Experiencing the moment yourself is
absolutely crucial when being a travel writer, so that you can personally delve
into all what you saw, smelt, felt and heard, and express how it all made you
feel.
It’s as if you’re taking the reader on a journey with you, going back in
time to that particular place, describing the people who were there and what
they were doing and even why. Investigating and satisfying the curiosity or
burning desire to know something, are some reasons for travel writing;
travelling gives you the ammunition for firing away and finding the material
you wish to seek out.
When thinking about one of my assignments,
I thought deep and hard about travel writers and the work they’ve done, and
somehow managed to forget Michael Palin, the man who came ‘full circle’ on his
travels.
Don’t ask me how I managed to forget him,
but it was only when browsing along the shelves in the library, that I came
across books of his which reminded me about how great a writer he is, and how
it would be fantastic to research him so that I could add him to my bank of
travel writers. And so, after choosing one to read and pick out an extract for
the third lecture of Travel, I chose ‘Full Circle’, which, to summarise succinctly,
brings us to his most ambitious expedition coming full circle. Glancing down the
contents page which had an amazing array of countries listed, I began to reflect
on the several countries I’ve had the opportunity to visit.
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