what we have come to expect in modern travel writing , is a relatively new ingredient in travel literature, but it is one that irrevocably changed the genre . . . . "Freed from strictly chronological , fact-driven narratives , nearly all contemporary travel writers include their own dreams and memories of childhood as well as chunks of historical data and synopses of other travel books. Self reflexivity and instability, both as theme and style , offer the writer a way to show the effects of his or her own presence in a foreign country and to expose the arbitrariness of truth and the absence of norms." ( Travel Writing: The Self and the World . Routledge, 2002)

Frances Mayes

• "Some travel writers can become serious to the point of lapsing into good ol' American puritanism. . . . What nonsense! I have traveled much in Concord. Good travel writing can be as much about having a good time as about eating grubs and chasing drug lords. . . . [T]ravel is for learning, for fun, for escape, for personal quests, for challenge, for exploration, for opening the imagination to other lives and languages." (Introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2002 . Houghton, 2002)

Travel Writers on Travel Writing

In the past, travel writing was considered to be nothing more than the detailing of specific routes to various destinations. Today, however, travel writing has become much more. Read on to find out what famous travel writers such as V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux say about the profession.

V.S. Naipaul

• "My books have to be called ' travel writing ,' but that can be misleading because in the old days travel writing was essentially done by men describing the routes they were taking. . . . What I do is quite different. I travel on a theme . I travel to make an inquiry. I am not a journalist. I am taking with me the gifts of sympathy, observation, and curiosity that I developed as an imaginative writer. The books I write now, these inquiries, are really constructed narratives." (Interview with Ahmed Rashid, "Death of the Novel." The Observer , Feb. 25, 1996)

Paul Theroux

• - "Most travel narratives—perhaps all of them, the classics anyway—describe the miseries and splendors of going from one remote place to another. The quest, the getting there, the difficulty of the road is the story; the journey, not the arrival, matters, and most of the time the traveler—the traveler’s mood, especially—is the subject of the whole business. I have made a career out of this sort of slogging and self-portraiture, travel writing as diffused autobiography ; and so have many others in the old, laborious look-at-me way that informs travel writing ." (Paul Theroux, "The Soul of the South." Smithsonian Magazine , July-August 2014) - "Most visitors to coastal Maine know it in the summer. In the nature of visitation, people show up in the season. The snow and ice are a bleak memory now on the long warm days of early summer, but it seems to me that to understand a place best, the visitor needs to see figures in a landscape in all seasons. Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. You see that the population is actually quite small, the roads are empty, some of the restaurants are closed, the houses of the summer people are dark, their driveways unplowed. But Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. Boats are repaired, traps fixed, nets mended. “I need the winter to rest my body,” my friend the lobsterman told me, speaking of how he suspended his lobstering in December and did not resume until April. . . ." ("The Wicked Coast." The Atlantic , June 2011)

Susan Orlean

• - "To be honest, I view all stories as journeys. Journeys are the essential text of the human experience—the journey from birth to death, from innocence to wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, from where we start to where we end. There is almost no piece of important writing—the Bible, the Odyssey , Chaucer, Ulysses —that isn't explicitly or implicitly the story of a journey. Even when I don't actually go anywhere for a particular story, the way I report is to immerse myself in something I usually know very little about, and what I experience is the journey toward a grasp of what I've seen." (Susan Orlean, Introduction to My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere . Random House, 2004) - "When I went to Scotland for a friend's wedding last summer, I didn't plan on firing a gun. Getting into a fistfight, maybe; hurling insults about badly dressed bridesmaids, of course; but I didn't expect to shoot or get shot at. The wedding was taking place in a medieval castle in a speck of a village called Biggar. There was not a lot to do in Biggar, but the caretaker of the castle had skeet-shooting gear, and the male guests announced that before the rehearsal dinner they were going to give it a go. The women were advised to knit or shop or something. I don't know if any of us women actually wanted to join them, but we didn't want to be left out, so we insisted on coming along. . . ." (Opening paragraph of "Shooting Party." The New Yorker , September 29, 1999)

Jonathan Raban

• - "As a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where different genres are likely to end up in the bed. It accommodates the private diary , the essay , the short story, the prose poem, the rough note and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality. It freely mixes narrative and discursive writing." ( For Love & Money: Writing - Reading - Travelling 1968-1987 . Picador, 1988)
• - "Travel in its purest form requires no certain destination, no fixed itinerary, no advance reservation and no return ticket, for you are trying to launch yourself onto the haphazard drift of things, and put yourself in the way of whatever changes the journey may throw up. It's when you miss the one flight of the week, when the expected friend fails to show, when the pre-booked hotel reveals itself as a collection of steel joists stuck into a ravaged hillside, when a stranger asks you to share the cost of a hired car to a town whose name you've never heard, that you begin to travel in earnest." ("Why Travel?" Driving Home: An American Journey . Pantheon, 2011)
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How To Write a Good Travel Essay

Home / Blog / How To Write A Good Travel Essay - Guide With Examples

Introduction

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

-Gustav Flaubert

Packing the duffel with the bare essentials and hopping into the car, getting behind the steering wheel and driving with no perfect destination in mind – we all dream to live such a life, don't we? Travelling to unseen places and exploring what it has to offer can be an enriching experience. However beautiful can travel be as an experience, writing a travelling essay can be quite a challenge. It may seem easy to come up with the ideas that you want to include in the essay but putting them into coherent sentences can be difficult. Your words should be impactful enough to be able to sweep the readers off their feet and take them on the cliff or make them feel the saline breeze on a beach.  

A perfect travel essay must reflect the journey and highlight the little-known facts about the region. It should be infused with the character and culture of the place. If you are feeling stymied while writing a travel essay, then we have some brilliant tips for you that can make the task considerably easy for you.

8 tips for an outstanding essay on travelling

Here are 8 tips that you can cash on to produce a winning travelling essay:

• Be specific with the destination

Before you choose a topic for your travel essay, keep the time spent in the location in mind. If your trip is just for a couple of days, then do not make the mistake of writing about an entire city. Think it out practically – is it possible to travel through a city in just a few days? Take for instance your essay is about London. It is quite an insurmountable task to be able to cover all the distance even in a week. So stick to a particular destination so that you can include the nuances and minutest details of the place to paint a picture in the reader’s mind with your words. 

• Less guide, more exploring

Also, the destination need not be about an exotic locale. It can be a story about an idyllic rustic location in the suburb of the teeming city. It can be about a cottage up on the hills with just the view of snowy valleys and iced peaks. Your words should give the sense of exploring and not touring. The essay should not be like a guide. It should be a view of the location through your lens.

• Know the location like the back of your hand

Before starting to write a travel essay, do your research. A travel essay isn’t a made-up story so there should not be any fake information. Readers will be looking for more than just the necessary information about the must-visit tourist attractions. So you need to go beyond the surface and include more about the history of the place. Just do not write about the restaurants – talk about the cuisine of the place and the story behind it, if any. To get into the innermost recesses of the location, you can speak to the residents of the area. To bring richness in your travel essay, you must reveal another side of the destination.

• Include the nitty-gritty

The key to an impressive travel essay is to be able to break down the location into kernels and write the core details about them. As mentioned earlier, so not just write about the tourist attractions and restaurants in the destination. Write about the lesser talked streets and unknown landmarks and the history behind them. If the place is known for its delicacies, write about how the cuisine has evolved and who had started it. From quaint bookstores to ice cream parlours to run-down shabby pubs – shed light to such nuances to bring your essay to life. You can even mention the negative things that you have faced in the place – like irregular transport modes or impolite locals. These little details will help you make your essay more impactful.

• Be creative with the writing style

Since a travel essay is more like an anecdote, there is no specific format to write it. Therefore, a travel essay gives you the scope of setting your foot into the unchartered areas of creativity. You have got the creative freedom to write what you want. You can study how the natives of the locale speak and learn some of the basic words and phrases they use. To put them into writing you can read the local newspaper to get the pulse of the city you are in. Using the colloquial lingo can help the reader get a closer peek into the lives of the people living in the place. It will reflect a slice of how they live their way of life. Your words should be simple and yet impactful to portray and not just merely narrate. Touch every bit of the rust in the roof to make the reader feel like they are on the same journey with you.

• Make it personal

The travel essay is your story. So add some personal experience in the story and at the same time do not make it self-indulgent. Include stories that can resonate with all your readers. Your experiences should be able to bring the reader back to the travel destination and connect him with the place. It should be the perfect blend of narration of the experiences you had while on the trip along with a vivid description of the place. To achieve the balance, write your essay in first person perspective to give a real touch to the story. Include the most interesting bits that will help the reader connect with you. You can even include the quotes of natives living in the area you had visited.

• Start with a captivating catch

Like every essay, the introduction is the key to make it an impressive read. The opening should be capturing enough to attract the reader’s attention. It should leave an impact and should make them want to go on reading the piece. Start with an unknown fact about the place and leave it hanging from the cliff. Use a tone of suspense to excite the readers to keep them guessing about the contents of the essay.

• Make it vivid with images

For certain places, words may fall short in being able to explain the exact description of a place. You cannot describe how the sky looked with the mountains seemingly touching the clouds or the horizon fading beyond the sea. Certain things cannot be explained in words – like the color of the sky or the water! This is where pictures come in! Providing real images of the place in between can help the readers stay connected. Vivid photos can also make the readers understand the story better by bringing them closer to it. So make sure you take breathtaking pictures of the place you are writing about. The images will help your essay stay in the readers’ mind longer.

