what is the purpose of a travel literature

Travel literature

• 1 Understand
• 2 Historical
• 3 19th century and later

Travel literature is a broad and popular genre of writing covering adventure and exploration, travel writing collections, travel-related memoirs, and travel-centric fiction. Travel writing often blends with essay writing, coming in the form of travel writing collections or as features in magazines. Styles range from journalistic, to the introspective, to funny, and to serious. Early examples appear in medieval China, ancient Greece, and in early Arabic literature.

• Narrow Road to the Deep North ( Oku-no-hosomichi )- Verses and poems by 17th century haiku poet Basho Matsuo on his travel to the northeastern Japan.

19th century and later

Long distance travel became more accessible to people with the advent of rail, ocean-going steamships and later the automobile and aeroplanes.

• Fiction tourism
• Travel writing

• Has custom banner
• Has map markers
• Preparation
• Topic articles
• Outline topics
• Outline articles

Navigation menu

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)
• A List of Every Nobel Prize Winner in English Literature
• 100 Major Works of Modern Creative Nonfiction
• What is Nature Writing?
• Defining Nonfiction Writing
• Creative Nonfiction
• First-Person Point of View
• Sports Writing as a Form of Creative Nonfiction
• Tips on Great Writing: Setting the Scene
• Point of View in Grammar and Composition
• An Introduction to Literary Nonfiction
• John McPhee: His Life and Work
• 11 Things You Should Know About Trees
• Definition and Examples of Humorous Essays
• The Life and Travels of Ibn Battuta, World Explorer and Writer

Exploring The World Through Words - A Journey Into Travel Literature

.anmzpq-y51p0m{color:inherit;font-size:inherit;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;text-decoration-thickness:1px;}.anmzpq-y51p0m:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.anmzpq-y51p0m:hover::after{content:" #";opacity:0.6;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;} what is travel literature.

.anmzpq-x8t943{position:absolute;font-size:170px;color:#c7c7c7;-webkit-user-select:none;-moz-user-select:none;-ms-user-select:none;user-select:none;pointer-events:none;z-index:0;display:block;margin-left:-33px;width:97px;height:38px;line-height:116px;}@media (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 768px){.anmzpq-x8t943{top:-20px;left:33px;}}@media (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 10000px){.anmzpq-x8t943{top:-7px;left:-32px;font-size:200px;}} “ .anmzpq-sr0jhn{position:absolute;font-size:170px;color:#c7c7c7;-webkit-user-select:none;-moz-user-select:none;-ms-user-select:none;user-select:none;pointer-events:none;z-index:0;display:block;}@media (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 768px){.anmzpq-sr0jhn{bottom:-42px;right:87px;width:12px;}}@media (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 10000px){.anmzpq-sr0jhn{bottom:-40px;right:-63px;font-size:200px;}} „ .anmzpq-1l9orbh{z-index:1;position:relative;} .anmzpq-1gk50um{font-family:adobe-garamond-pro,serif;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant-numeric:lining-nums;line-height:1.45;overflow-wrap:break-word;padding-right:10px;padding-left:10px;max-width:768px;margin:0 auto;box-sizing:border-box;z-index:1;position:relative;}@media (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 10000px){.anmzpq-1gk50um{font-size:22px;margin-top:20px;}}@media (min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 768px){.anmzpq-1gk50um{font-size:20px;margin-top:15px;}} Is a captivating literary genre that serves as a passport to distant lands, diverse cultures, and exhilarating experiences, all meticulously chronicled through the artistry of the written word. .anmzpq-aq2xkr{font-family:adobe-garamond-pro,serif;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant-numeric:lining-nums;line-height:1.45;overflow-wrap:break-word;font-family:adobe-garamond-pro,serif;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant-numeric:lining-nums;line-height:1.45;overflow-wrap:break-word;display:block;text-align:end;margin-bottom:0;font-weight:600;} - Mohamed Chtatou - Writer

Travel literature isn't merely a collection of stories from far-off places; it's a profound literary journey that captures the very essence of exploration, human connection, and the irresistible allure of adventure. Whether it takes the form of a reflective memoir, an evocative novel, or a thought-provoking essay, travel literature possesses a unique power that of transporting readers to remote corners of the globe, sparking the flames of wanderlust within their hearts.

Beyond The Surface - Unearthing The Soul Of A Place

At its core, travel literature is a testament to the human spirit's unquenchable thirst for discovery. It isn't just about detailing the superficial aspects of a locale – the landmarks, dates, and events. Instead, it delves deeper, venturing into the very heart of the places it explores. It seeks to uncover the soul of a destination, painting vivid portraits of the landscapes, cultures, and individuals that make each place unique.

The Narrative Tapestry

For a work to earn the prestigious title of "literature" within the travel genre, it must transcend the role of a mere chronicle. It must weave a narrative tapestry that resonates with readers on a profound level. Travel literature offers insights and perspectives that go far beyond the mere recording of facts and figures it is a repository of wisdom, emotion, and reflection. It's an invitation to embark on a mental journey that allows readers to witness the world through the eyes and heart of the author.

An Ever-Expanding Universe Of Exploration

Travel literature is a dynamic and expansive genre. While it often includes narratives of adventure, exploration, and conquest , it is not confined solely to these realms. It shares common ground with outdoor literature, forming a boundary-blurring landscape where the boundaries are as fluid as the rivers crossed and the mountains scaled by intrepid explorers.

The Allure Of Travel Literature Exploration

Unconstrained by time and space - roaming the world from home.

Travel literature, with its magical ability to transcend the boundaries of time and space, invites readers to embark on a limitless journey without ever leaving the comfort of their cherished reading nooks.

Through the pages of these captivating narratives, you can find yourself deep within the Amazon rainforest, navigating the labyrinthine streets of Tokyo, or strolling along the enchanting alleys of Marrakech all at your own pace, without the constraints of boarding passes or jet lag. The power of travel literature lies in its capacity to dissolve the borders that confine us, allowing us to traverse continents and eras with the turn of a page.

A Window To Culture - Discovering The Heart And Soul Of Distant Lands

Within the boundless realm of travel literature lies a cultural passport, offering readers an extraordinary opportunity to delve into the intricate tapestries of foreign customs, traditions, and rituals.

It's an invitation to savor the exotic flavors of a Moroccan tagine, to immerse oneself in the serene elegance of Japanese tea ceremonies, or to witness the kaleidoscope of colors that dance through the streets of India's Holi festival all through the vivid words of the author. This literary journey not only broadens our horizons but also fosters a profound appreciation for the rich tapestry of global cultures.

Meeting Extraordinary Characters - The People Who Inhabit The Pages

In the world of travel literature, the pages come alive with captivating characters, both real and fictional, who beckon readers to join them on their journeys. From the nomadic tribes of Mongolia, etching their existence into the windswept steppes, to the eccentric and endearing locals of a picturesque Tuscan village, these characters breathe life into the narrative.

They are the storytellers and guides, each offering a unique perspective on the world. Through their experiences, quirks, and dreams, these characters forge connections that make the journey even more enthralling, proving that the most remarkable discoveries often occur in the company of those we meet along the way.

A Journey Of Self-Discovery - Echoes Of Personal Transformation

Within the pages of travel memoirs, a parallel journey unfolds—an exploration of the self. Many travel writers choose to delve deep into their personal odyssey, revealing their vulnerabilities, fears, and moments of revelation.

Through their introspection, readers may find echoes of their own desires for self-discovery and transformation. The act of voyaging to far-flung destinations often mirrors an inner journey, where the author's encounters with foreign landscapes and cultures become mirrors reflecting our own aspirations for growth and understanding. It is a shared voyage of self-discovery that transcends the boundaries of time, space, and individuality.

Recommended Books

When it comes to the world of travel literature, who better to guide us to the most captivating reads than the authors who've delved deep into the genre? These literary explorers have navigated the pages of countless travel narratives and unearthed gems that have left an indelible mark on their own adventures. Here, we present their handpicked selection of the best travel books of all time, offering a curated glimpse into the most compelling journeys ever penned.

• " In Patagonia " by Bruce Chatwin: Paul Theroux, a luminary in the world of travel writing himself, vouches for "In Patagonia" as a masterpiece that captures the essence of a remote and mysterious region. Bruce Chatwin's odyssey through Patagonia is an exploration of the human spirit as much as the landscape, making it a timeless classic.
• ."The Great Railway Bazaar" by Paul Theroux: Bill Bryson, renowned for his humorous travel writing, acknowledges the influence of Paul Theroux's "The Great Railway Bazaar." This work paved the way for modern travel literature, offering a fascinating account of Theroux's epic train journey across Asia.
• "A Time of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor: Colin Thubron, celebrated for his profound travel narratives, lauds Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A Time of Gifts." This lyrical work recounts Fermor's incredible walk across Europe, bringing history and landscape to life in a way that has inspired generations of travelers.
• "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer: Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of "Eat, Pray, Love," highlights Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild." This gripping tale of a young adventurer's quest for meaning in the wilds of Alaska is a thought-provoking exploration of the human desire for freedom and self-discovery.
• "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang Pico Iyer, known for his contemplative travel writing, points to "Wild Swans" as an essential read. Jung Chang's multi-generational family saga provides an intimate portrait of China's tumultuous history and the resilience of its people.
• "The Songlines" by Bruce Chatwin Robert Macfarlane, a modern nature writer and travel enthusiast, praises Bruce Chatwin's "The Songlines." This unconventional travel narrative explores the indigenous songlines of Australia, offering a profound reflection on human connection to landscape and culture.

These selections, endorsed by some of the finest authors in the realm of travel literature, are more than just books they are gateways to new worlds, windows into the human condition, and inspirations for future journeys.

Whether you're an avid traveler or an armchair adventurer, these literary treasures promise to transport you to places both near and far, leaving an indelible mark on your own exploration of the written word.

How Travel Literature Enriches Your Journeys

Travel literature transcends the boundaries of ink and paper to become an invaluable companion, transforming your real-world journeys into profound adventures of the mind and heart. It is not merely a collection of words; rather, it is an intricate tapestry of experiences, emotions, and revelations.

As you set foot on new and unfamiliar soil, the pages of a well-chosen travel book become more than text they evolve into guiding stars that illuminate the hidden layers of your destination, spark your curiosity, and forge a profound connection with the places you explore.

In this exploration, we embark on a captivating journey into the world of travel literature, where the written word takes on a life of its own. We delve into the myriad ways in which travel literature goes far beyond the role of a simple travel guide. It acts as a passport to uncharted territories, offering not just directions, but a richer, more immersive experience that enhances every facet of your journey.

The Art Of Immersive Exploration

Travel literature is a potent catalyst for immersive exploration. It transports you beyond the surface, inviting you to delve deep into the cultural, historical, and social fabric of your destination. Through the narratives penned by intrepid authors, you gain access to the nuanced intricacies that define a place. You become more than a tourist; you become an observer, an empathizer, and a participant in the local tapestry of life.

Sparking Curiosity And Inquisitiveness

One of the most profound gifts of travel literature is its ability to ignite your curiosity. As you immerse yourself in the accounts of explorers, adventurers, and storytellers, you find yourself compelled to seek out the lesser-known, to uncover the hidden gems, and to ask questions that guide you towards a deeper understanding of the places you visit. Each page turned is a spark of curiosity, illuminating your path with newfound knowledge and wonder.

Connecting With The Soul Of A Destination

Travel literature serves as a bridge that connects you with the soul of a destination. It transcends the surface-level attractions and delves into the essence of a place—the stories of its people, the rhythm of its daily life, and the threads of its history. Through the lens of literature, you are offered a glimpse into the heart and soul of the places you explore, fostering a connection that lingers long after you've returned home.

