Travel Writers Who Question Their Own Assumptions

Saro-Wiwa knew Nigeria through childhood summers and stayed away for years after her father was killed. Returning on her own for Looking for Transwonderland, she found herself paying new attention to the country’s Indigenous traditions and natural heritage, including the sacred grove at Osogbo. The book lets that growing attachment sit alongside her frustration with the institutions she encounters.

Growing up under French colonial rule in Togo, Kpomassie imagined Greenland as a place where older traditions could endure without interference. He found Danish goods in the stores and learned how Christian missions had undermined local beliefs there too. An African in Greenland is especially good on the comparisons he could make only after spending time in both places.

Davidson set out with plans for how to cross the Australian desert. An Aboriginal elder named Eddie chose to walk with her through his country in the Jameson Ranges, and his way of traveling loosened her grip on schedules and timetables. Read Tracks for what that shift changes about the stretch she walks after they part.

Hessler tried to study Chinese in parks and teahouses in Fuling, and people kept coming over to see what he was reading. He found he could use the conversations to learn Chinese. That small change helps explain why the encounters in River Town are worth reading as exchanges between curious people.

Cooks and diners in China taught Dunlop to pay attention to the pleasures of texture. A piece of jellyfish, with very little flavor of its own, offered a way to test what she’d assumed made food worth eating. Her memoir Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper gives you another way to read a menu, with crunch and chew alongside flavor.

While reporting Border near Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, Kassabova learned from a resident that the same families had been guiding people across for generations. She saw people fleeing Syria walk along abandoned Cold War roads. Those conversations give the book a way to tell the history of a border through the people who know it on foot.

Ghosh goes to Egypt to ask questions and finds himself answering them, including an imam’s questions about cremation in India. He lets you hear his own defensiveness as the exchange turns into an argument about whose country is more modern. It’s a revealing scene in In an Antique Land, a book in which the visitor often becomes the one being studied.

Harris grew up idolizing Marco Polo and took that fascination with her when she cycled the Silk Road with Mel Yule. In Lands of Lost Borders, she reckons with how much of Polo’s attention went to trade and how much his account could pass over. The book is worth reading when you want to think about which questions your favorite explorers taught you to ask.

Iyer went to Kyoto imagining himself in a monastery. In The Lady and the Monk, his friendship with Sachiko changes what he pays attention to. The book is a good place to begin if you’re interested in what happens when a plan for solitude gives way to a relationship.

Amor writes about how the traveler’s role can change depending on who else is in the room. In an essay on writing their travel memoir, they examine when they carry authority as a visitor and how easy it would be to treat a short stay as expertise. Their conversation with Alice Wong extends the question to resorts, where guests can spend a whole trip seeing only what the resort chooses to show them.

Collecting rocks in the rain with scientists on the Canadian tundra gave Wheeler a different picture of the Arctic from the icy landscapes people tend to imagine. In The Magnetic North, she also notices the gap between what outsiders want from the region and the economic problems facing Indigenous communities. It’s a good read if you want a polar book that spends time with people at work.

Shah knew Morocco from childhood, but the caretakers of his new house in Casablanca told him something he hadn’t expected. They blamed a run of accidents on jinn, and he eventually agreed to the exorcism they urged. The Caliph’s House tells the story of a homeowner finding out how little his own plans could tell him about the place he’d bought.