With the above tips, we are sure you will be able to write an excellent travelling essay  that will impress your professor and fetch you a good grade.

And if you are still unsure about putting these to use, then below is a winning sample to show you how it is done!

Travelling essay sample

I have visited London several times, and yet it is amazing how I find something new to explore every time I visit the capital city. My visit last autumn too did not fail to surprise me. With the hustle and bustle and the rich royal history, London city has a lot to offer. Since I just had a few days to spare, I wanted to make the best out of this trip.

Although vast and sprawling, I decided to visit most of the city on foot this time. Now since in my previous visits I had seen most of the tourist-y attractions already, I wanted to take the path less travelled this time to discover the hidden gems of the city. The last time I had been to London, I had missed out on the chance to visit the chock full of literature and history that awaited me in the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. Being a student of literature, visiting the place where the Bard of Avon once enacted the plays he wrote was a spellbinding moment. And guess what? I also caught a staging of the Macbeth before I left the place. Before heading towards the Hyde Park tube station, I grabbed some of London’s famous Fish ‘n’ Chips from the oldest food market of the city, the Borough Market. From Hyde Park to Tower Hill in under fifteen minutes by Tube, I began exploring the Tower of London. It was there that I heard a guard speaking about where he hailed from. A quick conversation with Peter, I had gotten intrigued to know more about his village – Suffolk in Lavenham. I asked him how to get there and Peter, being the quintessential helping guide that Londoners are known to be, told me that I could either take a car from central London. Or I could wait for the next day and take the train from Liverpool to Sudbury and then take the bus route 753 and reach in around two hours. Having nothing to do, I spent that day in the British Museum and walking on Oxford Street.

The next morning, I started my journey to the quaint village of Suffolk. I had picked up a book about the village where I learned that the village had once housed Henry III in 1257. And a bonus for all the Harry Potter fans – the village also starred in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as Godric’s Hollow where Hermoine and Harry are seen to be visiting Bathilda Bagshot. On reaching the village, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the picture-perfect silhouette of prosperous medieval England with all the half-timbered houses. The lime-washed and brightly coloured buildings added an idyllic element to the village with the De Vere House standing out from the rest. Adding to the rustic touch was the fifteenth-century St Peter Church with its soaring height of a 141ft tower. The autumn breeze welcomed me as I walked on the leaf-covered high streets. I saw some young guns cycling around in a park and called out to them for directions. My stay for the trip was an Air BnB home-stay where I had to put up with an elderly couple – the Havishams. I still remember how on reaching the gate of the house, I had caught a waft of crumpets and hot scones. After an exchange of banalities followed by me gorging on the scones, I had found out about the hidden gems from Mr Havisham who happened to be quite a cheerful talker. He told me what a must-visit Hadley’s was when in Suffolk. I had then set out with a local map to find the hidden gem. On reaching I had found that Hadley’s was a cutesy ice cream shop, almost run down, run by an old lady. Here Rebecca told me how the ice cream parlour was opened back in the 1850s and was still known for their hand-made sorbets.

Like the sorbet, my stay in Suffolk had been a sweet experience – a trip of revelation. The tour – with all the lonely walks – had in an inexplicable way helped me to get my perspectives right. It isn’t the exotic locales and the flight above the clouds that make travelling my drug. Rather, it is little but beautiful discoveries like Suffolk that feed my wanderlust. Thank you, London. Thank you for being a wonderful experience, once again.   

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Travel Essay

Travel essay generator.

Being given the chance to write essays travel to places around the world is a privilege that shouldn’t be taken for granted. For some people, it’s a dream that isn’t quite easy to reach. After all, not everyone is fortunate enough to afford such luxury.

When one travels, it’s an experience that they want to share with others. They want to tell a story of the things they’ve seen, the people they met, and the culture they’ve experienced. Most people tell this story through photographs, video diaries, or even travel essays. Through this, they are able to express the thrill and joy from their travel experience. It’s not about bragging but it’s about sharing the beauty of our surroundings.

Travel Writing Essay

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Travel Photo Essay

How to Write a Travel Essay?

Writing a travel essay is simple. The only thing essential is how you deliver the message. When you travel, it’s important to pay close attention to details.

This would be anything from the structure, the ambiance, and the locals. Allow yourself to wander and focus on the uniqueness of the given place. Tour guides, natives, and travel brochures often provide a short history of a place that you could include in your essay. It’s also best to learn the backstory of a place through your own research. This will allow you and the reader to feel the historic value of a place. It’s best to create an essay outline of your experience for you to properly organize your thoughts.

Purpose of Travel Essay

You have probably read a travel essay in the past. This could be from blogs, newspapers, or magazines. Some essays are so well-written that it makes you feel like you’re a part of the experience. This would inspire you to visit the place at one point in your life. However, it’s not all about what to see or where to go. It’s about the experience. It’s about sharing the beauty of a place that most people aren’t aware of. Travelling isn’t only about having fun but it’s also about appreciating the world we live in.

It’s a descriptive essay explaining the endless wonders of mankind. A travel essay also provides a glimpse of the culture of a given place. Writers inform us of the living conditions of the people there, their character traits, and their outlook in life. These essays are meant to be informative for people to remember that there’s a whole different world out there to explore.

Travel Experience

Short Essay Sample

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Sample Space Essay

Why Is It Important to Write a Travel Essay?

Travel essays may be written for different reasons. This could be to promote a given location to encourage tourists for a given travel agency or even as a good subject for a high school essay . Writing a travel essay is important in such a way that we can promote local tourism.

Not only can this support a country’s economy but it can also contribute to a local citizen’s means of living. A travel essay is often more accurate and descriptive than a mere photograph. It simply brings the image to life.

Text prompt

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Write a Travel Essay on a transformative travel experience.

Create a Travel Essay exploring the culture of a country you visited.

Dave's Travel Corner

Seeing the World One Step at a Time

How to write a travel essay

November 22, 2023 by Josh Collins Leave a Comment

Travel essays and short notes allow you to dive deep into the memories and share your experience with readers. If written well, readers can explore new places without traveling or get inspired to explore new things. The location you have visited may contain many things to discuss: architecture, sightseeing, nature, culture, and much more. How can you tell about it in a short essay? Whether you are planning to write an essay, blog post, or another type of writing – all the tips below will help you craft an appealing paper.

Understand your goals

Before writing a travel essay: 1. Define the main idea you want to stick to in your writing. If you have a specific word limit, you may be unable to cover everything you wish to write about. 2. Check whether the professor asked you to cover specific experiences during your trip or stick to a more descriptive writing style. 3. If you are free of what to write about, make up a list of things you wish to focus on.

Understanding your goals will help you see the big picture and write the text within a limited time. If you were assigned to write an essay about your travel and can’t meet the deadline or have no ideas, you can get punctual help with essay writing from EssayShark .

Write catchy introduction How did your travel start? What were your plans? You can start with a quote about adventure or just begin your story by planning or arriving at the destination place. For example, here are some starters for travel essays: ● Who has said traveling is pricy? ● Don’t let the routine bore you; add a bit of spice with traveling to your everyday life. ● And the adventure begins!

Experiment with various approaches to engage the reader. You can put this step at the end when you finish the first draft, when the overall idea will be more transparent.

Add vivid descriptions First, think about whether you can attach images to your essay to make it more appealing to the reader and support your adventures with real photos. An additional illustration can create a unique atmosphere that will transfer the reader to the place you have visited.

Use a more relaxed writing style and understand that a travel essay is not a formal academic paper but more personal writing. Use the language you use every day, and avoid cliches and slang to sound more natural and appealing to the reader.

Focus on several ideas What if you have no solid experience in traveling? Or maybe you haven’t seen anything special to talk about. In fact, even a small town has its own spirit and local sightseeing that, you can tell in your essay. For example, you can discuss local cuisine the weather, and share specific descriptions of the places.

Tell the simple story The main aim of every travel essay is to help the reader wear your shoes and imagine what you have experienced during the trip. Describe your emotions and experience in detail to help the reader feel like they have already visited the place. Avoid listing attractions or telling the traveling process step by step. Share your thoughts, and use creative expressions to keep your natural flow.

Ensure your travel story has a standard format and contains an introduction, main body, and conclusion. Don’t interrupt your writing in the middle of an idea; wrap up everything you have said in a meaningful conclusion.

Wrapping Up In general, you can approach traveling essays from different points of view. Grab the reader’s attention with an exciting intro, add vivid details, and focus on several aspects of your journey to keep them reading. Share your experience in a storytelling manner, and your writing won’t be unnoticed.

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8 Travel-Writing Tips From Professional Travel Writers

​​Travel writing has a way of transporting the reader to new places. When done well, it can even inspire others to explore, experience new things, and gain an appreciation of different cultures. But when you sit down to start writing about your own travel experiences, it can be challenging to know where to start.

A place is so many things, after all. It’s the people, the architecture, the sounds of the city, the smells and tastes of the food, and more.

Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your writing shines? Grammarly can check your spelling and save you from grammar and punctuation mistakes. It even proofreads your text, so your work is extra polished wherever you write.

Your writing, at its best Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly

So how do you take everything that happened and condense it into a readable blog post? How do you take your experiences and turn them into a story ? To find out, we talked to six professional travel writers and bloggers.

Here’s what they said:

1 Understand why you’re writing

Before writing a travel post, think about what you want to get out of it. That way, you can work toward something and have a starting point you care about.