An Invitation To Personal Reflection

Beyond being a window to the world, travel literature is a mirror to the self. Many travel narratives intertwine the author's personal journey with the physical exploration of a place. In doing so, they inspire introspection and self-discovery. Readers often find echoes of their own desires for growth and transformation within the author's experiences, creating a space for personal reflection and growth.

A Journey That Extends Beyond Borders

Travel literature knows no boundaries. It transcends geographical limits, inviting you to explore not just distant lands, but also different eras, cultures, and perspectives. It broadens your horizons, fostering a global perspective that enriches your understanding of the world.

Where To Find These Gems

Travel literature is a treasure trove of stories waiting to be discovered. While many beloved classics grace the bookshelves, there are also hidden gems that offer unique perspectives, cultural richness, and memorable adventures for readers. In this exploration, we delve into the world of lesser-known but equally captivating children's travel literature, unearthing the hidden treasures that await curious minds and imaginative hearts.

People Also Ask

What is meant by travel literature.

Travel literature is a genre of literary writing that focuses on accounts of journeys and experiences in distant or foreign places. It can take various forms, including memoirs, essays, novels, and travelogues, and it typically provides vivid descriptions of the author's encounters with different cultures, landscapes, people, and adventures during their travels. Travel literature often aims to convey not only the physical aspects of a place but also the emotional, cultural, and personal dimensions of the journey.

What Is An Example Of Travel Literature?

An example of travel literature is " On the Road " by Jack Kerouac. This novel, often considered a classic of the genre, chronicles Kerouac's cross-country road trips across America in the mid-20th century. It captures the spirit of youthful exploration, the search for meaning, and the desire for freedom in the post-war era. The book is a prime example of travel literature because it vividly portrays the journey itself, the diverse characters encountered along the way, and the profound impact of travel on the author's life.

What Is The Purpose Of Travel Literature?

The purpose of travel literature is multifaceted:

• To Transport Readers: Travel literature aims to transport readers to distant or foreign places, allowing them to experience and explore new cultures, landscapes, and adventures vicariously through the author's words.
• To Inform and Educate: It serves as a source of information about different regions, cultures, and historical contexts, offering insights into the world's diversity and complexity.
• To Inspire: Travel literature often inspires wanderlust and a desire for adventure, encouraging readers to embark on their own journeys and discover the world.
• To Foster Understanding: It can promote cultural understanding and empathy by showcasing the commonalities and differences between cultures, highlighting the shared human experience.
• To Reflect and Transform: Travel literature allows authors to reflect on their personal experiences, leading to self-discovery and personal growth. It also invites readers to reflect on their own lives and perspectives.

Travel literature remains a timeless and transformative genre. It allows us to explore, learn, and dream, all from the comfort of our own reading spaces. As we journey through the pages of these captivating narratives, we discover that the world is vast, diverse, and endlessly intriguing. So, pick up a book, embark on a literary voyage, and let the words of intrepid explorers transport you to places unknown such is the magic of travel literature.

In the age of virtual experiences and armchair adventures, travel literature continues to be an invaluable guide for the curious at heart, offering a passport to the world, one page at a time.

Featured Articles

Recent articles.

The Allure of Travel Writing

Jan Morris, one of the world’s leading travel writers, introduces six essays and describes the challenges of modern travel writing

Now that nearly everyone has been nearly everywhere, it might be thought that travel writers have lost their purpose. In a way they have. Only the most spectacularly perilous journey is nowadays worth writing a book about, and a public almost surfeited with TV travelogues rarely needs to be told what foreign parts look like.

Ah, but what they feel like is something else, and in a profounder sense the best travel writers are not really writing about travel at all. They are recording the effects of places or movements upon their own particular temperaments—recording the experience rather than the event, as they might make literary use of a love affair, an enigma or a tragedy.

So it is with the six practitioners represented in this special issue—whose destinations were chosen by their answer to a single question: Where in the world would you like to go? Talk about dream assignments.

When in 1922 the novelist E.M. Forster set out to write a guidebook to the Egyptian city of Alexandria, his most memorable advice was "to wander aimlessly about." In that one famous phrase, he was admitting that the subjective means more than the objective.

I do not doubt that wandering aimlessly was part of the technique of all six of the writers in this issue; most of them are even recalling a very first travel experience. Paul Theroux, who has famously quartered the world in his time, here makes his inaugural drive from coast to coast in his American homeland. Geoff Ward grew up in India but had never traveled to Punjab, and he describes for us his sensations with the wisdom of an old hand and the excitement of a newcomer. When we hear the name of Frances Mayes we instantly think of Tuscany, but here she makes a journey across the very different landscapes of Poland. Susan Orlean looks at Morocco through the unlikely prism of a donkey's personality. Caroline Alexander, though she had been to Jamaica, chooses to write about marvelous gardens there that are new to her, and Francine Prose explores rural Japan as the most delighted and appreciative of tourists.

I would guess they approached their tasks, like Forster in Alexandria, open to all suggestions, all antennas out: but it is their technique that is aimless, not their purpose. They know exactly what they are doing, and the result is something far more complex and profound than mere wandering.

First impressions are not always best—certainly not always the most accurate. Responses are often mellower, less gushing, less bigoted, more balanced, upon a return visit. Some of the most potent evocations of places are written by people who have known them for years, so that observer and observed, so to speak, become more intricately enmeshed. But there is no denying extra freshness, extra sparkle, to a seasoned observer's first impressions. Like us, they have doubtless sniffed by proxy the cherry blossoms of Japan. But until now they have not known what those places feel like, have not matched their realities with their own imaginations.

This is not to say that these writers are exploring the treacherous creative quagmire called fiction. It is not invention that you will find in these pages, but something subtler: the alliance of knowledge and sensation, nature and intellect, sight and interpretation, instinct and logic. It is more real than fiction, but more genuine than mere fact, too. Susan Orlean is not just thinking about donkeyness, she is exploring the relationship between animal and human in North Africa. In Japan, Francine Prose is wondering why some travelers find themselves so fully at home in other people's homelands. And Geoff Ward ends his article on Punjab with the Sikh thought that all Punjabis—"and, by extension, all mankind"—are one.

Our writers are certainly not telling us what we shall see or feel ourselves, if ever we go to the parts they write about, and it is no good complaining that our own responses were different, if we happen to have been there already. For they are other minds that we are traveling with here, other sensibilities, and as any philosopher knows, the truth about anything is nobody's monopoly—not least, the truth about a place.

Jan Morris has written some 40 books on history and travel.

Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

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…

Share this:

Categories: Time and Space

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

The Best Travel Literature of All Time

Like many travellers, you may have found yourself immersed in the voyages of those who have gone before you from time to time. While living vicariously is no replacement for being on the road, there are some utterly wonderful nonfiction travel books out there, which are the next best thing.

A Time of Gifts by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

It’s quite genuinely impossible to create a comprehensive list of the best travel literature. While there’s a lot of replication of these types of lists out there, some books endure precisely because of their importance at the time or to other writers. Although some authors listed below deserve to have more than one of their books featured on this compendium of the greatest travel literature, only their finest work has been included. Consider it your gateway to that writer’s greater oeuvre, if you’ve not read any of their work previously; a reminder if you have. Similarly, non-male writers have often been unfortunately overlooked in the past and some real gems that deserve to be on the best travel literature of all-time lists have been overlooked.

The following aims to redress the balance a little. Consideration is also given to some of the works that defined people who are now better-known for their other exploits, because there’s no greater adventure than that of somebody whose travels inspired them to do something more important or lasting in the world beyond merely moving through space and time for travel’s sake. Here are twenty of the best pieces of travel literature ever written (theoretically), to guide you to your next read, to find inspiration for your next trip, or to simply use as a general reading checklist until your next journey.

A Time of Gifts (1977) – Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Writing about Paddy Leigh Fermor in 2020, it would be easy to dismiss the great writer as a privileged individual who was fortunate to stay with royalty and the well-to-do all across Europe as he sauntered from one place to the next. But that would be an awful disservice. A Time of Gifts is the first of a trilogy of books documenting his journey, on foot, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (Istanbul). His scholarship and complete immersion in every culture he encountered helped his writing transcend mere travel literature to reach a higher level of writing. You never feel as though he’s an outside observer trying to make sense of the foreign by superimposing his own beliefs. His prose has been described as baroque, and is densely layered with a deep intelligence, understanding and, above all, passion for everything he encounters. The trip itself was undertaken in 1933/4 and the Europe that Fermor uncovers on his peregrinations is one which is beginning to spiral blindly into major conflict. Somehow this aspect makes the random acts of kindness he experiences across Germany and the rest of the continent even more bittersweet.

Publisher: John Murray, Buy at Amazon.com

Arabian Sands (1959) – Sir Wilfred Thesiger

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger (Photo: courtesy of P.S. Burton via Wikimedia Commons)

Another travel literature classic is Thesiger’s intrepid anthropological look at Bedouin culture and lifestyle in one of the remotest, most inhospitable places on earth: the Arabian Peninsula’s Rub’ al Khali. The setting for the journey is amid the embers of World War II, the repercussions of which were being felt worldwide, including among the Bedouin tribes who’d lived much in the same way they always had until the outside world intruded. In effect, this book offers a snapshot of a remarkable culture that was fast altering, which is what makes this, and many of the books written during the reign of the British Empire, fascinating historical documents. For all of the rightful condemnation of European colonialism, one thing is clear in this book: the fascination and inquisitive nature of the many British scholarly individuals sent to far-reaching corners of the globe created an immensely valuable cache of first-person accounts of cultures and peoples that may not have been recorded otherwise amid the inevitable and inescapable rise of globalisation of the time.

Publisher: Penguin Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) – Rebecca West

West’s voluminous, in-depth examination of Yugoslavia during her time travelling there in 1937 was designed to explore how the country was a reflection of its past. West spent six weeks journeying across the whole region with her husband and meeting eminent citizens along the way. Sadly, by the time the book was published, the Nazis had invaded and the country would never be the same again, which makes this yet another invaluable early-20 th -century document. What sets Black Lamb and Grey Falcon apart though is the level of exquisite detail and research dedicated to the subject. If there was any proof required that travel literature serves an invaluable purpose as a piece of primary historical evidence, then this may well be it.

Publisher: Canongate Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Border (2017) – Kapka Kassabova

Beautifully written and layered with a real sense of atmosphere, Kassabova’s haunting Border is one of the standout pieces of travel writing to be published in the last decade. Eastern Europe is one of the least explored regions of the world in travel literature. Owing perhaps in part to the secrecy and legacy of distrust brought about by the Cold War, even those who have travelled through as part of longer journeys (Paul Theroux in Pillars of Hercules or Bill Bryson in Neither Here Nor There ) scarcely shed any real light on the region. Here, Kassabova heads back to the nation of her birth (Bulgaria) to explore the fragments of political ideology, faith and race, and the blurred lines between them, that have developed around the border region separating Bulgaria from Greece and Turkey.