“I feel accomplished when I get feedback that travel posts on my blog sparked interest for someone to go to a place or exposed them to a locale they’d never heard of,” says Lola Méndez, the writer behind Miss Filatelista , a travel blog with a focus on sustainability. “For me, the elements that are important are those that will make someone wonder or question something . . . I’m trying to spread awareness about how we can all be more mindful travelers as we explore the globe.”

Your approach will depend on what you value most. For Amanda Kendle of NotABallerina.com, that’s getting other people to value travel as much as she does.

“I start with what makes me most excited,” says Kendle. “Rather than write a ‘Top 10 things to do in Venice’ post, I tend to start with the event or story that affected me the most, or that I’ve found myself telling people over and over . . . what I love to do is talk about something I learned from the experience and how I pushed the borders of my comfort zone, perhaps by making a bigger effort to talk to strangers, or by taking part in an activity I wasn’t sure I’d like.”

Having your ‘why’ in place at the start allows you to easily build in a sort of theme into your post. Then you can thread that throughout your work and create a stronger, more cohesive post and blog.

2   Make it your own

“Travel writing should be exciting to read. It should make the reader feel like they are next to you on the powdery beach with a warm breeze tickling their shoulders. They should be able to taste the curry, rich with coconut milk, lime, and lemongrass. They should be able to hear the chaos of the city traffic and smell the sewage wafting from the grimy streets,” says Katie Diederichs of Two Wandering Soles, which she runs with her husband, Ben Zweber.

In other words, details matter, and so does your unique perspective.

“Figure out what’s important to you and focus on that; write about your experience, and what’s unique about it. We live in a world where so much information is at our fingertips, but the way you experienced a trip—your emotions, your reactions, the crazy things that went wrong, the people you met and chatted with—is unique. That’s what makes interesting writing,” says Kendle.

3   Know the general rules of travel writing

Every type of writing has its own conventions—things that are expected and generally agreed upon as best practices within the space. For travel blogs, that often means the writing should:

• Be written in first-person
• Tell the story in the past tense
• Be conversational in tone ( dialogue can be useful here)
• Contain sensory details
• Give the reader value in some way, whether that’s providing useful tips for navigating or insight into a culture
• Make it relatable to the audience

Since you’ll also be writing online, readability is key. For Diederichs, that means doing things like including a table of contents so the reader can jump to what they’re looking for, using short paragraphs, bolding key sentences, and segmenting the article with subheads. She adds, “Also, keep in mind that the majority of your audience is likely coming from mobile, so make sure that the text is an appropriate size and it is easy to read while scrolling.”

You don’t have to stick to the established rules and conventions, but it’s helpful to know what’s common—that way you’ll be able to break those rules with intention and purpose, rather than accidentally.

4   Edit your travel writing

Writing is a skill, and first drafts—whether they’re novels, articles, or travel blog posts—are rarely, if ever, perfectly executed. That’s where editing comes into play.

“The editing process really is the most important part, as that’s when I take my rough idea and hone it into something useful,” says Matthew Kepnes of travel blog NomadicMatt. “Anyone can start a blog these days. What separates the good blogs from the great blogs is the quality of writing.”

While editing your work, you’ll want to consider several key aspects, like: Storytelling (including things like word choice and evocation); grammar (word processors and editing software can help); and overall effect (is there a consistent tone and voice? Does everything serve the larger purpose of the post?). Reading the post out loud can help you identify inconsistencies.

“I learned early on from re-reading my much-too-detailed travel diaries from various trips that there really is no need to reproduce a trip in every detail. I find the most important part, the message I really want to share, and focus on that,” says blogger, and host of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Kendle.

5   Avoid travel writing cliches

The travel-writing space is awash in cliches. But those are never something you want to include in your posts because it makes for a stale, rather than engaging, reading experience.

“Everyone has their own experiences and voice. Tell your story, and don’t copy others,” advises Diederichs.

If you’re working on a description and you just can’t seem to avoid the cliches —crystal blue waters, breathtaking vistas, “a place out of time”, bustling marketplaces or city streets, authentic anythings, places that are “off the beaten track”, cultural melting pots—try focusing on the truly evocative details, the things that stick out you most, the themes or comparisons you want to make, and break out the thesaurus.

If that doesn’t work, consider using a photo to convey the information instead. A travel blog is a multimedia platform. Writing is the core of it, but the photographs, videos, and audio recordings contribute as well.

6   Be confident in your abilities

It’s easy to see the many existing travel blogs and think, ‘what could I possibly have to add?’ But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a valuable and unique contribution.

“Don’t hold back because you think it’s a saturated field or you only have the budget to visit the town next door,” says freelance journalist and travel blogger Méndez. “Your experiences are valuable. Write from your heart—people will keep coming back to your blog if you’re authentic in the way you share what you saw or felt in a place.”

Your writing should sound like you and should reflect your unique perspective. And the more you write, the more confident you’ll become in the value of that point of view, as well as your own expertise.

“Over the years I’ve also become much more focused on what’s important to me about a travel experience (which is usually the life lessons) and less concerned about what I thought ‘should’ be in it (like an analysis of a painting at a gallery). I write what I want to read,” says Kendle.

7   Continually hone your craft

Practice is a necessary part of learning any new craft. Travel writing is no different in that respect.

“I’ve gotten much better at using things like Grammarly to help with my writing…I kick myself all the time that I didn’t have the courage to start earlier. The more you write, the better you get at it and if you help even just one person, it’s rewarding,” says Kristen Guglielmo of KristenAbroad.com.

If you want to be a better travel writer, it’s a good idea to build your skills by writing every day and reading great travel posts to get inspired, notes Kepnes, adding, “It’s a long, slow process to improve your writing, but as long as you stick with it you’ll make progress!”

8   Remember: It isn’t only about the Instagram-worthy stuff

Good travel writing doesn’t have to focus solely on the beautiful and expected. It’s about all aspects of your experience, and taking the reader somewhere new often means showing them the unexpected.

“I want it to look good and I want to inspire, but I don’t want it to be so unrealistic that people think they’re failing because they can’t live up to it,” says Eric Stoen of Travel Babbo, where he chronicles his trips with his kids.

Travel isn’t always beautiful, and as Stoen points out, people tend to bring their real-world problems with them on vacation and that impacts the experience. But more than that, places are no more perfect than humans are. And sometimes they don’t live up to our expectations.

Even though it may feel like you have to conform to certain standards as a travel writer, there’s room for more than one kind of experience of travel.

“I think being authentic and honest is one of the biggest things to separate the mediocre bloggers from the great ones. The goal is for the reader to see, feel and taste what you are describing. Even if it’s not pretty,” says Diederichs.

Places, like people, are seldom what we think they’re going to be. That’s a good thing. The world would be a lot less interesting if we knew how every new experience, every trip, every new encounter, was going to play out. And it’s ok, and even encouraged, to talk about those discrepancies.

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Kathleen Boardman

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Editor’s Note: We know that many of you are looking for help writing travel experience essays for school or simply writing about a trip for your friends or family. To inspire you and help you write your next trip essay—whether it’s an essay about a trip with family or simply a way to remember your best trip ever (so far)—we enlisted the help of Professor Kathleen Boardman, whose decades of teaching have helped many college students learn the fine art of autobiography and life writing. Here’s advice on how to turn a simple “my best trip” essay into a story that will inspire others to explore the world.

Welcome home! Now that you’re back from your trip, you’d like to share it with others in a travel essay. You’re a good writer and a good editor of your work, but you’ve never tried travel writing before. As your potential reader, I have some advice and some requests for you as you write your travel experience essay.

Trip Essays: What to Avoid

Please don’t tell me everything about your trip. I don’t want to know your travel schedule or the names of all the castles or restaurants you visited. I don’t care about the plane trip that got you there (unless, of course, that trip is the story).

I have a friend who, when I return from a trip, never asks me, “How was your trip?” She knows that I would give her a long, rambling answer: “… and then … and then … and then.” So instead, she says, “Tell me about one thing that really stood out for you.” That’s what I’d like you to do in this travel essay you’re writing.

The Power of Compelling Scenes

One or two “snapshots” are enough—but make them great. Many good writers jump right into the middle of their account with a vivid written “snapshot” of an important scene. Then, having aroused their readers’ interest or curiosity, they fill in the story or background. I think this technique works great for travel writing; at least, I would rather enjoy a vivid snapshot than read through a day-to-day summary of somebody’s travel journal.

Write About a Trip Using Vivid Descriptions

Take your time. Tell a story. So what if you saw things that were “incredible,” did things that were “amazing,” observed actions that you thought “weird”? These words don’t mean anything to me unless you show me, in a story or a vivid description, the experience that made you want to use those adjectives.

I’d like to see the place, the people, or the journey through your eyes, not someone else’s. Please don’t rewrite someone else’s account of visiting the place. Please don’t try to imitate a travel guide or travelogue or someone’s blog or Facebook entry. You are not writing a real travel essay unless you are describing, as clearly and honestly as possible, yourself in the place you visited. What did you see, hear, taste, say? Don’t worry if your “take” on your experience doesn’t match what everyone else says about it. (I’ve already read what THEY have to say.)

The Importance of Self-Editing Your Trip Essay

Don’t give me your first draft to read. Instead, set it aside and then reread it. Reread it again. Where might I need more explanation? What parts of your account are likely to confuse me? (After all, I wasn’t there.) Where might you be wasting my time by repeating or rambling on about something you’ve already told me?