Publisher: Granta Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Border by Kapka Kasabova (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) – George Orwell

While much of travel literature is concerned with the voyage and seeking out the miraculous, the unique and the lesser known, Orwell took another route entirely. Down and Out in Paris and London does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a memoir of impoverished living in two of the world’s great cities, at a time when they were global beacons in terms of both power and culture. Not only does this book, in a very prescient move, eschew the superior tone of academia when examining the other, it also avoids all glamour in those cities, focussing entirely on the poor, the meek and the desperate. In Paris he lives on the edge of eviction, working the kitchens of a fancy establishment, while in London he lives the life of a tramp, moving from one bunkhouse and soup kitchen to the next, living day to day. It is to travel writing what the ‘method’ is to acting.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) – Hunter S. Thompson

The outlier on this list (all good lists need one) is Hunter S. Thompson’s delightfully absurd, occasionally apocryphal and downright debauched novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . In it, he created a new way of writing known as gonzo journalism, a style of storytelling which is found most commonly today in some documentaries, where the lines of fact and fiction become blurred and with the journalist placed as a central character in the story. This brilliant commentary on the flexible and inconsistent nature of truth was perfectly epitomised by the increasingly hallucinogenic recollections of protagonist Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo. The road trip to Las Vegas ultimately casts important light on an American society gripped by racism and violence (partly why the story is still so powerful today is that America hasn’t yet learned to grow up). As such it remains one of the most intriguing snapshots of America out there, surpassing the work of many strait-laced travel narratives in the process.

Publisher: Random House Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (Photo: Mathieu Croisetière via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975) – Paul Theroux

A perfect example of how gonzo journalism began to seep into travel literature comes from what is arguably the most important modern travelogue: The Great Railway Bazaar . In it, Theroux travels from London all the way to Southeast Asia and Japan, via India, then back to Europe via Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway. While Theroux upholds elements of the old school travel narrative – like the scholarly, studious approach and the inquisitive air – his journey by train is as much about the growing backpacker, hippie, trail and the western counterculture that encouraged it. Occasionally the line between fact and fiction is blurred in his writing, but only to better convey his interactions with the people he met. As such, you get a fascinating look at what could be called modern colonialism, whereby the train networks that were often built by colonial rulers in non-European nations across the world, like India and Burma, were now being used by a new generation in the post-colonial era to explore these newly-sovereign nations.

In Patagonia (1977) – Bruce Chatwin

Coming hot on the tail of Theroux’s above book is perhaps the most popular and enduring travel book of all time: In Patagonia . Bruce Chatwin starts it off with a direct nod to writing and journalism’s slide into apocrypha by framing his trip loosely around the search for remains of a “brontosaurus” found in a Patagonian cave, which he first found languishing in his grandparent’s house. The doubtful story behind this find sets him on a road where he aim to unravel various other mysteries whose only connection is geographical, including the final resting place of Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid, in the wild, empty spaces of South America. It’s a brilliant book formed of loose sections that don’t directly link to one another but has greatly influenced modern travel literature today.

Publisher: Vintage Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

In Xanadu (1989) – William Dalrymple

One of the travel writers greatly influenced by Chatwin was William Dalrymple, whose own quest for his first book, In Xanadu , was framed as a search for the fabled palace of Kublai Khan, Xanadu. This type of narrative has always proven to be a ready source of inspiration for some of the better modern travel books; searching for answers to popular mysteries. It has a journalistic bent to it, and manages to sidestep the awkwardness of westerners merely travelling abroad and casting aspersions about the people and cultures they encounter through an imperial gaze, as is the criticism often lodged again some of the earlier works of travel writing. Here, Dalrymple follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo (following footsteps of somebody famous is also a common trope of travel literature) to find the palace. While Dalrymple restores elements of the scholarly, learned approach common to writers like Robert Byron and Paddy Leigh Fermor, you can feel the impact of those 70s writers as well.

Publisher: Flamingo, Buy at Amazon.com

In Xanadu by William Dalrymple (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Into the Wild (1996) – Jon Krakauer

Few gripping travel narratives manage to capture the why? of our impulse to roam quite like Jon Krakauer does in Into the Wild . The book is both harrowing and revelatory, while performing a third-person character study on a young man he never actually met. In 1992 Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never came back out. The book tries to examine what had led him there in the first place, whether he’d intended to return at all, and why he wasn’t the first to try and cut all ties with modern society. Krakauer looks to others, such as Henry David Thoreau ( Walden is the original escape from society book and a must-read for anybody fascinated by this subject), who successfully parted from the rat race, as well as the reasons McCandless initially fled from well-to-do family life years before and never contacted them again in his search for something more profound and meaningful. While most readers may disagree with McCandless’s methods, his motives seem far more familiar and relatable.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, Buy at Amazon.com

The Living Mountain (1977) – Nan Shepherd

Perhaps one of the finest pieces of nature writing ever committed to paper is The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Sadly, it’s also one of the most underrated books. The research for her book was undertaken in and around 1942, during the Second World War, which didn’t trouble the wilds of Scotland too badly. Here, the stark beauty of the Cairngorms seems to mirror the harsh reality of war. But Shepherd’s deep examination of the various microcosms of life that thrive on the region’s mountains is really a poem that exalts life. It’s a celebration of survival and endurance. Her wonderful book almost never made it to print, lying in a drawer for decades until a friend read it and encouraged her to seek out a publisher. We’re lucky it did.

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Motorcycle Diaries (1992) – Che Guevara

Even if Che Guevara never became the revolutionary and icon of a generation that he did, The Motorcycle Diaries is a fascinating first-person account of travel’s capacity to broaden the mind. The young medic Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara sets out from his home in Buenos Aires with his friend Alberto Granado sharing a motorcycle ‘La Poderosa’ and in his pointed recollections, you can almost feel Che’s ideological shift. He sees poverty and pain and beauty in the poor communities they visit, and through this, we learn a lot about how Guevara became a key player in the Cuban Revolution. But it’s also a beautiful rumination about the paths we take in life and the importance of curiosity.

Publisher: Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island (1995) – Bill Bryson

You can’t really write a top travel literature list and omit Bill Bryson. He’s one of the finest travel writers still producing books. Notes from a Small Island is particularly intriguing because, while most of the books that make any top travel literature list tend to be written by Brits, this is a book about Britain, written by an American. And it’s a delightfully observed book at that, pinpointing the eccentricities and unusual aspects of the island nation that most Brits would never think twice about, but when seen through foreign eyes suddenly become absurd. Bryson is especially gifted at making even the most mundane things seem funny. His books neatly balance thorough research and scholarship with humour and keen observation, effectively amalgamating all of the key aspects of travel literature into one inimitable style.

Publisher: Black Swan, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Photo: Wolf Gang via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

On the Road (1957) – Jack Kerouac

Before modern travel literature’s more self-aware phase that started in the 1970s, we had what essentially kick-started the great 20 th -century American cultural upheaval: The Beat Movement. Kerouac was writing about sexual promiscuity, wanton drug use and giving the establishment the middle finger way before it was cool to do so. Well-educated and moving in New York’s literary circles, Kerouac’s thinly-veiled characters in On the Road (substituting Old Bull Lee for William S. Burroughs, Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady, Carlo Marx for Allen Ginsberg, and Sal Paradise for himself) are painted into a quasi-fictional account of his cross-country jaunts in the late 1940s. The post-war world was much-changed; the white picket fence America with its Jim Crow segregation and uptight Bible-belt hypocrisy were no longer acceptable. Around the same time, J.D. Salinger was branding it phoney, while Kerouac was realising this in his own way, by embracing escapism and drugs. On the Road still resonates today; both the book and the Beats gave licence to a generation of youths to question the oppressive system that became all too obvious in the 60s.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Road to Oxiana (1937) – Robert Byron

Much of the Afghanistan and Iran of Byron’s writing has disappeared, making the precision of his prose all the more valuable. The Road to Oxiana has all the classic elements of earlier travel narratives in it, scholarship, keen observation but also the kind of humour and casual presentation that would become far more popular in the writing styles common to the latter half of the 20 th century. Byron’s constant use of Marjoribanks to replace the name of the Persian ruler of the time was designed to evade censure or punishment in case his notebooks were confiscated and read. The humour of this rebelliousness is not lost when read today, even if some of his style may feel a little bit dated now. His architectural descriptions may be among some of the finest in all of travel literature.

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Rome and a Villa (1952) – Eleanor Clark

Because the majority of travel writing is crafted around a voyage or quest of some sort, we expect the movement to transcend places, countries even. What Clark does exceptionally well in Rome and a Villa is offer an in-depth depiction of just one city: Rome. This book, although not particularly tied to or crafted around any one specific idea, offers a deeper understanding of The Eternal City based on Clark’s explorations, often on foot. Indeed, her scholarly treatment of the Italian capital brings the city’s rich, storied past to life in imaginative and illuminating ways that offer fresh insight on a place that we may easily think has already been well covered already. Which goes to show that places change with the times offering an opportunity for fresh perspectives. There’s nowhere that is dull or too well-known in travel writing if handled by the right scribe.

Publisher: Harper Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road (2007) – Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron’s fascination with worlds that are ostensibly closed off to westerners has often led him into places that many others wouldn’t think to go. He visited China before it had opened up to the world, and the same goes for Soviet Russia. In Shadow of the Silk Road Thubron exhibits why his books are perhaps the most masterfully crafted of all contemporary travel literature. His pacing and descriptive writing are exquisite, particularly in this book, in which he journeys from Xi’an to Antakya in Turkey following the old ways, through Central Asia, once known as the Silk Road. The worlds he uncovers and the people he meets are painstakingly woven into a rich text, much like a hand-woven Persian rug, that is one of the most evocative pieces of travel writing out there.

Publisher: Vintage, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Travels with Myself and Another (1979) – Martha Gellhorn

Even if Martha Gellhorn was writing today, she would rightly be upheld as one of the great journalists, but given that she was doing it decades ago, often better than her counterparts in a male-dominated field, is even more remarkable. The ‘Another’ that accompanies Gellhorn through much of the book was her former husband Ernest Hemingway, but the book also includes memoir from Africa in which she voyages solo. The book is presented as a collection of essays, a format that has become increasingly common in travel writing and which effectively allows the book to focus on more than one topic. Gellhorn’s writing includes keen observation, lively wit and a really sharp political outlook.

Publisher: Eland Publishing Ltd., Buy at Amazon.com

The Valleys of the Assassins (1934) – Freya Stark

Stark was an incredible human being. Fluent in numerous languages, including Farsi, she travelled the world often alone at a time when even men undertaking such journeys were considered intrepid. Stark was particularly drawn to the Middle East and was able to recount the stories of the women there, living in devout Muslim communities, in a way no man would ever have been able to do. She also discovered regions that had not been explored by Westerners before, including the Valley of the Assassins, which forms the basis of this eponymous book, receiving the Royal Geographical Society’s prestigious Back Award in the process. She continued to write books well into her 90s (releasing work over six decades) and died in Italy at the age of 100.

Publisher: Modern Library Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) – Cheryl Strayed

Some may question this popular book’s inclusion on a list of the all-time greats, but it really has all the ingredients of a classic exploration of the human psyche. The physical duress that Strayed experienced on her hike of the Pacific Crest Trail (which runs from California’s border with Mexico to Washington’s border with Canada), and the gradual loss of her toenails as a result, is depicted with visceral precision. Her self-inflicted pain mirrors the mental health and dependency issues that plagued her before embarking on the feat, and in the process, we discover the restorative power of travel, of meeting new people and of forcing ourselves to step beyond our comfortably-positioned boundaries. Like any good travel literature, this book sheds light on why travel is so addictive, powerful and pertinent. Just like all the other books on this list, you’ll finish it wanting to plan your next trip.

Publisher: Atlantic Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Latest Articles

• 20 Unique Things to Do in Philadelphia June 18, 2024
• 3 Fun Parasailing Experiences in Gran Canaria June 18, 2024
• A Comparison of Luxury 5 Star Resorts in Negril June 17, 2024
• Oceanografic de Valencia: A Comparison of Tickets & Tours June 17, 2024
• 7 of the Best Coworking Spaces in Palo Alto June 17, 2024

A (Short) History Of Travel Writing

Posted on Last updated: February 5, 2023

In this short history of travel writing, we will look at the different types of reporting about travel throughout the ages.

If you’re looking for a book about travel in a bookshop or library, you better take the rest of the day, well perhaps even better the week… month, or even rest of the year off! There are just so many!

The amount of writers reporting about the different landscapes and food they tasted in foreign destinations, books with history lessons about certain places and personal narratives about a person’s excitement and struggles of navigating through unknown territories and meeting foreign people are endless.

TYPES OF TRAVEL WRITING

Early travel literature in asia, travel writing during classic and medieval times, who was the first travel writer, discovering new worlds, why we like to write and read about travelling, famous travel writing, studying travel literature, modern day travel writing, add to your vision board, travel without leaving home, which book to read, want to be a travel blogger, our favourite travel journals, our favourite travel notebook covers, travel journals for kids, discover unique travel gear & gifts in our shop, travel writing history.

When we’re talking about travel writing, there are a couple of distinctions to be made. There are:

• travelogues (journal/itinerary style, actual reports about someone’s trip)
• travel stories  (a realistic narration about a journey, meant for a wider audience and usually with a certain literary value to it)
• and travel guides (publication with practical information and tips/advice about a certain destination, meant for people that want to visit that place).

With old stories, it’s hard to distinguish between a travel story or a travelogue. This is because we don’t know the accuracy of the information and motif of the story. Most of the time, it is also not known who commissioned the story in the first place.

That said, in all travel writing, the focus lies on accounts of real or imaginary places. It may range from documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic and from humorous to serious.

You can find travel writing in books, magazines and of nowadays also online. What different types of travel writing are your favourite to read?

You don’t always need to be physically on the road to enjoy the beauty of destinations from all around the world!

From vintage travel posters to beautifully displayed souvenirs and home decor items inspired by your favourite places and from travel journals and crafts to exploring world recipes, music and dance.

With our creative articles you’ll get some fresh ideas on how to bring the world closer to the comforts of your own home.

In China , travel literature became popular during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Under the name of ‘ Youji Wenxue ‘ (‘ Travel Record Literature ‘), authors such as Fan Chengda and Xu Xiake incorporated geographical and topographical information into their writing.

Poet and statesman Su Shi wrote ‘ Record Of Stone Bell Mountain ‘ and made a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose.

In Japan , there are also many personal reports from travellers sharing their experiences and interesting encounters.

Examples include the ‘ Sjōrai Moluroku ‘ (804) by author Kūkai and the ‘ Tosa Nikki ‘ (‘ Tosa Diary’ ) by Ki no Tsurayuki (early 10th century), which was found revolutionary because it featured a female narrator.

Haiku poet Matsuo Bashō wrote the story ‘ Oku no Hosomitsji ‘ (‘ The narrow road to the Deep North’ ) in the second half of the 17th century. The work included the journey, places visited and the author’s personal experience.

Throughout the history of travel writing, you might not categorize some of the historical tales as travel stories. But how about the famous travelogue ‘ Odysseia ‘ (‘ Odysey ‘) from 8B.C. by Homer? This poem recounted Greek hero Odysseus’ long journey home after the fall of Troy.

The Latin work ‘ Commentarii dé bello Gallico ‘ by Julius Caesar reported his journey during the Gallic War.

Greek writer Xenophone wrote ‘Anabasis’ around 431-355 BC. It was about the expedition of a Persian prince against his brother, King Artaxerxes II and the Greek troops travels through Asia back home to Greece. In Medieval works, it showed that people had very little knowledge about the world around them.

Stories were usually a colourful mix of facts and impossible events. They were mostly quests (for the Holy Grail or for personal development) or texts with a mainly Christian/spiritual focus. You can’t really call them travel stories, as they didn’t tell much about the actual environment.

It’s hard to say with 100% accuracy, but often the Greek author Herodotus is consider the first real ‘travel writer’. He travelled all over the eastern Mediterranean to research his monumental  Histories , written between 450 and 420 BC.

The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa at that time.

After the crusades, new stories and information reached the people. They started to realize that there was a whole other world outside their own. The history of travel literature evolved even more at this point.

There came a shift in stories type, as there was much curiosity about explorations and voyages to unknown destinations.

Travel was a necessity at those times. That is why most travel stories were purely intended to inform about the different nature and culture of inhabitants they met. And the best ways in which to approach them. There were also a lot of military explorations that informed more about strategic issues.

A well-known travel writer in those times was Marco Polo from Italy , who wrote (or let someone else write) about a Venetian traveller on his way to China and the Mongol Empire in the work ‘ Il milione ‘ (‘ The million ‘, 1298). This work is seen as a truthful report of things, complemented with (not always correct) information he collected through hearsay.

In 1336, someone did a bit more than just jotting down facts about his destination. Italian poet and humanist Petrarch described his experiences about climbing mount Ventoux and –more importantly- his satisfaction about reaching the top. He also wrote about his travel companions and even related his experience to his own moral development in life, as were it a pilgrimage.

More and more people after Petrarch found a new interest in writing about their travels in a more personal way.

World traveller Ibn Battuta from Morocco wrote in 1355 the work ‘ Rihla ‘ (‘ The Journey ‘), with an original title that translates as: ‘ A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling ‘.

Halfway through the 15 th century, Historicus Gilles le Bouvier from France wrote in a book his opinion about why people should travel and write about it: ‘ Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take please, as I have done in times past, in seeing the world and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go and travel, I have begun this little book .’

The Travel Tester loves to review books that teach you something about yourself or the world around us.

From travel guides and stories to books about business and self-development and from cultural stories to cook books from kitchens around the world… if it looks interesting to us, we’ll test it!

No matter where you’re going, with our reviews you’ll know exactly what to read next!

Continuing this history of travel writing through ages, in the 18 th century travel writing was known under the name ‘ Book of Travels ‘. Usually these were maritime journals – and the people devoured them. British James Cook’s diaries (1784) reached the status of a modern day international best-seller. Along with true stories, imaginary travel stories started to appear.

Many of them were actually based on factual journeys. You might have heard of Joseph Conrad’s ‘ Heart of Darkeness ‘, Daniel Defoe’s ‘ Robins on   Crusoe’ , Jonathan Swift’s  ‘Gulliver’s   Travels’ or Jules Vernes, ‘The journey around the world in 80 days’ .

Charles Darwin wrote his famous account of the journey of the HMS Beagle in the 19 th century. It was a work at the intersection of science, natural history and travel. Other famous authors from his time, that also wrote travel stories where: Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.

There have been many studies about travel writing and travel literature.

They include themes such as: interwar travel writing as escapism, the primitivist presentation of foreign cultures, the psychological correlatives of travel, the role of gender in travel and travel writing, explorations of the political functions of travel, studies about the function of language in travel and travel writing, cultural diversity, globalization and migration.

The first international travel writing conference was titled ‘ Snapshots from Abroad ‘ and was organized by Donald Ross at the University of Minnesota in the USA 1997. It attracted many scholars and led to the foundation of the ‘ International Society for Travel Writing ‘.

Travel writing in current times is quite a broad theme. From journal-type stories to literary works in which style and structure are more important.

Some of the most popular travel writers from the 20 th and 21 st century are (amongst others): Bill Bryson , Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, Stanley Stewart, Kira Salak, Douglas Adams, Anthony Sattin, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Bruce Chatwin and Rory MacLean.

These days, we all know the travel blog as another form of travel writing.

The first online travel blog was posted by Jeff Greenwald on the ‘ Global Network Navigator ‘ in 1993. He described his journey around the world and later turned the pieces into a book.

TIP! Read this funny travel blog of how things went south for me once at Schiphol Airport (but all was ok in the end)…

There is a lot that goes into running a profitable blog and there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes than you might not realize at first.

I’ve been blogging since 2006 and have a ton of tips to share! From brainstorming ideas to creating content all year round and from posting on social media to maintaining your website, tracking what’s working, networking at events and eventually working with brands…

As you can see, travel and reporting about our travels has been a source of inspiration for a long time now. Whether it was military officers, missionaries, the early explorers, scientists, pilgrims, migrants or people simply going on a holiday, we love telling others about our adventures!

I hope you enjoyed this short history of travel writing. Do you have an (online) travel journal? Feel free to share it in the comment section. And don’t forget to share this article if you liked it!

PRACTICAL INFO

• The Adventure Book – Original Edition (prompts + scrapbook per country)
• The Adventure Book – Europe Edition (prompts + scrapbook per country)
• The Adventure Book – Ultimate Traveler’s Edition (prompts + scrapbook per country)
• Moleskine Passion Journal Travel (blank paper)
• Moleskine National Geographic Traveller’s Journal (tabbed sections + prompts)
• Moleskine Journey City Notebook – London (pocket)
• Moleskine Journey City Notebook – Paris (pocket)
• Moleskine Journey City Notebook – New York (pocket)
• Moleskine Journey City Notebook – Hong Kong (pocket)
• Duncan & Stone Travel Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• Everywhere You Go: Guided Travel Journal (prompts)
• Promptly Journals X Kelli Murray (prompts + scrapbook)
• Robrasim Refillable Leather Travelers Notebook (mixed papers + pockets)
• Clever Fox Bucket List Journal (prompts + stickers)
• Clever Fox Camping Journal (prompts + stickers)
• Clever Fox Travel Journal (prompts + stickers)
• Axel & Ash Life’s a Road Trip Journal (prompts)
• Axel & Ash Swept Away by Wanderlust (prompts)
• Field Notes: National Parks Series (pocket, graph paper)
• Bookishly Travel Journals (blank pages)
• Wayfaren Travel Journal (lined paper)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Motorhome Travel Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Travel Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Caravan Travel Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Wooden Journal (lined pages)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Hiking Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Road Bike Journal (prompts)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Wooden Adventure Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• Oakdene Designs Personalised Camping Journal (prompts + scrapbook)
• CamperVanStore Bamboo Travel Journal (lined paper + pen)
• Personalized Monogrammed Leather Travel Journal (blank pages)
• OneLineVoyage Faux Leather Travel Journal (prompts)
• Luckies Scratch Off Travelogue (prompts + scratch maps)
• Letterfolk Trip Passport (pocket + prompts)
• Galen Leather – Leuchtturm1917 Notebook Covers
• Galen Leather – Moleskine Covers
• Galen Leather – Field Notes Covers
• Galen Leather – Traveler’s Notebook Covers
• I Was Here: A Travel Journal for the Curious Minded
• Go!: A Kids’ Interactive Travel Diary and Journal – RED
• Go!: A Kids’ Interactive Travel Diary and Journal – BLUE
• Go!: A Kids’ Interactive Travel Diary and Journal – YELLOW
• Kids’ Travel Specialty Journal
• Lonely Planet Kids My Travel Journal
• Lonely Planet Kids The Travel Activity Book
• The Ultimate Travel Journal For Kids
• Road Trip Activities and Travel Journal for Kids
• Travel Journal for Kids
• Here I Go!: A Kid’s Travel Journal

MORE ABOUT TRAVEL JOURNALLING

• How to Make a Travel Journal ? Tips and Supplies
• How to Write a Travel Journal ? Best Writing Tips
• 65+ Travel Journal Prompts to inspire you
• 10+ Travel Bullet Journal Ideas you’ll love
• Best Bullet Journal Tips
• These Travel Journal Covers will amaze you
• Explorers’ Sketchbooks Review
• A Short History of Travel Writing
• 15 Signs you are born for Travel Writing
• Our Okinawa (Japan) Project Life Album
• Must-Have Travel Scrapbooking Supplies

In The Travel Tester shop, you will find our favourite travel products and original gift ideas.