Make me feel, make me laugh, help me learn something. But don’t overdo it: Please don’t preach to me about broadening my horizons or understanding other cultures. Instead, let me in on your feelings, your change of heart and mind, even your fear and uncertainty, as you confronted something you’d never experienced before. If you can, surprise me with something I didn’t know or couldn’t have suspected.

You Can Do It: Turning Your Trip into a Great Travel Experience Essay

I hope you will take yourself seriously as a traveler and as a writer. Through what—and how—you write about just a small portion of your travel experience, show me that you are an interesting, thoughtful, observant person. I will come back to you, begging for more of your travel essays.

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7 June 2024

A Writer’s Guide to Great Travel Writing

Travel writing is about visiting different places and observing things that are unique to the specific destination, like the landscape and geography, the people and their customs, the history, culture, and food. Travel writing informs people about particular locations through articles and blogs, and often provides tips about travelling to that destination. But it is also a form of literary non-fiction that tells a more detailed narrative about a journey or a place. 

What is travel writing

Travel writing is one of the oldest forms of literature — the earliest known records of travel literature date all the way back to the second century. Exploring new places and embarking on voyages has always been part of our DNA, and ever since humans have put pen to paper, we have written about the new places that we’ve discovered close and far, and similar and different from home.

There are many styles of travel writing, from the journalistic to the literary, to memoir , which can be both serious and humorous. Journalistic approaches to travel writing might explore a place’s history, politics, people, and culture in a measured and well-researched way, providing the reader with a realistic and well-informed account of what the place is like. More literary approaches to travel writing tend to be more personal, reflecting on the author’s personal response to a particular place or journey, which might be presented as a daily journal or a more expansive narrative . 

Types of travel writing

Travel writing is a fertile form of non-fiction, which intersects with other subjects, like nature , history, adventure, memoir, and food. While one travel book might paint a famous, familiar city in a new light, another might describe a treacherous journey through a little-known and isolated mountainscape, while another might delight you with sensory descriptions of a country’s delicacies, and another might entertain you with witty observations about a place or regale anecdotes of a holiday gone horribly wrong.

Travel writing can take readers from the hostile shores of Scotland, to the bustling streets of Mexico City, to the wild Australian outback, all focusing on different things — the natural landscape, the writer’s emotional response to the place, the unique food and fauna, or the local people. 

As travel writing is so broad, readers usually come to it for different reasons. They might be interested in deepening their understanding of a specific country’s culture, they might want to learn more about a cuisine, they might want to immerse themselves in the colours, smells and noises of a far-flung city or wild landscape, and they might want to be entertained as well as informed. 

What travel writing includes

It’s important that travel writing shows, not tells. Readers want to be immersed in a place , feeling as if they are there with the narrator, and in order to do that, an author must make sure that their writing is rich with description, using vivid language to tell compelling stories and paint colourful scenes.

Travel writing should speak to the senses – drawing out beautiful, surprising and entertaining descriptions of sight, smell, taste, sounds, and touch. Travel writing often combines different types of descriptions, from amusing anecdotes, to historical details, to flashbacks from the author’s own memories, to close-ups of minute details, to long shots of impressive vistas and scenes.

How you choose to compose travel writing depends on your own personal choice and writing style, but it’s helpful to keep in mind the different techniques available to you to keep the writing interesting for the reader. 

Tips for travel writing

• Open with a compelling and snappy anecdote or description to hook the reader’s interest from the beginning 
• Give the reader a strong sense of where you are through vivid language 
• Ground the reader in time, in climate, and in the season
• Introduce yourself to help the reader identify with you and explain the reason for the trip, and why you are writing about this particular place 
• Think about how best to describe the travel or journey unfolding in terms of the timeline and which themes, stories or memories you might introduce, and when 
• Include details about the people you come across, the sights you see, the history of a place, the things people say 
• Remember to appeal to the five senses to help transport the reader to the place 

Reading List

If you’re thinking of writing about travel, it’s a good idea to read some of the top-selling and most interesting books in this area to help you get a flavour of different styles and reading experiences. Reading some of these books should also give you helpful insights into different ways you can present your experience of a country or place, how to weave specific themes into your travel writing and how to create an intimate reading experience. 

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson 

Notes from a Small Island is one of the quintessential pieces of travel writing about Britain told from an American writer’s point of view. Bryson’s wry, perceptive observations on his adoptive country provoke both snorts of hilarity and uncomfortable winces of recognition for those familiar with British culture.

Before moving back to America, Bryson took a trip around Britain to take stock of the nation’s public face and private parts, and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite.

This is the perfect example of funny travel writing that fuses personal observations with history and culture.  

The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit by Helena Attlee

The Land Where Lemons Grow is a delightful book about Italy’s unexpected history, told through its citrus fruits.

By combining travel writing with history, recipes, horticulture, and art, Helena Attlee takes the reader on a unique and rich journey through Italy’s cultural, moral, culinary and political past.

Having lived in Italy for over 30 years, Helena Attlee gives us a really unique piece of travel writing which uses one object as a different way into a country’s fascinating history.

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux 

No list of travel books would be complete without a nod to Paul Theroux, a master of the genre.

The Great Railway Bazaar is Theroux’s classic and much-loved homage to train travel. From the Orient Express, to the Delhi Mail from Jaipur, to the Trans-Siberian Express, Theroux embarks on an epic rail journey from London across Europe to Asia.

This was a trip of discovery made in the mid-seventies, well before the West had embraced the places, peoples, food, faiths, and cultures of the East. Theroux vividly describes his encounter with the foreign and exotic, in an energetic style which is both pacy and lean. 

The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert MacFarlane

In The Old Ways , MacFarlane travels Britain’s ancient paths and discovers the secrets of Britain’s beautiful, underappreciated landscapes.

Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads, and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes crisscrossing the British Isles and beyond, Macfarlane discovers a lost world — a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts.

MacFarlane is a master at totally immersing the reader in a particular place. To read this book is to be transported to different parts of the British Isles and see them afresh with new eyes and appreciation.

Reading this book feels like an adventure and flight of discovery. It is a perfect example of how travel and nature writing intersect. 

One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake 

In One More Croissant for the Road , the Guardian’s food columnist Felicity Cloake embarks on a cycling trip around France to sniff out the delicacies that make the French nation the crème de la crème of European cuisine.

Cloake charts her journey, from the beach to mountain, Atlantic to Mediterranean, polders to Pyrenees, tasting the glorious local dishes at each stop.

Cycling 2,300km across France in search of culinary perfection, from Tarte Tatin to Tartiflette, she puts all that she learns about the French craft of cooking into creating a definitive recipe for each dish included in the book.

One More Croissant for the Road , is another great example of how travel writing can intersect with other subjects – food and memoir – and it is also the perfect love letter to France.

Note: All purchase links in this post are affiliate links through BookShop.org, and Novlr may earn a small commission – every purchase supports independent bookstores.

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How to Write a Great Essay on Traveling

• April 25, 2019

Travel writing is like an adventure. You go out, explore, record and write. However, it can get difficult doing a story about places you’ve never visited or even a culture about which you know nothing. It means, without taking that one breathtaking leap to a destination and spending a few days, weeks or months interacting with the locals, your travel journal may end up with more fiction than facts.

In this post, learn the bits and bytes of travel writing. It won’t be a difficult ordeal for experienced essay writers , but if you are just beginning to draft your first story about a trip to Africa, Asia or Brazil, this post if for you. The following tips will therefore move you from a travel writing novice to an expert:

Write in first person

Most of the times, travel stories are everything to do personal experiences, and so, letting people into your world is the first major responsibility. Now, to do this, it is imperative that you craft an essay in first person. Include questions you asked while traveling and quotes you heard from a local person in some distant parts of the world. Most importantly, every twists and turn should be interesting to grab attention of readers.

Images have never outlived their significance in essay composition. In writing a travel story, they should help reinforce your stories. This way, readers will move from imagination to having a close shave with reality.

Capitalize on a powerful introduction

You can bet on the fact that no one will bother reading further, a travel essay with boring introduction. It means; you must make the most of your most exciting experiences at this point. It is important to grab attention of readers using powerful and interesting words at the start.

Show instead of telling

In crafting great travel essays , it is important to take readers on a journey they will never forget.  Therefore, show the nattiest and grittiest of a place instead of simply telling a story. Talk about rugged terrains, unique skyscrapers, leech infested rivers and paint a color of every place in the mind of your readers.

Capitalize on research

While setting foot in a new place will in itself give you a new experience with the locals and life that thrives there, it is advisable that you start by doing research about a place. It is the only surest approach to asking the most important questions and learning more about a people’s culture, history, governance structures and socio-economic life.

Make use of transitional words

Transitional words are the thread that links pieces of a story together. In crafting a travel essay, it is, therefore, imperative that you make the most of words that indicate the begging, middle, climax and end of a story. Your story will not only be interesting but also coherent and cohesive.

The bottom Line

Travel essays should be interesting and most importantly, memorable. With this explored in this post together with the help of Paper Written , it is that time you started creating wonderful stories out of less traveled places.

Related Topics

• travel blogging
• travel blogs
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What is Travel Writing?

For thousands of years, travellers have written about their experiences exploring the furthest reaches of the world, both to record their journeys for personal reasons and as a guide for those who might follow.

Before the internet age, even as far back as Ancient Greece, stories of distant lands were popular because many people would never have had an opportunity to visit themselves.

But what is travel writing like today? With the internet, sharing experiences of our travels has never before been so easy, and arguably travel writing in one form or another is more popular ever.