Whether you’re looking for the best travel gear, gadgets, electronics, packing solutions, clothing, shoes, travel books, health- or beauty products… we’ve made a personal selection for you!

We’ve also included our favourite tech items used to create this blog, as well as material that can help you in your self-development, such as interesting books and courses.

Monday 5th of March 2018

A great synopsis of the fundamentals of travel writing. From the very start one can easily discover a cultural binding through the need of storytelling and sharing. Thank you guys!

Nienke Krook

Friday 6th of April 2018

Glad you liked it Antonios!

HISTORY CHALLENGE: HISTORIC TRAVELLERS | Time Travelling With Kids

Monday 28th of November 2016

[…] For an overview of the history of travel writing, visit: https://thetraveltester.com/a-short-history-of-travel-writing/ […]

Friday 20th of February 2015

Your article is absolutely fascinating Nineke. I came across it whilst researchign a talk I'm giving on the 'Pleasure of Travel Writing' and will certainly recommend it to the audience :-)

Wednesday 25th of February 2015

Thanks so much Zoë! Would have loved to see your talk, will it be online somewhere? Thanks for mentioning me!

LifeInCamelot

Wednesday 6th of February 2013

I enjoyed reading this and am glad I have found you. Welcome to Australia and I look forward to reading more of your stories. I have started my own travel blog - it includes some travelogues (from the past) and some travel stories. I enjoy using humour so love reading other people's sites that are humourous. I also love the feeling of nostalgia your blog has, along with the history of your grandfather.

My blog address is - www.lifeincamelot.wordpress.com

thetraveltester

Hi (sorry couldn't find your name anywhere?), Thanks for your nice comment. I've just left Australia after 2 years and loved living there. Now it's adjusting to (coldcold) Europe :) I am looking forward to reading your blog, thanks for the tip!

Why Travel Writing Matters

An excerpt from “The Elasticity of Place”

In the Fall 2017 issue of The Chattahoochee Review

By Rolf Potts

First of all, what is travel writing? And why is travel writing important right now?

Travel writing is important because it humanizes distant places. Unlike standard journalism, it doesn’t pretend to detached objectivity, and it doesn’t follow the panic-driven war/disaster tropes of the twenty-four hour news cycle. Instead, it uses a personal lens to delve into the nuanced realities of daily life away from home, finding human commonalities as it explores cultural differences.

Much travel writing doesn’t live up to that ideal, of course. Some travel writing inevitably veers into self-absorption or dumb generalizations when it encounters other cultures. And much of what is characterized as “travel writing” these days is essentially consumer information for vacationers — where to go, how to get there, what to see and do and buy when you get there. That’s fine, I suppose — most travelers benefit from authoritative guidance and tips — but the best travel writing is a tentative inquiry into other places, one that seeks understanding and insight while being of aware of its own limited point-of-view. Like all good literature, its nuanced specifics speak to universal themes.

But backing up to the big-picture level for a moment, one could ask the question: What isn’t travel writing? Indeed, one of the most enduring human narratives — one that predates literacy — is the story of the wanderer who leaves home, encounters the challenges of the unknown, and returns to tell the tale. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the imaginative fictions set in Oz, Narnia, or Westeros, travel has always been a literary mechanism that incites struggle and learning and change.

As for fact-based travel writing, many of the tropes we still associate with the genre go back at least to Herodotus’s Histories , which used on-the-ground inquiry and reportage in an effort to make (admittedly imperfect) sense of Near Eastern cultures for a Greek audience. For more than two thousand years — from Zhang Qian and Ibn Battuta to the far-flung wanderers of the British Empire — the implied task of travel writing was to describe the customs and idiosyncrasies of faraway people and places. Travel writing was a key source of information about the outside world, and it influenced not just exploration, science, and commerce — it also influenced the history of ideas and literature. It’s easy to see the influence of travel writing on Don Quixote or Robinson Crusoe , but its DNA can also be found in The Faerie Queene and The Tempest and the King James translation of the Bible (which contains evocations of Eden that mirror John Layfield’s descriptions of Dominica).

By the nineteenth century, as railroads and steamships and telegrams were shrinking the world and making it more knowable, the mission of travel writing slowly began to shift into a more personal direction. Over time, scientific description of distant cultures was less essential than the author’s first-person account of traveling within those cultures. Alexander Kinglake, Mark Twain, and Isabella Bird popularized this narrative approach near the end of the nineteenth century — and by the end of the twentieth century the most popular travel books blended first-person reportage with a memoiristic evocation of the traveler’s inner life.

Literary travel writing still resides in the overlap of reportage and memoir, and some of the most memorable travel writing (think Jan Morris , Pico Iyer , Orhan Pamuk) isn’t about the act of physical motion so much as the task of making sense of a single place, or reflecting on the complexity of human experience amid a world in flux. In a time when academic disciplines are hyper-specialized and foreign correspondents fixate on wars and crises, travel writers are allowed to digress, to take things slow, and use a variety of interpretive lenses. A good travel book doesn’t just mix reportage and memoir; it might blend geography with gastronomy, history with humor, sociology with spirituality. At its best, it’s about a perceptive author using a mix of narrative strategies to make sense of both a place and of herself as the person experiencing that place.

Travel writing used to be more of a colonizing genre: A representative of the dominant world culture would go off to a distant and exotic land, and then come back to report how fascination the place was for its difference. So even if its importance has slowly become more of a personal response to a place or culture, this response may still contain a strong element of cultural judgment. This may come across as a positive judgment, say, when a travel writer only has positive things to say about a culture they describe as charming, while they take a surface view of the people they describe. Have you ever worried in your own work that you were guilty of writing about a place before you knew it well enough? How do travel writers get around the fact that they are essentially visitors, but claim some kind of authority over a place by writing about it?

I think every travel writer worries about trying to depict a place without knowing it properly. I know I do — and I’d be suspicious of any travel writer who didn’t struggle with this process.

This issue has, in fact, become somewhat of an in-joke among travel writers over the years. When D.H. Lawrence visited Florence in 1921, Norman Douglas poked fun at him for the fact that he was “vehemently and exhaustively describing the temperament of the people” within a few days of arriving there. Two decades later, when George Orwell reviewed Henry Miller’s Colossus of Maroussi , he quipped that it bore “all the normal stigmata of the travel book, the fake intensities, the tendency to discover the ‘soul’ of a town after spending two hours in it.” The best anecdote in this regard comes from nineteenth-century philosopher Herbert Spencer, who wrote about a French traveler who was ready to write a book about England three weeks into his visit. Three months later, the Frenchman decided he wasn’t ready yet — and after three years he determined that he had no authority whatsoever to write a book about England.

Of course nobody ever knows a place “well enough” to write about it with ironclad authority. This includes historians, anthropologists, and the people living there. Orhan Pamuk’s book about his hometown, Istanbul , has been hailed as a masterpiece, but I’d imagine his own neighbors might take issue with his sour, sentimental, cerebral take on their city. Pamuk, a novelist and academic, tends to view his city through the lens of art and literature, whereas a Turkish butcher or banker or beautician might view the city in a completely different way. My 1999 take on Istanbul, “ Turkish Knockout ,” which recounts getting drugged and robbed in the city’s well-visited Sultanahmet district, is inseparable from the fact that I was utterly ignorant of the city when I arrived there. On reading it, one doesn’t learn much about Istanbul in the socio-historical sense, but it does evoke what one part of the city was like for a certain overconfident American tourist.

A lot of my early travel writing explored the tentative, liminal space we occupy as travelers. “Turkish Knockout” appears in my 2008 book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There , alongside more lighthearted tales like “ Storming The Beach ,” which is set in Thailand, and “ Tantric Sex For Dilettantes ,” which is set in India. These humor stories are less focused on the essential nature of Thailand or India than in unpacking the overwrought fantasies we project onto these places. Both stories end with a realization of my own boneheaded naiveté — and while other stories in the book go further to depict the local people I connected with as a traveler, I always tried to make it clear that my perspective was less than perfect. As a writer I am not speaking for these places so much as I am recounting the ephemeral experiences of one specific middle-class American male in certain corners of these places, visiting at certain times of the year, in a certain moment in history. I might bring in research — history, literature, reportage — to help make sense of my experiences (as most travel writers do), but I make no claim to be authoritative.

The implicit acknowledgment that a traveler is always operating from a specific personal-cultural point-of-view has always been central to travel writing. Herodotus’s Histories purport to describe other lands and cultures, for instance, but the author continually reminds the reader of his own reportorial doubts and limitations. Moreover, it’s clear that he is describing the customs and routines of non-Greek cultures (their gender relations, culinary practices, toilet protocols) with a Greek sensibility, for a Greek audience. In this way Histories reveals as much or more about ancient Greece as it does the places it describes. So, for as long as it has been around, travel writing invariably uses one cultural point-of-view to make sense of another, and any account (ancient or modern, colonial or postcolonial) that pretends to objectivity is clearly blind to the inevitability of its own biases and preconceptions.

It’s interesting to consider that the notion of “journalistic objectivity” arose in the nineteenth century, around the same time that (in countries like Britain) some forms of travel writing were being used as a literal pretext for colonizing other cultures. I don’t want to dismiss journalistic objectivity with too broad a brush — the idea was to promote more ethical, empirical reporting — but when you travel to distant lands and omit the “I” from the account of what you saw, it implies an objective authority that doesn’t exist in the real world. Part of the push to make foreign reportage more objective was pegged to the excesses of Romantic-era travel writing — which proved that impressionistic reverie could be just as unreliable as subjective fact-gathering when trying to depict other places. So that’s the tricky ground a travel writer must navigate — including enough of the “I” to orient the reader with her subjectivity, while being disciplined enough to move beyond the “I” and report meaningfully about people who in the places she is visiting.

In the twenty-first century we no longer need travel writing to teach us about other places — especially when the people who live in those places are documenting their lives in real-time, with videos, social-media posts, and personal essays of their own. But travel writing was never really about pure reportage; it has always existed in the vicarious tension of what a writer from one culture experiences (and attempts to comprehend) when visiting another. Admitting to confusion and discomfort and naïve excitement isn’t just what makes travel writing entertaining and relatable to the home audience; the very authority of a travel narrative (unlike the big-picture sweep of narrative history or social science) lies in the self-declared limitations of its own first-person perspective.

Aside from the issues we’ve already discussed, what should aspiring travel writers of the next generation keep in mind?

I think the core task of travel writing — going slow, experiencing, listening, seeking nuance, reflecting — hasn’t changed much, and won’t change all that much in the future. Often travel writing is a matter of getting past your preconceptions and being thoughtful and honest about what you experience. This naturally applies to getting past crude cultural stereotypes, but it also means avoiding performative sensitivity and the over-idealization of other cultures. And, as I’ve suggested before, narrative point-of-view counts: Remind the reader not just of what’s being experienced and reported, but also of who is experiencing and reporting it.

The full text of this literary round-table, which also includes insights from  Eddy L. Harris and Alden Jones , can be found in the Fall 2017 issue of the Chattahoochee Review .

More from RolfPotts.com

• ← Travel Writer: Rowan Moore Gerety
• 3 More Thoughts on the Importance of Remembering Your Audience →

• Artificial Intelligence
• Generative AI
• Business Operations
• Cloud Computing
• Data Center
• Data Management
• Emerging Technology
• Enterprise Applications
• IT Leadership
• Digital Transformation
• IT Strategy
• IT Management
• Diversity and Inclusion
• IT Operations
• Project Management
• Software Development
• Vendors and Providers
• Enterprise Buyer’s Guides
• United States
• Middle East
• España (Spain)
• Italia (Italy)
• Netherlands
• United Kingdom
• New Zealand
• Data Analytics & AI
• Newsletters
• Foundry Careers
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Member Preferences
• About AdChoices
• Your California Privacy Rights

Our Network

• Computerworld
• Network World

IT leaders go small for purpose-built AI

Companies don’t need to adopt large language models to get real benefits from ai, some experts say..

When adopting AI, sometimes the best direction is to go small. That’s what a number of IT leaders are learning of late, as the AI market and enterprise AI strategies continue to evolve.

During the new AI revolution of the past year and a half, many companies have experimented with and developed solutions with large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 via Azure OpenAI, while weighing the merits of digital assistants like Microsoft Copilot. But purpose-built small language models (SLMs) and other AI technologies also have their place, IT leaders are finding, with benefits such as fewer hallucinations and a lower cost to deploy.

Microsoft and Apple are seeing the potential for small AIs, with Microsoft rolling out its Phi-3 small language models in April, and Apple releasing eight small language models, for use on handheld devices, in the same month.

SLMs and other traditional non-LLM AI technologies have many applications, particularly for organizations with specialized needs, says Dave Bullock, CTO at UJET, a contact-center-as-a-service provider experimenting with small language model AIs. SLMs can be trained to serve a specific function with a limited data set, giving organizations complete control over how the data is used.

Low barriers to entry

Better yet, the cost to try a small language model AI is close to zero, as opposed to monthly licensing costs for an LLM or spending millions of dollars to build your own, Bullock says.

Hugging Face offers dozens of open-source and free-to-use AIs that companies can tune for their specific needs, using GPUs they already have or renting GPU power from a provider. While AI expertise in LLMs is still rare, most software engineers can use readily available resources to train or tune their own small language models, he says.

“You might already have a GPU in your video game machine, or you want to just spin up some GPUs in the cloud, and just have them long enough to train,” he says. “It could be a very, very low barrier to entry.”

Insight Enterprises, a technology solutions integrator, sees about 90% of its clients using LLMs for their AI projects, but a trend toward smaller, more specialized models is coming, says Carm Taglienti, CTO and chief data officer at the company.

Taglienti recommends LLMs to clients that want to experiment with AI, but in some cases, he recommends classic AI tools for specific tasks. LLMs are good for tasks such as summarizing documents or creating marketing material but are often more difficult and expensive to tune for niche use cases than small AIs, he says.

“If you’re using AI for a very targeted set of tasks, you can test to ensure that those tasks are executed properly, and then you don’t really worry too much about the fact that it can’t do something like create a recipe for souffle,” he says.

Sometimes, ML is all you need 

A small AI approach has worked for Dayforce, a human capital management software vendor, says David Lloyd, chief data and AI officer at the company.

Dayforce uses AI and related technologies for several functions, with machine learning helping to match employees at client companies to career coaches. Dayforce also uses traditional machine learning to identify employees at client companies who may be thinking about leaving their jobs, so that the clients can intervene to keep them.

Not only are smaller models easier to train, but they also give Dayforce a high level of control over the data they use, a critical need when dealing with employee information, Lloyd says.

When looking at the risk of an employee quitting, for example, the machine learning tools developed by Dayforce look at factors such as the employee’s performance over time and the number of performance increases received.

“When modeling that across your entire employee base, looking at the movement of employees, that doesn’t require generative AI, in fact, generative would fail miserably,” he says. “At that point you’re really looking at things like a recurrent neural network, where you’re looking at the history over time.”

A generative AI may be good for screening resumes, but once the recruiting process starts, a traditional machine learning model works better to assist recruiters, Lloyd adds. Dayforce uses a human-reinforced ML process to assist recruiters.

“This concept of bigger is better is, in my view, false,” he says. “When you look at the smaller models for the generative side, you have very good specialty models. You can look at some that are good for language translation, others that are very strong on math, and ours, which is very strong on human capital management.”

Building AI for your needs

HomeZada, provider of digital home management tools, is another convert to a purpose-built approach to AI. The company has licensed an LLM, but since June, it has also built seven proprietary AI functions to help homeowners manage costs and other issues associated with their properties.

HomeZada’s Homeowner AI functionality is integrated with the larger digital home management platform, says John Bodrozic, co-founder and CIO at the company. HomeZada uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) alongside external, proprietary, and user data to improve the accuracy and reliability of its licensed LLM.

Using an LLM without any tweaks results in generic answers about the value of a home or the cost of a bathroom remodeling project, Bodrozic says. “By itself, it does not provide a deep personalization for every unique homeowner on the platform, thus it is not specific enough to provide real value,” he says. “Consumers demand expertise specificity that considers their home and location.”

For example, Homeowner AI creates budgets for home improvement projects, based on location, materials used, and other factors. The AI tool enables homeowners to document home and personal asset inventories using photographs, and it can diagnose repair and home improvement issues in real time. Homeowner AI can also send users weather alerts based on their locations, and it can assess climate disaster risk.

Bodrozic considers RAG as a happy midpoint between building or training a small AI and using an LLM by itself. An LLM may provide an answer to any of a million prompts in milliseconds, but the RAG-enhanced Homeowner AI doesn’t need to be as fast, nor does it need to be an expert in all things.

“We’re not big enough, nor do we need to build our own AI tool for a homeowner, because it doesn’t need to be real time like that,” he says. “Does the user need the response over how much my bathroom remodel is going to cost in milliseconds? No, they can wait 30 seconds.”

The right tool for the job

CIOs and chief data officers at companies trying to decide what size of AI they need should ask themselves several questions before jumping in, Bodrozic says. Response time, cost, data privacy, and specialized needs are some considerations.

“You really need to sort of figure out the context of domain of who is going to use your AI, where are you are going to use the AI,” he adds. “Is there a unique set of data versus a massive set of data?”

He suggests that CIOs and CDOs run short experiments with an AI to see whether it fits their needs. Too often, companies launch a six-month AI project and spend significant time and resources on something that ultimately doesn’t work.

“To start, you need to run a test for one day,” he says. “Instead of having a 50-person committee all trying to have input on this thing, create a five- or 10-person committee that can do rapid tests over the course of three weeks.”

With the current AI craze, Dayforce’s Lloyd sees a rush to adopt AI when it may not be the right solution. CIOs first need to identify a problem that AI can fix.

“I don’t think companies actually ask themselves, when they look at the problems they’re trying to solve, whether AI is even applicable,” he says. “I can open a bottle with a wrench, but that’s not necessarily the best approach.”

Related content

How hendrick motorsports wins with z by hp, salesforce debuts gen ai benchmark for crm, three ways ai is raising the stakes around endpoint security, dell recently announced the dell ai factory. here’s what you should know., from our editors straight to your inbox.

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time technology journalist. He previously served as Washington correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

More from this author

Generative ai’s killer enterprise app just might be erp, deepfakes: coming soon to a company near you, unauthorized ai is eating your company data, thanks to your employees, most popular authors.

Show me more

The 7 sins of user support.

Pfeiffer Report: AI supercharges enterprise knowledge work

Navigating the ethical and legal risks of AI implementation

CIO Leadership Live Australia with Stevie-Ann Dovico, Chief Information Officer at Beyond Bank

CIO Leadership Live NZ with Lena Jenkins, Chief Digital Officer, Waste Management NZ

Northwestern Mutual’s CIO Jeff Sippel on productivity gains with AI

Asimily monitors IoT landscape, tracks vulnerabilities

UAE CISOs: Key priorities unveiled

Sponsored Links

• Visibility, monitoring, analytics. See Cisco SD-WAN in a live demo.
• The cloud shouldn’t be complicated. Unlock its potential with SAS.
• Everyone’s moving to the cloud. Are they realizing expected value?
• Everybody's ready for AI except your data. Unlock the power of AI with Informatica

Log in using your username and password

• Search More Search for this keyword Advanced search
• Latest content
• Current issue
• BMJ Journals More You are viewing from: Google Indexer

You are here

• Online First
• Association between COVID-19 vaccination and menstruation: a state of the science review
• Article Text
• Article info
• Citation Tools
• Rapid Responses
• Article metrics

• http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5999-9101 Laura A Payne 1 , 2 ,
• Lauren A Wise 3 ,
• Amelia K Wesselink 3 ,
• Siwen Wang 4 ,
• Stacey A Missmer 2 , 4 , 5 ,
• Alison Edelman 6
• 1 McLean Hospital , Belmont , Massachusetts , USA
• 2 Harvard Medical School , Boston , Massachusetts , USA
• 3 Boston University School of Public Health , Boston , Massachusetts , USA
• 4 Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health , Boston , Massachusetts , USA
• 5 Michigan State University , East Lansing , Michigan , USA
• 6 Oregon Health & Science University , Portland , Oregon , USA
• Correspondence to Dr Laura A Payne, McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, USA; LPayne{at}mclean.harvard.edu

Introduction Menstrual health is a key patient-reported outcome beyond its importance as a general indicator of health and fertility. However, menstrual function was not measured in the clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines. The purpose of this review was to synthesise the existing literature on the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual health outcomes.

Methods A PubMed search to 31 October 2023 identified a total of 53 publications: 11 prospective cohort studies, 11 retrospective cohort studies or registry-based cohort studies, and 31 cross-sectional or retrospective case–control studies.

Results Identified studies were generally at moderate-to-high risk of bias due to retrospective design, interviewer bias, and failure to include a non-vaccinated control group. Nonetheless, the bulk of the literature demonstrates that COVID-19 vaccine is associated with temporary changes in menstrual characteristics (cycle length and flow) and menstrual pain. Follicular phase (at the time of vaccination) is associated with greater increases in cycle length. Evidence suggests temporary post-vaccine menstrual changes in adolescents, abnormal vaginal bleeding in postmenopausal individuals, and a potential protective effect of using hormonal contraception.

Conclusions In this review we found evidence supporting an association between the COVID-19 vaccine and menstrual health outcomes. Given the importance of menstrual function to overall health, we recommend that all future vaccine trials include menstruation as a study outcome. Future vaccine studies should include rigorous assessment of the menstrual cycle as an outcome variable to limit sources of bias, identify biological mechanisms, and elucidate the impact of stress.

• Reproductive Health

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsrh-2024-202274

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request permissions.

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ON THIS TOPIC

Menstrual health data were not collected as part of the clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccines, and anecdotal reports of menstrual cycle changes after vaccination encouraged independent research to evaluate these outcomes. Individual research studies have evaluated this question, but data have not been summarized in a comprehensive review.

WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS

We found that most published studies reflected a moderate or high risk of bias due to methodological issues. However, the existing data suggest temporary changes in menstrual cycle length, flow and menstrual pain following COVID-19 vaccination.

HOW THIS STUDY MIGHT AFFECT RESEARCH, PRACTICE, OR POLICY

This review suggests the importance of measuring and monitoring the menstrual cycle as a key outcome in future vaccine clinical trials and may also be used to counsel individuals about potential menstrual changes following COVID-19 vaccination.

Introduction

Half the population will experience menstruation at some point in their lives. Among individuals with a uterus, menstruation occurs for approximately 5–7 days each month for 40 years. Menstrual health, whether characterised in terms of cycle length, days of flow, volume/intensity of flow, regularity or associated symptoms, is a key patient-reported outcome beyond its importance as a general indicator of health and fertility. Menstrual health outcomes are not routinely included in clinical trials and have not been a consideration for vaccine trials. 1–4 Numerous reports of menstrual disturbances following COVID-19 vaccination, the complete absence of evidence, and the lack of attention to this sex-specific issue contributes to vaccine hesitancy, causes public mistrust, and directly impacts preventable morbidity and mortality (see online supplemental file 1 ). 5–10 The purpose of this review was to summarise the existing evidence on the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual health.