Definition of travel writing

Travel writing is a genre that describes a writer’s experiences, observations, and feelings while travelling to different places. 

It often includes descriptions of the landscape, culture, people, and events that the writer encounters, as well as their personal thoughts and reflections on these experiences. 

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IB Language and Literature 2.0

Group 1 english higher and standard level, faraway places: travel writing.

“Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home?” Elizabeth Bishop, poet (1911–1979)

In this section you’ll come to understand the conventions of travel writing , learn a bit about the history of the genre, question why people are compelled to travel – and to write about it – and investigate the overlap between language and literature that exists in the wide and varied genre of travel writing. You’ll read non-fiction texts that feel like stories and see imaginary scenes presented as fact. You’ll learn to decode elements of travel writing and question texts more closely, finding analysis points and learning to evaluate various pieces of writing. These kinds of skills underpin your success in Paper 1 at the end of your course. Begin your study by reading The Travel Narrative from the list of articles below, and then choose one or two more pieces of wider reading to enrich your study:

• The Travel Narrative (IB Textbook)
• A Short History of Travel Writing (Traveltester article)

Reading Challenge

This is a longer and more challenging piece of reading, but spending time on this piece, and discussing it with your teacher, will help you master this topic:

• The Elasticity of Place (an interview with a travel writer)

Class Activit y 1: why do we travel?

As you will have learned by now, people travel – and write about the places they visit – for a variety of reasons. the most common are:

• to find the self
• curiosity about the ‘other’
• religious or spiritual reasons;
• to search for one’s roots;
• to be informed
• to experience ‘awe’

In this activity, you’ll practice identifying these purposes in travel writing. Visit Travel Tales, a collection of stories and articles curated and edited by Lavinia Spalding. Slowly scroll down the home page of her site, reading the titles and blurbs of the various stories you find there. Can you infer the purpose of travel from these snippets of information? Refer to The Travel Narrative (above) for more information of the purposes of travel writing.

Class Activity 2: seven travel stories

The travel genre is wide and varied – and this small collection of travel stories will give you a little taste of some famous (and not-so-famous) writers’ work. You may recognise one or two of these names, such as Bram Stoker and Bill Bryson.

Inside the booklet you’ll find seven short travel tales: either read them yourself, or divide them amongst the people in your class. Use this powerpoint to record your observations about the genre of travel writing. However many extracts you attempt, feed back what you’ve done to the rest of the class.

Areas of Exploration Guiding Conceptual Question

‘Cultural practices’ refers to traditional or customary practices of a particular ethnic, national or cultural group. They can be considered in the same way as symbolism in literary texts; physical manifestations of abstract beliefs and values . One reason we travel is to discover the beliefs and values of different people, as practiced in rites and traditions which have often been passed down from generation to generation. Before you work through the resource below, can you think of any practices that are special in your culture? These may include religious, medical, artistic, culinary, political, family or any other behaviour that reveals underlying beliefs and values:

• H ow do texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

Discussion Points

After you’ve got your head around the material in this section, pair up, pick a question, spend five minutes thinking and noting down your thoughts – then discuss your ideas with a friend and report back to the class:

• Why is travel writing important? How is it different from other kinds of journalism?
• In the twenty-first century, is travel writing still necessary? Given that technology can connect us with people and places all around the world, and we can watch videos, read blogs, and browse the social media of people who live in other places, what is the point of reading first person accounts of travel by outsiders to those places?
• Is there a difference between a traveller and a tourist? What makes a person one rather than the other? Is it preferable to be one over the other?

Learner Portfolio

Watch Livinia Spalding’s Tedtalk (above) and, if you have not done so already, visit Travel Tales to browse some of the stories from her collection. Near the end of this talk Lavinia issues a challenge: to write your own literary travel story, inspired by a place you’ve been or a person you’ve met on a journey you have taken. Take her up on this challenge by writing a piece of literary non-fiction about a place you have been ora journey you have taken in your life. Make the purpose of your writing clear: is it to find the self; discover the ‘other’; become informed; search for your roots; take a religious or spiritual journey, experience ‘awe’ – or some combination of purposes?

Paper 1 Text Type Focus: travel writing

At the end of your course you will be asked to analyze unseen texts (1 at Standard Level and 2 at Higher Level) in an examination. You will be given a guiding question that will focus your attention on formal or stylistic elements of the text(s), and help you decode the text(s)’ purpose(s). Travel writing is an extremely fluid genre and you could be presented with a text that contains a variety of tropes (such as maps, photographs, itineraries, reported or direct speech, humour, metaphors… the list goes on) and may even share similarities with literary texts. Use these practice texts to familiarise yourself with the different features of Travel Writing and add them to your Learner Portfolio; you will want to revise text types thoroughly before your Paper 1 exam. You can find more information – including text type features and sample Paper 1 analysis – by visiting 20/20 . Read through one or two of the exemplars, then choose a new paper and have a go at writing your own Paper 1 analysis response:

• A Fish with Hair
• The Mangyan of Mindanao
• Enter Tasmania’s Labyrinth ( Past Paper)
• Cycling Tips (Past Paper)
• Taj Mahal (Past Paper)
• Long Enough in Jo’burg (Past Paper)
• Travel Tales (Past Paper)
• Hunting Moose (Past Paper)

Key features of travel writing

• Viewpoint: travel writing often documents the personal experiences of someone exploring a new place or country so is often first person.
• Perspective: an outsider’s perspective is common when reading travel writing, particularly if the destination is new, exotic or remote. Alternatively, the piece might be written from an insider’s perspective and is inviting you to visit or share an experience in a different part of the world.
• Structure: look out for chronological timelines, past – present structures or a linear journey of discovery. Guidebooks will have clear headings and subheadings and will probably include box-outs and the like.
• Information: travel writing often seeks to be informative and can present you with facts and figures, names and dates, historical or architectural or geographical information and more.
• Description: if the writer is trying to make the destination tantalising, or to help transport the reader, you might find examples of visual imagery, vivid description , even figurative comparisons , helping you visualise a far-off place.
• Visuals: photographs, maps , or floor plans of famous locations are all visual features that you might encounter in travel writing, particularly guidebooks.

Body of Work: Alison Wright Photography

Alison Wright is an author, photographer and speaker who has published several collections of photo-essays including  Faces of Hope: Children of a Changing World  and  The Spirit of Tibet: Portrait of a Culture. Her most recent collection from 2018 is titled Human Tribe . Her mission is to document endangered cultures and traditions from around the world, including raising awareness of human rights and other issues. Alison has won numerous awards and accolades including the Dorothea Lange Award in Documentary Photography for her photographs of child labor in Asia and a two-time winner of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award. She was named a National Geographic Traveler of the Year in 2013. Here is a small selection of her photography to use in class, or you can explore Alison’s complete body of work here .

The presentation of beliefs and values through images is a powerful tool that can help preserve minority cultures in the face of globalisation and help to balance historical injustice by educating those who have lost touch with the past or with alternative ways of living. Texts of all kinds – written, spoken, visual – can help protect cultural heritage that might otherwise be lost. Alison Wright’s work can be seen in the wider context of cultural preservation , an important global issue in our increasingly homogenised and globalised world.

Towards Assessment: Individual Oral

“Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work, students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt:  Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied. (40 marks) “

Alison Wright’s photography would make a good text to consider using in your Individual Oral. Here are two suggestions as to how you might use this Body of Work to create a Global Issue. You can use one of these ideas, or develop your own. You should always be mindful of your own ideas and class discussions and follow the direction of your own thoughts, discussions and programme of study when devising your assessment tasks:

• Field of Inquiry: Culture, Identity and Community
• Global Issue: Cultural Preservation

Though the colonial era has passed, its legacy lives on in the education systems, laws, political systems and other cultural practices that have displaced indigenous traditions and beliefs. In this context, the reassertion of minority cultures through texts is a powerful tool that can help balance out historical injustices and educate those who have lost touch with alternative ways of life. You could easily pair her work with any literary text that reveals aspects of culture, describes cultural practices, or reflects cultural beliefs and concerns.

• Field of Inquiry: Beliefs, Values and Education
• Global Issue: Encountering the ‘Other’

An important purpose of travel writing is for us to encounter ‘other’ people and make connections with people who may be very different to ourselves. In a world of suspicion and insularity, it is through building bridges between cultures and learning to understand different ways of life that we can settle our differences peaceably. In this context, Alison Wright’s photography invites us to ‘meet’ individuals from cultures that are very different to the urbanised or westernised cultures a lot of us may be more familiar with.

Sample Individual Oral Here is a recording of the first ten minutes of an individual oral for you to listen to. You can discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this talk as a way of improving your own oral presentations. Be mindful of academic honesty when constructing your own oral talk. To avoid plagiarism you can: talk about a different global issue; pair Alison Wright’s photography with a different literary work; select different passages to bring into your talk; develop an original thesis.

Possible Literary pAirings

• Broken April by Ismail Kadare – you might like to consider the idea that some cultural traditions are worth preserving, while others should rightly be consigned to the dustbin of history and Kadare subtly implies the Kanun is a dying tradition.
• John Keats’ poetry – In Ode on a Grecian Urn , the speaker tries to imagine what life might have been like for the people engraved on the surface of an urn.
• Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw – the play is awash with peculiar Victorian mores revealing all kinds of beliefs and attitudes about class, poverty, prudery, morality and more. Doolittle’s speeches, Mrs Higgins’ at-home or conversations between Higgins, Pickering and Mrs Pearce could all be passages that you might like to select for this activity.
• Border Town by Shen Congwen – written just as China was beginning to modernise, and recently rediscovered by a new generation of Chinese readers, Congwen’s novella paints a picture of the lives and traditions of local Miao people in West Hunan, and can be valued as a record of a way of life that has largely disappeared in one of the world’s fastest-changing countries.
• The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami – these stories are set in a world traumatised by history, and most of the characters are victims of a peculiar kind of ‘collective amnesia’. They seem stuck in the present and can’t move on in their lives. Some critics have interpreted Murakami’s writing as a response to the tumultuous events of Japan’s history – a past that many would like to simply forget. Approaching this activity from this unusual angle would be a challenging, but possibly very interesting, way to pair a literary and non-literary body of work.
• Charlotte Mew’s poetry – writing at the start of the twentieth century, what does Charlotte Mew reveal about the lives, attitudes and values of the people in her poems? What kind of society did she live in? What was life like for ordinary people – and for women, disabled people and those who were mentally impaired?
• Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee – the ‘civilised’ world’s encounter with the fearsome ‘other’ is a major theme of Coetzee’s novel and could make an ideal piece with which to compare Alison Wright’s photography.

Towards Assessment: HL Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length. (20 marks) .††

If you are an HL student who enjoyed this section of work, and find the topic of travel writing interesting, you might consider this Body of Work to write your Higher Level Essay. You could extend your research beyond Human Tribe to include some of her other published collections. Angles of investigation might include: to what extent you think she is successful in her aim of bridging the gap between different cultures; whether her photography constitutes a modern form of travel writing; to what extent her photography reveals and represents cultural practices; whether you feel the photographs form or impose an identity onto people from an outsider’s perspective. Here are some suggestions for you – but always follow your own lines of inquiry should your thoughts lead you in a different direction:

• How is colour and composition used to present ideas about identity in Alison Wright’s photography?
• How does Alison Wright imply a close connection between people and the natural world in her photography collections?
• How does Alison Wright use metonymy in her photographic work?
• Explore the symbolism of eyes in Alison Wright’s photographic collections.
• In what ways does Alison Wright’s photography meaningfully negotiate our encounter with unfamiliar people and places?

Wider Reading and Research

• Outpost Magazine – a Canadian adventure-travel publication published six times a year, Outpost is known for its long-form adventure narratives from across the world.
• My Favourite Travel Book – six famous travel writers nominate their favourite travel books.
• The Most Inspiring Talks on Travel – a selection of the best Tedtalks about travel, including Lavinia Spalding’s talk.
• The Truth About Tribal Tourism – visit this Rough Guide blog to discover how your sustainable tour may not be as friendly to people or places as you might have thought…

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Jun 14 Writing the Perfect Travel Essay for Students1

Writing travel essays.

Writing college essays about traveling is a straightforward process for most students. As long as you can creatively connect the thrilling events in the correct order to give great flow, then everything else will flow effortlessly. The most important thing here is to know how to use your skills. You must be excited to compose a travel essay. After all, you’re about to have fun while completing this assignment. 

Remember when you had to google a reliable service to write my college admissions essay for an affordable price? Luckily, not all essays demand that great extent of preparation and a professional approach.

Meanwhile, you simply can check https://uk.assignmentgeek.com/write-my-dissertation.html to be more free while studying and especially traveling

But you have to be careful. Remember that you have a lot of information, and you can't write everything due to the number of words set by the instructor. That's why you should be careful to avoid losing track of the essay. Here are tips on writing the perfect traveling essay for students.

Travel Writing Essay

Exploratory Glory YouTube Channel

Using a Capturing Introduction

The introduction is the part that hooks your reader. And of course, these are the first few lines of the write-up. Avoid boring cliches or statements like trying to describe what's traveling. There is nothing new here you are trying to indicate. This is a clear indication that you have nothing interesting to talk about. So, it's vital to start with something that catches the reader's attention.

How do you write an interesting introduction about traveling to places like Pig Beach, Mexico ? You can begin with startling statistics or narrate unusual experiences you encountered while traveling. Still, you can

take a stance on something interesting about traveling. Tell the reader how interesting traveling can sometimes be.

Sometimes you can be stuck on how to write a captivating travel essay. In this case, you can try checking out travel essay examples and see the level of creativity in those essays. It will motivate you to write a great essay about the trip. You can also search the internet for an essay guide about traveling and follow it keenly when writing. Whenever you face challenges with managing your time effectively due to other assignments, you can find essay writing service Canada on Ca.EduBirdie. The professionals on this platform will write a quality essay that's captivating to read due to their vast experience.

One great way to keep up with your exam and essay knowledge is to try out ExamSnap so you can be ready for anything your teachers through your way.

Maintain the Standard Essay Structure

As stated above, you might have a lot of unique experiences to tell, but you have to follow the standard essay structure. This is the most crucial tip that you should always keep in your mind. You will easily earn marks for following the structure! The structure of the standard essay includes the introduction, body, and conclusion.

Following this structure keenly will help you organize your thoughts and ideas to maintain a high level of cohesiveness for your essay. Paragraphs must be connected, and ensure you don't repeat any information. A good body of a traveling essay should contain about 3 to 4 paragraphs. Each paragraph must have a unique idea that you are trying to explain.

Create An Outline

Do you want to keep your essay organized and in good structure? Creating an outline is the first step to writing a perfect traveling essay. This will help you stay on track and avoid missing any vital information. The outline should include a thesis in the introduction, key points, and concluding thought. The thesis should sum up the central point of the traveling essay.

It's normally written at the end of the introduction. This statement should give a reason that supports the main idea of the essay . Key points are the experiences that you went through while traveling. Is there any unique feature that you saw? If you nod your head in confirmation, you should describe it creatively.

Keep the Essay Simple

There are various benefits of being straightforward with your essay. Sometimes too much flowery language is not necessary for an essay. What matters is how you are presenting your points. Most instructors are highly interested in how you convey your message and not too much unnecessary information. Keep in mind that you don't have the luxury to talk about all the experiences you went through.

Your experiences might not be something unique to the instructor. Still, your travel destination may not be too dreamy! But you can present them nicely and earn good marks. So, describe just a few experiences in an organized manner, ensuring you don't sound like you are showing off your vocabulary . Too many difficult words interrupt the reading flow, and the reader may not even understand what you are trying to say.

Traveling is a thrilling part of everyone's life experience. This experience can be a potentially fascinating topic for your essay. Writing this essay requires minimal creativity if you follow the tips above. That's why there is a need to think through the ideas while writing your traveling essay creatively. If you are not careful enough, you will make unnecessary dull cliches in a bunch of disparate places and nothing new. 

Author’s Bio

Sven Eggers is a prolific academic writer who impresses everyone with his accurate and well-researched writing and editing work. He’s been doing essays and dissertations right from his college days which gives him a competitive advantage. He relaxes in his free time by reading novels, watching sunsets and swimming in the ocean. 

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What is Travel Writing?

By Norbert Figueroa • April 22, 2023

GloboTreks is reader-supported through affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I might earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support! – Norbert

The first ever travel writer might have been the Greek geographer Pausanias, who wrote Hellados Periegesis, or Description of Greece – the oldest guidebook ever written. It is the first tome of the travel literature genre.

Over the centuries, travel writers have written for glossy magazines or the dun-colored pages of memoirs. They made their words concrete in print, shared them with readers who held physical paper, and spent more than just seven seconds looking at an article.

However, with the invention of the Internet, everything changed. What is the definition of travel writing today?

Travel Writing Definition

Before we discuss what travel writing is, perhaps we should say what it isn’t. Travel writing is not writing about your family’s vacation. It is not documenting what you liked or didn’t like about your last trip. And it is definitely not about writing destinations so you can travel for free.

Travel writing is when an individual travels to various destinations across the globe and finds a publishable story to tell about that area. The writing describes places the author has visited and their experiences while traveling.

Besides, travel writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator’s encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject. It is also called travel literature or tourism writing.

Travel writing has a way of transporting the reader to new places. When done well, it can inspire others to explore, experience new things, and gain an appreciation of different cultures.

But when you sit down to start writing about your travel experiences, it can be challenging to know where to start. A place is so many things, after all. It’s the people, the smells, the architecture , the sounds of the city, the tastes of food and much more.

So how do you take everything that happened and condense it into a readable blog post? How do you take your experiences and turn them into a story?

Before writing a travel post, think about what you want to get out of it. That way, you can work toward something and have a starting point you can care about.

Lola Mendez, the writer behind Miss Filatelista, a travel blog focusing on sustainability, says, “I feel accomplished when I get feedback that travel posts on my blog sparked interest for someone to go to a place or exposed them to a locale they’d never heard of.”

She also notes that essential elements in travel writing make someone wonder or question something. As an experienced travel writer, Lola tries to spread awareness about how people can be more mindful travelers as they explore the globe.

Travel writing is crucial because it humanizes distant places. Unlike standard journalism, it doesn’t pretend to detach objectivity, and it doesn’t follow the panic-driven war of disaster tropes of the twenty-four-hour news cycle.

Instead, this writing uses a personal lens to delve into the nuanced realities of daily life away from home, finding human commonalities as it explores cultural differences.

What is Travel Writing in Literature?

It is difficult to classify travel writing since it has many similarities with other genres, such as personal narratives, histories, exploration accounts, and tales of epic quests.