Supplemental material

To identify potentially relevant publications, we used the following search terms in PubMed to identify articles published on or before 31 October 2023: ‘COVID-19’, ‘vaccination’, ‘vaccine’, ‘menstruation’, ‘menses’ and ‘menstrual changes’. After excluding case series or case reports and publications based solely on postmenopausal individuals, we identified a total of 53 publications: 11 prospective cohort studies, 11 retrospective cohort studies or registry-based cohort studies, and 31 cross-sectional or retrospective case–control studies. These papers were then rated by the co-authors and a research staff member for risk of bias using the ROBINS-E tool, which provides a structured method for evaluating risk of bias in non-randomised epidemiological studies. 11 Authors of any of the included papers were not involved in the risk assessment of these papers. In the results, we have highlighted key studies while summarising the evidence. Additionally, we provide study details for the identified prospective and retrospective cohort studies or registry-based cohort studies in tables 1 and 2 , respectively. Study details for cross-sectional studies or retrospective case–control studies are presented in online supplemental file 2 .

• View inline

Prospective cohort studies of premenopausal individuals

Retrospective cohort studies or registry-based cohort studies of premenopausal individuals

Cycle length

Cycle length is a distinct measurement defined as the time period from the first day of the last menstrual period until the day before the next menses starts. The bulk of research on COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual health has been focused on cycle length as it is a well-defined and, often, routinely tracked outcome. Formal passive reporting systems and public reports described both longer and shorter cycle lengths in the cycle during which COVID-19 vaccination occurs. 12 13 The first prospective study to identify an association between COVID-19 vaccination and temporary alterations to menstrual cycle length was a retrospective cohort study of prospectively tracked menstrual cycles in approximately 4000 US-based individuals. 14 The study utilised de-identified period tracking data from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared menstrual tracking application Natural Cycles to compare cycle length differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The population analysed had to be not recently pregnant, naturally cycling (no use of hormones) and demonstrate normal menstrual cycle length pre-vaccination. As compared with the unvaccinated control group, vaccinated individuals experienced a slightly longer cycle of less than 1 day after vaccination. A subsequent study broadening the population to include individuals outside the United States confirmed the findings with data from nearly 20 000 individuals and additionally found that for most individuals the increase in cycle length resolved in the cycle following vaccination. 15

Although the average cycle length change observed in these population analyses was small, there were individuals in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups who experienced a greater magnitude of change. Of the total, 1342 participants experienced a change in cycle length of eight or more days, comprising 6.2% of vaccinated individuals and 5.0% of unvaccinated individuals. Individuals who were younger and who had a longer cycle length before vaccination were more likely to experience the increase. This study also found no difference in the type of COVID vaccine (eg, mRNA, attenuated virus, etc.) and no change in menstrual cycle length (eg, days of bleeding).

With regard to menstrual cycle phase at the time of vaccination, one retrospective cohort study of individuals using a menstrual tracking application demonstrated that individuals who received vaccine in the follicular phase were more likely to experience a cycle length disturbance then those who received vaccine in the luteal phase. 16 This study was not designed to determine causation as it did not include a control group or use a validated ovulation date.

Much less is known about the extent to which adolescent girls experience menstrual cycle changes following COVID-19 vaccination – likely given the greater difficulties in studying this vulnerable population. One study included 39 adolescent girls (aged 12–16 years) and assessed menstrual regularity following vaccination. Although this study did not include a control group, the data showed that eight girls (of the 23 with pre-vaccine regular cycles) reported some kind of menstrual irregularity 3 months post-vaccination. 17 A separate study in Norway asked mothers of both vaccinated and unvaccinated adolescent girls to retrospectively report any menstrual cycle disturbances in their daughters. 18 The data showed mothers reported more menstrual disturbances (shorter and longer cycles, increased pain, and increased heavy bleeding) in the girls who had been vaccinated compared with those who were not, although the authors mentioned that menstrual disturbances were common in both groups.

The published literature has continued to demonstrate that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with a slightly longer average cycle length among reproductive-aged individuals who prior to vaccination had regular cycles. 16 19–22 We now know the COVID-19 vaccine is associated with changes in cycle length, at least in adult populations, and although a small change in menstrual cycle length may not be meaningful to healthcare professionals and researchers as it does not signify the need for a clinical workup or intervention, the significance of this body of research is that unanticipated, even small disturbances for a key patient outcome like menstrual health can trigger an exponential rise in concerns, as has been the case with the COVID-19 vaccine.

Cycle irregularity/missed periods/intermenstrual bleeding

Studies investigating altered menstrual patterns (ie, missed periods, intermenstrual bleeding and cycle irregularity) remain sparse. These outcomes, specifically missed periods and cycle irregularity, overlap somewhat with one another and with cycle length outcomes and may be viewed and defined differently by patients and the scientific community. Intermenstrual bleeding is more straightforward to define, any bleeding that occurs outside of menses, but the data have not been available prospectively or have been inconsistently tracked by patients. Just three prospective cohort studies in the United States and the UK have reported on pre- and post-vaccination menstrual cycle characteristics; all concluded that COVID-19 vaccination was not associated with a change in menstrual regularity. 21–23 Additionally, one Swedish national register-based cohort study found that COVID-19 vaccinations were not associated with incident menstrual cycle irregularity that was “at least of sufficient concern to warrant seeking medical care” among premenopausal women. 24

The evidence is less clear regarding any impact of COVID-19 vaccination on other bleeding disorders. Evidence from any longitudinal studies is absent. We found seven cross-sectional surveys of individuals reporting missed periods and intermenstrual bleeding after receiving COVID-19 vaccination (especially in subsequent and booster doses compared with the first dose). 25–31 However, none of the studies was able to ascertain the extent to which these findings were attributable to a natural menstrual variation, selection bias, or causally affected by the vaccines given the cross-sectional study design.

At the present time, the current evidence is insufficient to determine if COVID-19 vaccination is associated with cycle irregularity or other altered menstrual patterns.

Flow effects/bleeding intensity, quantity and duration

Menstrual flow is truly a patient-oriented outcome where the patient determines what is heavy or light; thus any reported change from an individual’s baseline is the outcome of interest. 32 Reported menstrual flow effects around COVID-19 vaccination have been mainly retrospectively collected but duration of menses or number of bleeding days have been more available prospectively as they are tracked routinely by individuals and are a main data point captured by menstrual tracking applications.

A large-scale investigation of 9555 menstruating individuals (7401 vaccinated and 2154 unvaccinated) who tracked menstrual cycles using an app found no differences in number of heavy bleeding days, although vaccinated individuals did report greater total bleeding quantity in the cycle when the vaccine was received. 33 Other studies have found no significant changes in self-reported menstrual flow in a large prospective and retrospective sample of women 19 and no differences in relative risk of reporting “heavier” or “lighter” periods in those vaccinated compared with those who were not. 34 Similar self-report studies have found no differences in menstrual flow following vaccination. 35 However, contradictory findings have also been published suggesting there are changes to menstrual flow following vaccination, with many participants reporting “heavier” menstrual flow. 12 36 37 These findings also have support from research demonstrating changes to menstrual flow following vaccination, 31 38 although there have also been a mix of reported changes including “heavier” and “lighter” flow. 39 Despite these mixed findings, the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) determined that “heavy flow” be included as a potential vaccine side effect, given the strength of the evidence supporting this outcome, and Pfizer and Moderna product information has now added this as a possible side effect. 40

Menstrual pain and endometriosis

Menstrual pain is a self-reported outcome measure, defined as pain and discomfort in and around the pelvic region that begins with the onset of menstruation. Data on menstrual pain and COVID-19 vaccination are limited, although existing studies do suggest increased menstrual pain after COVID-19 vaccination, affecting around 20–40% of menstruating people after vaccination; estimated prevalence was similar after both the first and second vaccination dose. 28 41–43 Heterogeneity by type of vaccination in relation to post-vaccination menstrual pain experience remains inconclusive. 39 41 However, a longitudinal study that included pre-pandemic and pre-vaccination follow-up data did not observe that menstrual cycle pain complaints varied appreciably according to vaccination status. 22 Importantly, post-vaccination change in menstrual pain could also be attributed to background variability in menstrual pain driven by, for example, between-cycle fluctuations, age-related menstrual changes or pandemic-related stress. 44 Unlike menstrual length and regularity, menstrual pain and other menstruation-related symptoms can be perceived differently when reported in real time versus recalled and influenced by the format of questions, increasing the risk of misclassification or recall bias.

One of the most common medical conditions associated with menstrual pain is endometriosis. Endometriosis is a disease where the lining of the uterus (the endometrium) grows outside of the uterus. Endometriosis is associated with other painful conditions including dyspareunia, dysuria and dyschezia, and can be a source of chronic pelvic pain. It is associated with inflammatory processes, and thus, individuals with endometriosis may be particularly susceptible to effects from the COVID-19 vaccine. Emerging research suggests that people with endometriosis immunised with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines perceived worsening menstrual cycle abnormalities – namely fatigue, pain and regularity disorders – compared with those without a history of endometriosis. 43 45 Among people with endometriosis, those taking hormonal treatment reported less change in menstrual-associated symptoms, 43 suggesting a possible protective or stabilising effect of oestrogen or progesterone. Notably, in these studies, endometriosis was confirmed by either transvaginal sonography or by hospital record, so it is not clear if participants received surgical confirmation of endometriosis at any point, which is the gold standard for diagnosis.

Postmenopausal individuals

The diagnosis of menopause is quite clear, diagnosed 12 months after an individual’s last period. Although one small study of 64 postmenopausal Lebanese women found no evidence of vaginal bleeding following receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine, 46 many larger studies examining population data have found evidence of a slightly increased risk of bleeding in postmenopausal women. In an examination of clinical records of 485 644 postmenopausal women, there was a small but statistically significant increase in the likelihood of receiving an abnormal bleeding diagnostic code in the 16 weeks following COVID-19 vaccination. 47 However, the authors note that this temporary increase was so small that it translated to fewer than 1 in 1000 women experiencing this change. Another study of over 1.5 million Swedish postmenopausal women also reported a small but significantly increased risk of bleeding, particularly after receiving a third dose of the vaccine. 24 An evaluation of reports of COVID-19 vaccine side effects to “v-safe” – an independent and voluntary vaccine monitoring system for individuals in the United States – found that approximately 4% of the 84 943 responses of menstrual disturbances reported postmenopausal bleeding. 48 Additionally, a supplementary analysis of 14 577 Danish self-reported postmenopausal women showed 2% (n=347) reported some “menstrual changes” following vaccination. 49 Postmenopausal women, by definition, are not menstruating, although the authors did not clarify the specific “menstrual” changes reported by postmenopausal women. Taken together, it does appear that many postmenopausal individuals experienced some abnormal vaginal bleeding following COVID-19 vaccination and this information is critically important information for this population to know when considering the potential side effects of the COVID-19 vaccination.

Hormonal contraception users

Hormonal contraception encompasses a wide range of methods, method delivery systems and dosing, and can contain only progestogen or oestrogen combined with a progestogen. The few studies that have specifically evaluated the impact of hormonal contraception on menstrual cycle changes following COVID-19 vaccination have suggested that hormonal use has a protective effect against changes to the menstrual cycle but not all studies are able to differentiate between different methods.