It derives from and adds to each of these forms. Travel writing has always been as much about exploring the writer’s self as it has been about the people or places visited.

Travel writers and critics of the genre often argue that the destination has little consequence. They claim that a travel writer’s true subject is the travel process, the work or travel involved.

In literature, travel writing records travelers’ experiences in fascinating places and circumstances. It includes vivid descriptions, historical backgrounds, illustrations, and possibly maps and diagrams.

It has an equal status with romance, action-adventure, mystery, and fantasy. Travel writing often blends with essay writing, coming from travel writing collections or magazine features.

Styles range from journalistic to introspective to funny and too serious. Early examples appear in ancient Greece, medieval China, and early Arabic literature. Today, you can find travel writing on websites, books, blogs, and periodicals.

General Rules of Travel Writing

Like any other writing genre, travel writing has its conventions – things expected and generally agreed upon as best practices. While there are many rules, travel writing should:

• Be in first-person
• Contain sensory details
• Tell the story in the past tense
• Have a conversational tone
• Give readers value through valuable tips for navigating into a culture or a place
• Be relatable to the audience

Travel Blogs

Nowadays, travel literature has become a social media genre in the form of travel blogs .

Travel bloggers use platforms, such as Instagram , Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and personal blogs, to convey information about their adventures and advice for navigating particular countries or for traveling generally.

Online Writing Services

Travel writing may sound simple to many, but it isn’t straightforward. Writing an essay or research paper can be equally challenging, especially if you don’t know how to go about it.

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The company has expert writers who know the ins and outs of the academic discipline in which they specialize. Whether you have a short, long, or urgent assignment, their writers complete it according to your specifications. They can resolve any writing crisis that you may have.

Examples of Travel Writing

Suppose travel writing is as much about the traveler as it is about the destination. In that case, American travel writing reveals as much about the American itself as it does about other people.

American travel writing between 1820 and 1870 reflected the nation’s expansion of its territorial boundaries, participation in the process of Manifest Destiny, and developing a sense of a distinct country from its ties with the European past. Here are a few travel writing examples to show its breadth.

• National Geographic Travel is a forever iconic publication featuring stories that explore travel through the lens of science, history, culture, or environment.
• The award-winning JRNY magazine is a beautiful ode to the art of travel writing and photography. It’s a magnificent print publication, a bit of a rarity that makes it even more a treasure.
• Patagonia’s journal is an epic example of content marketing. It contains genuine and dazzling stories of adventure around the world. I like to think of it as a journalistic marvel of travel content. It can highlight a brand and a purpose while still staying true to inspiring narratives.
• Travel + Leisure is a beautiful mix of roundups, service pieces, and inspiration.

Wrapping Up!

Travel writing is writing about places, persons, and things in different sites. It also involves writing about how, when, and where to travel – all with the reader in mind.

Travel writing is about relaying your experiences to others so that they may emulate them or, at the very least, not make certain mistakes you made. Besides, it is writing about things in your backyard that are exotic to everyone else.

The best travel writing is a tentative inquiry into other places to provide insights and understanding. Like all forms of literature, its nuanced specifics speak to universal themes.

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Great Travel Writing Examples from World Renowned Travel Writers

Are you ready to be a better travel writer? One of the best ways to do this is to read great travel writing examples from great travel writers.

Writing about travel in a way that keeps your reader reading is not always easy. Knowing how to write an irresistible first paragraph to entice the reader to keep reading is key. Writing a lede paragraph that convinces the reader to finish the article, story or book is great travel writing.  This article features travel writing examples from award-winning travel writers, top-selling books, New York Times travel writers, and award-winning travel blogs.

Ads are how we pay our bills and keep our blog free for you to enjoy. We also use affiliate links; if you make a purchase through them, we may receive a small commission at no cost to you.

The writers featured in this article are some of my personal favorite travel writers. I am lucky to have met most of them in person and even luckier to consider many friends. Many I have interviewed on my podcast and have learned writing tips from their years of travel writing, editing and wisdom.

11 Great Travel Writing Examples

Writing with feeling, tone, and point of view creates a compelling story. Below are examples of travel writing that include; first paragraphs, middle paragraphs, and final paragraphs for both travel articles as well as travel books.

I hope the below examples of travel writing inspire you to write more, study great travel writing and take your writing to a higher level.

Writing Example of a Travel Book Closing Paragraphs

Don George is the author of the award-winning anthology The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George , and the best-selling travel writing guide in the world: How to Be a Travel Writer .

He is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Travel, and has been Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, Salon, and Lonely Planet.

I had the wonderful opportunity to see Don speak at Tbex and read from one of his books as well as interview him on the Break Into Travel Writing podcast. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Below is the closing of Don’s ebook: Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus: Dispatches from a Year of Traveling Close to Home

I continued hiking up to Lost Trail and then along Canopy View Trail. Around noon I serendipitously came upon a bench by the side of the trail, parked my backpack, and unpacked my lunch. Along with my sandwiches and carrot sticks, I feasted on the tranquility and serenity, the sequoia-swabbed purity of the air, the bird and brook sounds and sun-baked earth and pine needle smells, the sunlight slanting through the branches, the bright patch of blue sky beyond.

At one point I thought of shinrin-yoku, forest bathing, the Japanese practice that has become widely popular in the U.S. This was a perfect example of shinrin-yoku, I thought: Here I am, alone in this forest, immersed in the sense and spirit of these old-growth redwoods, taking in their tranquility and timelessness, losing myself to their sheer size and age and their wild wisdom that fills the air.

I sat there for an hour, and let all the trials, tremors, and tribulations of the world I had left in the parking lot drift away. I felt grounded, calm, quiet—earth-bound, forest-embraced.

In another hour, or two, I would walk back to the main paved trail, where other pilgrims would be exclaiming in awe at the sacred sequoias, just as I had earlier that day.

But for now, I was content to root right here, on this blessed bench in the middle of nowhere, or rather, in the middle of everywhere, the wind whooshing through me, bird-chirps strung from my boughs, toes spreading under scratchy pine needles into hard-packed earth, sun-warmed canopy reaching for the sky, aging trunk textured by time, deep-pulsing, in the heart of Muir Woods.

• You can read the whole story here: Old Growth: Hiking into the Heart of Muir Woods
• Please also download Don’s free ebook here:  Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus
• In addition to writing and editing, Don speaks at conferences, lectures on tours around the world, and teaches travel writing workshops through www.bookpassage.com .

Writing Example of a Travel Book Intro Paragraphs

Francis tapon.

Francis Tapon , author of Hike Your Own Hike and The Hidden Europe , also created a TV series and book called The Unseen Africa, which is based on his five-year journey across all 54 African countries.

He is a three-time TEDx speaker. His social media username is always FTapon. I interviewed Francis on the Break Into Travel Writing podcast about “How to Find An Original Point of View as a Travel Writer “. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Below is the opening of Francis’ book, The Hidden Europe:

“This would be a pretty lousy way to die,” I thought.

I was locked in an outhouse with no way out. Outhouses sometimes have two latches—one on the outside and one on the inside. The outside latch keeps the door shut to prevent rodents and other creatures who like hanging out in crap from coming in. Somehow, that outer latch accidentally closed, thereby locking me in this smelly toilet. I was wearing a thin rain jacket. The temperature was rapidly dropping.

“This stinks,” I mumbled. It was midnight, I was above the Arctic Circle, and the temperatures at night would be just above freezing. There was no one around for kilometers. If I didn’t get out, I could freeze to death in this tiny, smelly, fly-infested shithole.

My mom would kill me if I died so disgracefully. She would observe that when Elvis died next to a toilet, he was in Graceland. I, on the other hand, was in Finland, not far from Santa Claus. This Nordic country was a jump board for visiting all 25 nations in Eastern Europe.

You can find his book on Amazon: The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us

For $2 a month, you can get Francis’ book as he writes it: Patreon.com/ftapon

Intro (Lede) Paragraph Examples of Great Travel Writing Articles

Michele peterson.

Former banking executive Michele Peterson is a multi-award-winning travel and food writer who divides her time between Canada, Guatemala, and Mexico (or the nearest tropical beach).

Former banking executive Michele Peterson is a multi-award-winning travel and food writer who divides her time between Canada, Guatemala, and Mexico (or the nearest tropical beach). Her writing has appeared in Lonely Planet’s Mexico from the Source cookbook, National Geographic Traveler, Conde Nast’s Gold List, the Globe and Mail, Fifty-five Plus and more than 100 other online and print publications.

She blogs about world cuisine and sun destinations at A Taste for Travel website. I met Michele on my first media trip that took place in Nova Scotia, Canada. I also had the pleasure of interviewing about “ Why the Odds are in Your Favor if you Want to Become a Travel Writer” . You can listen to the full podcast here .

Michele’s Lede Paragraph Travel Writing Example

I’m hiking through a forest of oak trees following a farmer who is bleating like a pied piper. Emerging from a gully is a herd of black Iberian pigs, snuffling in response. If they weren’t so focused on following the swineherd, I would run for the hills. These pigs look nothing like the pink-cheeked Babe of Hollywood fame.

These are the world’s original swine, with lineage dating back to the Paleolithic Stone Age period where the earliest humans decorated Spain’s caves with images of wild boars. Their powerful hoofs stab the earth as they devour their prized food, the Spanish bellota acorn, as fast as the farmer can shake them from the tree with his long wooden staff. My experience is part of a culinary journey exploring the secrets of producingjamón ibérico de Bellota, one of the world’s finest hams.

You can read the full article here: Hunting for Jamón in Spain

Perry Garfinkel

Perry Garfinkel has been a journalist and author for an unbelievable 40 years, except for some years of defection into media/PR communications and consulting.

He is a contributor to The New York Times since the late ’80s, writing for many sections and departments. He has been an editor for, among others, the Boston Globe, the Middlesex News, and the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

He’s the author of the national bestseller “ Buddha or Bust: In Search of the Truth, Meaning, Happiness and the Man Who Found Them All ” and “ Travel Writing for Profit and Pleasure “.

Perry has been a guest on my podcast twice. He gave a “ Master Class in Travel Writing ” you can listen to the full podcast here . He also shared “ How to Find Your Point Of View as a Travel Writer ” you can listen to the full episode here .

Perry’s Lede Travel Article Example from the New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — A block off Grant Avenue in San Francisco’s Chinatown – beyond the well-worn path tourists take past souvenir shops, restaurants and a dive saloon called the Buddha Bar – begins a historical tour of a more spiritual nature. Duck into a nondescript doorway at 125 Waverly Place, ascend five narrow flights and step into the first and oldest Buddhist temple in the United States.

At the Tien Hau Temple, before an intricately carved gilded wooden shrine and ornate Buddha statues, under dozens of paper lanterns, Buddhists in the Chinese tradition still burn pungent incense and leave offerings to the goddess Tien Hau in return for the promise of happiness and a long life.

You can read the full article here: Taking a Buddhist pilgrimage in San Francisco

Elaine Masters

Elaine Masters apologizes for pissing off fellow travelers while tracking story ideas, cultural clues, and inspiring images but can’t resist ducking in doorways or talking with strangers.

She’s recently been spotted driving her hybrid around the North American West Coast and diving cenotes in the Yucatan. Founder of Tripwellgal.com, Elaine covers mindful travel, local food, overlooked destinations and experiences. Elaine was a guest on my podcast where we spoke about “ How to Master the CVB Relationship “. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Elaine’s Lede Example

I jiggered my luggage onto the escalator crawling up to the street. As it rose into the afternoon light, an immense shadow rose over my shoulder. Stepping onto the sidewalk, I burst into giggles, looking like a madwoman, laughing alone on the busy Barcelona boulevard.  The shadow looming overhead was the Sagrada Familia Cathedral. It had mesmerized me forty years earlier and it was the reason I’d finally returned to Spain.

You can read the full article here: Don’t Miss Going Inside Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s Beloved Cathedral

Along with his wife, photographer Mary Gabbett, Bret Love is the Co-Founder/Editor In Chief of Green Global Travel and the Blue Ridge Mountains Travel Guide.

He’s also an award-winning writer whose work has been featured by more than 100 publications around the world, including National Geographic, Rolling Stone, American Way, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Bret’s Lede Example

Congo Square is quiet now. Traffic forms a dull drone in the distance. A lone percussionist taps out ancient tribal rhythms on a two-headed drum. An air compressor from Rampart Street road construction provides perfectly syncopated whooshes of accompaniment.

Shaded park benches are surrounded by blooming azaleas, magnolias, and massive live oaks that stretch to provide relief from the blazing midday sun. It’s an oasis of solitude directly across the street from the French Quarter.

Congo Square is quiet now. But it’s here that the seeds of American culture as we know it were sown more than 200 years ago. And the scents, sounds, and sights that originated here have never been more vital to New Orleans than they are now, more than a decade after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

You can read the full article here: Treme, New Orleans (How Congo Square Was The Birthplace Of American Culture)

Middle Paragraph Examples of Great Travel Writing Articles

Mariellen ward.

Canadian travel writer and blogger Mariellen Ward runs the award-winning travel site Breathedreamgo.com , inspired by her extensive travels in India.

She has been published in leading media outlets worldwide and offers custom tours to India through her company India for Beginners. Though Canadian by birth, Mariellen considers India to be her “soul culture” and she is passionate about encouraging mindful travel.

Mariellen’s Middle Paragraph Example

While the festival atmosphere swirled around me, I imbued my  diya with hope for personal transformation. I had come to India because a river of loss had run through my life, and I had struggled with grief, despair and depression for eight years. I felt I was clinging to the bank, but the effort was wearing me out. Deciding to leave my life and go to India was like letting go of the bank and going with the flow of the river. I had no idea where it would lead me, what I would learn or how I would change. I only knew that it was going to be big.

You can read the full article here: The River: A tale of grief and healing in India

Joe Baur is an author and filmmaker from Cleveland currently based in Berlin. His work has appeared in a variety of international publications, including BBC Travel, National Geographic, and Deutsche Welle.

He regularly reports for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and is the author of Talking Tico detailing his year of living in Costa Rica and traveling around Central America. I interviewed Joe about “ How to Find Unique Travel Stories “. You can listen to the full podcast here .

Joe Baur’s Middle Paragraph Example

I first became aware of the Harz mountains and the Brocken when reading the works of some of Germany’s great writers, like Goethe and Heinrich Heine. Legends of witches congregating with the devil being the main theme of the mountain’s mythology. I, however, was more interested in a refreshing time spent in nature rather than reveling with the devil.

The first stage from Osterode to Buntenbock was a warm-up to the more rigorous stages ahead. It began on sidewalks before sliding into the forest sporting a healthy shade of green — a gentle jaunt that made my hiking boots feel a bit like overkill given the dry, pleasant weather.

You can read the full article here: Follow the witch through the forest: 5 days hiking Germany’s Harz

Samantha Shea

Samantha is a freelance travel writer with bylines in Matador Network, GoNomad and more. She also runs the travel blog Intentional Detours which provides thorough guides and tales related to offbeat adventure travel in South Asia and beyond.

When she’s not writing she enjoys cycling, hiking, the beach, as well as language learning.

Samantha Shea’s Middle Paragraph Example

Suddenly, the spark of a match pulsed through the early-fall afternoon and my head snapped towards the men. Amir touched the flame to an unidentifiable object that seconds later made itself known by the deep earthy scent of Pakistani hashish.

Amir’s ice blue eyes focused intently on his creation: a combination of tobacco and nuggets of greenish-brown charas. He forced the mixture back into the cigarette, before bringing it to his pursed lips, flicking the match, and setting flame to his high.

I reached out from the cot to take my turn and took a deep inhale, acutely pleased. I savored the familiar burn of the drag, the rows and rows of corn and apple plants in front of me, the stuttered cacophony of animal exclamations behind me, and the generosity of the men to my left, some of whom we had just met an hour before.

You can read the full article here: Thall Tales: A Hazy Afternoon in Thall, Pakistan

Final Paragraph Example of Great Travel Writing Articles

Cassie bailey.

Cassie is a travel writer who has solo backpacked around Asia and the Balkans, and is currently based in Auckland. Alongside in-depth destination guides, her blog has a particular focus on storytelling, mental health, and neurodiversity.

Cassie’s Final Paragraphs Example

So my goal is to feel, I guess. And I don’t mean that in a dirty way (although obvz I do mean that in a dirty way too). This is why we travel, right? To taste crazy new foods and to feel the sea breeze against our skin or the burn on the back of our legs on the way down a mountain. We want to feel like shite getting off night buses at 4am and the sting of mosquito bites. We know we’re going to feel lost or frustrated or overwhelmed but we do it anyway. Because we know it’s worth it for the ecstasy of seeing a perfect view or making a new connection or finding shitty wine after a bad day.

My goal is never to become numb to all of this. To never kid myself into settling for less than everything our bodies allow us to perceive. I’m after the full human experience; every bit, every feeling.

You can read the full article here: Goals inspired by life as a solo backpacker

Lydia Carey

Lydia Carey is a freelance writer and translator based out of Mexico City who spends her time mangling the Spanish language, scouring the country for true stories and “researching” every taco stand in her neighborhood.

She is the author of “ Mexico City Streets: La Roma ,” a guide to one of Mexico City’s most eclectic neighborhoods and she chronicles her life in the city on her blog MexicoCityStreets.com .

Lydia’s Final Paragraphs Example

Guys from the barrio huddle around their motorcycles smoking weed and drinking forties. Entire families, each dressed as St. Jude, eat tacos al pastor and grilled corn on a stick. Police stand at a distance, keeping an eye on the crowd but trying not to get too involved.

After this celebration, many of the pilgrims will travel on to Puebla where they will visit some of the religious relics on display in the San Judas church there. But many more will simply go back to their trades—legal and illegal—hoping that their attendance will mean that San Judas protects them for another year, and that he has their back in this monster of a city.

You can read the full article here: San Judas de Tadeo: Mexico’s Defender of Lost Causes

I hope you enjoyed these examples of travel writing and they have inspired you to want to write more and write better! The next article that will be published is a follow-up to this and will include travel writing examples from my first travel writing teacher, Amanda Castleman. This article will include travel writing tips from Amanda and travel writing examples from her students as well as one from her own writing.

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Alexa Meisler is the editorial director of 52 Perfect Days. Born in Paris, France she has since lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. She currently resides in San Diego with her husband and son where they enjoy exploring California and Mexico.

Travel has always been a part of her life; traveling to such places as Morocco, Tangiers and Spain as a young child as well as taking many road trips to Mexico with her grandparents as a young girl. Since then, she has traveled abroad to locations such as Russia, Taiwan and throughout Europe.

Prior to working at 52 Perfect Days she was a freelance travel writer; focusing on family and women’s adventure experiences.

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