One large study including prospective and retrospectively collected self-report data found a delay in the menstrual period following vaccination of 0.37 days, which was a smaller delay than in those not using hormonal contraception. There were no significant changes to menstrual flow following vaccination in those using hormonal contraception generally; although when type of hormone was analysed separately, those using progesterone-only hormones reported heavier flow following vaccination. 19 A separate study also reported heavier menstrual flow post-vaccine among those using hormonal contraception, although type of hormonal contraceptive was not analysed separately. Those using hormonal treatments also reported more breakthrough bleeding. 12 However, one additional study reported fewer menstrual cycle changes and less bleeding changes following each of the first and second dose vaccinations in those using hormonal contraceptives compared with those who were not. 43

The term “stress” is a broad and wide-ranging term that encompasses a number of areas related to psychological distress, worry or concern. 50 Many different measures can reflect different aspects of stress including depression, anxiety, perceived stress and COVID-19 pandemic-related stress. There have been mixed results with regard to the impact of psychological stress on menstrual disturbances following receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine. Wang and colleagues reported that adult vaccinated women had a higher risk of increased cycle length compared with unvaccinated women, and this finding persisted after accounting for pandemic-related stress, which was assessed as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, perceived stress and worry about COVID-19. 21 Similarly, another study found no relationship between perceived stress and vaccination status or menstrual cycle characteristics. 22 However, another study found that changes in menstrual cycle characteristics were correlated with symptoms of depression, suggesting that the menstrual cycle effects of the vaccine may be related to changes in mood. 51 However, these inconsistent findings may result from different assessments of stress and how those measures related to changes in the menstrual cycle.

Long/short pre-vaccination cycles

Almost all of the research published to date is focused on individuals with regular pre-vaccination menstrual cycles. 32 The restriction of analyses to this ‘normal’ cycle population was by design, otherwise it would have been impossible to determine if an actual signal existed due to the vaccine. Individuals with baseline irregular cycles did report menstrual disturbances through official passive reporting systems (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS) and social media-based surveys. However, due to the inherent increased variability with irregular cycles, it will be a challenge to determine what changes are due to the vaccine.

Areas of future research

Optimisation of study design and risk of bias.

Cross-sectional and retrospective case–control studies, which select participants after both vaccination and menstrual changes have already occurred, are more prone to selection bias than prospective studies because selection is more likely to be dependent on both exposure and outcome. Another common concern about many studies is that participants were asked to report data on changes in menstruation in relation to vaccination, or participants were asked to provide data on vaccination and menstrual changes on the same questionnaire, both of which are likely to increase potential for spurious positive associations. The studies at lowest risk of bias are those that: (1) did not select participants in a way that depended on outcome status, (2) collected data prospectively in time (ie, vaccination data were collected before data on the occurrence of menstrual changes), (3) included a comparison group of non-vaccinated participants and (4) followed participants for at least two menstrual cycles to assess the extent to which menstrual changes persisted over time. Ideally, a study would use vaccine data on brand, dose and dates from a population vaccine registry (gold standard), but only a small subset of studies had access to vaccination records. Nevertheless, studies that collected data proximal in time to the occurrence of vaccination are likely to have reasonably valid exposure classification. Prospective cohort studies in which participants were asked to report any changes in menstruation attributed to vaccination should still be considered at relatively higher risk of bias. Overall, based on these criteria, there is a moderate-to-high risk of bias in the vast majority of published studies on this topic.

Biological mechanisms

While we still do not know the mechanism for vaccine-induced menstrual changes, in retrospect it is not surprising that temporary changes to the menstrual cycle could occur with vaccination. Prior evidence exists demonstrating that the reproductive and immune systems ‘cross-talk’, and a large body of literature has demonstrated the role of oestrogen receptors and their impact on immune function, 52 53 although the extent to which the reverse is true (ie, influence of immune responses on oestrogen) is not well documented. The menstrual cycle is orchestrated through the hypothalamic–pituitary–ovarian (HPO) axis with a series of well-timed hormonal events. 54 The follicular phase of the menstrual cycle or the first half of the menstrual cycle prior to ovulation is the portion of the cycle that is the most variable in its duration while the luteal phase is a consistent duration (typically 14 days). 55 It is quite plausible that both stress and inflammation would impact the balance of ovarian hormones that determine menstrual cyclicity. 56 Future research exploring these potential mechanisms is warranted.

This review has summarised the existing literature on the relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual cycle changes. Overall, data from published studies indicate small transient changes in menstrual cycle length (ie, longer cycle length) following vaccination. Additionally, there is some evidence that other menstrual characteristics such as menstrual pain, menstrual flow and intermenstrual bleeding also occur following vaccination. Less is known about how these effects impact unique populations, including postmenopausal individuals and adolescents, although the limited data available suggest that breakthrough bleeding or menstrual cycle changes, respectively, may occur. Data from several studies suggest estrogen-containing hormonal contraception may protect against changes, which may be due to combined hormonal contraception’s inherent, dominant effect on the endometrium or perhaps a unique oestrogen-inflammatory interaction. Additionally, preliminary evidence exists suggesting that menstrual cycle phase at the time of vaccination impacts the degree of menstrual changes, although much more research is needed in this area. The role of stress and long/short pre-vaccination cycles is much less clear due to the very limited data available.

Despite the range of studies included in this review, outcome measures varied from study to study, likely reflecting the lack of established measures for assessing menstrual characteristics or use of whatever data were available in attempts to try to answer the question. Although efforts have been made to provide guidelines for menstrual cycle outcome measures, 57 this remains a significant gap in menstrual-related research. Additionally, lack of standardised measures creates further obstacles for future clinical trials to evaluate and assess the impact of interventions on the menstrual cycle. The menstrual cycle is a significant indicator of women’s health outside of fertility and pregnancy, and the lack of attention to this critical health indicator suggests much work is still needed to address women’s health disparities ( Box 1 ).

Additional educational resources (Source)

Sharp GC, Fraser A, Sawyer G, et al . The COVID-19 pandemic and the menstrual cycle: research gaps and opportunities. Int J Epidemiol . 2022 Jun 13;51(3):691-700.doi: 10.1093/ije/dyab239

NIH COVID-19 website. https://covid19.nih.gov/news-and-stories/covid-19-vaccines-and-menstrual-cycle .

COVID-19 vaccination and menstruation. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1051

We now have a solid evidence base from data over the past 3 years demonstrating the impact of the COVID-19 vaccine on the menstrual cycle. However, it should be noted that the majority of these papers are published in obstetrics/gynaecology or low-impact health journals. The lack of publication of vaccine/menstrual cycle papers in general medical journals suggests that much of academic medicine does not see this information as important for public health. Unfortunately, many providers and members of the public may not learn about these results because of decreased visibility or availability of the published articles. General medical journals may want to reconsider publication priorities in light of the impact of women’s health outcomes on public health; given the paucity of evidence in the field, even a small or negative finding is important for both patients and providers. Going forward, we encourage the measurement and monitoring of menstrual health as a key outcome in future clinical trials.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

Not applicable.

Ethics approval

• Polack FP ,
• Thomas SJ ,
• Kitchin N , et al
• Vandebosch A , et al
• El Sahly HM ,
• Essink B , et al
• ↵ COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual cycle changes: a United Kingdom (UK) retrospective case-control study | medRxiv . 2022 . Available : https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.23.21266709v3
• Townsel C ,
• Wagner AL , et al
• ↵ Characterizing menstrual bleeding changes occurring after SARS-Cov-2 vaccination | medRxiv . 2021 Available : https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.11.21264863v1
• Stoeklé HC ,
• Sekkate S ,
• Angellier E , et al
• Hanley SJB ,
• Smith MA , et al
• Higgins JPT ,
• Morgan RL ,
• Rooney AA , et al
• Junkins EJ ,
• Luo C , et al
• Liu J , et al
• Edelman A ,
• Boniface ER ,
• Benhar E , et al
• Male V , et al
• Gibson EA ,
• Fruh V , et al
• Mohr-Sasson A ,
• Sivan M , et al
• Caspersen IH ,
• Feiring B , et al
• Alvergne A ,
• Chiang MR ,
• Lu CC , et al
• Mortazavi J ,
• Hart JE , et al
• Wesselink AK ,
• Lovett SM ,
• Weinberg J , et al
• Morant S , et al
• Sundström A , et al
• Komine-Aizawa S ,
• Takada K , et al
• Rodríguez Quejada L ,
• Toro Wills MF ,
• Martínez-Ávila MC , et al
• Muhaidat N ,
• Alshrouf MA ,
• Azzam MI , et al
• Farland LV ,
• Shilen A , et al
• Al-Furaydi A ,
• Alrobaish SA ,
• Al-Sowayan N
• Taşkaldıran I ,
• Vuraloğlu E ,
• Bozkuş Y , et al
• M M Al-Mehaisen L ,
• A Mahfouz I ,
• Khamaiseh K , et al
• Critchley HOD ,
• Fraser IS , et al
• Darney BG ,
• Van Lamsweerde A , et al
• Kountourides G ,
• Argentieri MA , et al
• Saleh Alzahrani H ,
• Ali Algashami S ,
• Abdulaziz Alharkan A , et al
• Qashqari FSI ,
• Dahlawi M ,
• Assaggaf HM , et al
• Junaid N , et al
• Nourelden AZ ,
• Assar A , et al
• Quansar R , et al
• Alahmadi AM ,
• Aljohani AH ,
• Fadhloun RA , et al
• Baena-García L ,
• Aparicio VA ,
• Molina-López A , et al
• Martínez-Zamora MÁ ,
• Gracia M , et al
• Sawyer G , et al
• Laster-Haim S ,
• Rottenstreich A , et al
• Aoun E , et al
• Suh-Burgmann EJ ,
• Tierney C ,
• Hung YY , et al
• Heilig CM ,
• Hause A , et al
• Bisgaard Jensen C ,
• Hansen SN , et al
• ↵ Stress . n.d. Available : https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/stress
• Barabás K ,
• Farkas N , et al
• Valsamakis G ,
• Chrousos G ,
• Mastorakos G
• Rahimi Mansour F ,
• Keyvanfar A ,
• Najafiarab H , et al
• Schmalenberger KM ,
• Tauseef HA ,
• Barone JC , et al
• Bouchard TP ,
• Schneider M ,
• Schmidt M , et al
• Duijster JW ,
• Schoep ME ,
• Nieboer TE , et al
• Dellino M ,
• Lamanna B ,
• Vinciguerra M , et al
• Hallberg E ,
• Sundström A ,
• Larsson M , et al
• Hasdemir PS ,
• Senol Akar S ,
• Goker A , et al
• Trogstad L ,
• Robertson AH , et al

Supplementary materials

Supplementary data.

This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

• Data supplement 1
• Data supplement 2

Competing interests LAP has served as a consultant for Bayer Healthcare and Mahana Therapeutics. LAW receives in-kind donations from Swiss Precision Diagnostics (home pregnancy tests) and fertility-tracking apps (Kindara) for primary data collection in PRESTO. LAW also receives consulting fees from the Gates Foundation and AbbVie, Inc. SAM has received institutional grants from AbbVie, Inc., National Institutes for Health (NIH), Department of Defense, and the Marriott Family Foundation and received honoraria from the University of British Colombia, WERF, Huilin Shanghai, and University of Kansas Medical Center. SAM has also received travel support from the Society for Reproductive Investigation, ESHRE 2022, FWGBD 2022, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ASRM 2022, LIDEA Registry, Taiwan Endometriosis Society, SEUD, and thr Japan Endometriosis Society. SAM has participated on advisory boards for AbbVie, Roche, Frontiers in Reproductive Health, Abbott, Human Reproduction, and LIDEA Registry. ABE received royalties from Up To Date.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.

Read the full text or download the PDF: