Three Travel Writers You Definitely Want To Read
By: Stephen Bailey
Tags: Travel Writing, Travel, Readers, Comment, Writer

Three Travel Writers You Definitely Want To Read

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When I started travelling, 14 years ago, I did it because of three people.

They inspired me, and convinced me that as soon as the opportunity came, I had to go — and not just go travel a little bit, but go on a really epic journey.

Those people were all travel writers. To me, they are the greatest travel writers of all time.

Now, I haven’t read Marco Polo. I haven’t read the writings of Columbus or of other famous travellers back in the previous centuries. But the ones I am talking about are contemporary legends in their field.

The first one is Paul Theroux. In the 1970s, Theroux travelled across the world by train, and wrote a book about those travels called The Great Railway Bazaar. There’s a wonderful line on the first page:

“I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.”

After this breakthrough book — which became one of the bestselling travel books of all time — he wrote about other adventures. He’s recently written one called Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, covering Africa by trains, buses and other overland means of transport.

What I love about Theroux’s writing is that he goes on such incredible adventures, but he never makes the story about himself. He makes the story about the train, about the people he meets on the train, about the places he goes to. He really pulls the readers into the story.

That’s why he’s one of the preeminent and most famous travel writers of our day.

Then, it’s impossible to talk about travel writers without mentioning Bruce Chatwin, who was responsible for one of those seminal works that got people excited thinking, “I can go on an adventure.”

His first big work was called In Patagonia, a book where he documents his travels and experiences around rural Patagonia. He’s got a much more laconic style. He uses fewer words, but it’s just as impressive in the way he presents a destination.

Another favorite of mine is Chatwin’s The Songlines, where he travels to Outback Australia, connecting with Aboriginal culture and some of the things that happen out there.

What I love about Chatwin is that he goes deeply into what’s going on. He’s not just passing through. He’s finding out what takes place and he takes the time to stop for two weeks to figure out what the story is, what the culture is, what he can learn there.

Patagonia is number one on my bucketlist. It has been for a long time, and I still hope I’m going to go there — and it’s all because initially I read a book by Bruce Chatwin about that region. He is a great inspiration.

The third author who inspired me is Michael Palin. You may know him as one of the Monty Python comedy group — but after Monte Python, Michael Palin became one of the first TV travel personalities in the world.

In the late eighties, he decided to be the star of a show where he tried to recreate the journey of the character Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days. So he went around the world in 80 days for television — long before travel TV shows started. And it was a big success.

Then he did a trip in the USSR, at the exact time when the Soviet Union collapsed. And he continued to go on trips.

Of course, he is a TV personality to start with. You will have seen him in loads of films. But he’s matured into a kind of venerable old gentleman who goes travelling. And he has a sense of mischief, and of complete surprise, that makes it seem that when he was playing in Monte Python he was just playing himself — he wasn’t playing any character. And that also comes across in his writing.

The trips Michael Palin goes on are inspiring because they are epic — the most epic being the Pacific Rim. Not content with travelling around the world in 80 days, he travelled the entire Pacific Rim — along the Pacific, from the tip of South America all the way up to Alaska, then across to the other side and all the way down the Pacific through Asia, then New Zealand.

And in his writing he tells it as an adventure. He tells it almost in a TV show style.

Theroux, Chatwin, Palin — these three are the writers that inspired me to go travelling. They were also the writers is that I initially tried to imitate in my own writing. They inspired me so much that I read them, went travelling and wanted to write about my travels as well. Because I wanted to narrate what happened, to be part of what they had done and to learn from them.

But I can’t finish this article without mentioning that preeminent travel book of all time, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. They say that’s the book that sent so many American kids on the road in the sixties.

I read it in this century, 40 years later, but it inspired me to go on the road, to leave without a plan, to just do it and figure out what will happen next.

Who inspires you to go travelling? Is it a TV personality, a YouTube influencer? Or is it a writer in a newspaper, in a book, in a magazine?

Please tell me about it in the comments, because I’m always looking for new inspiration.

By Stephen Bailey. Edited by Beatriz Becker.

For more insights and inspiration, check us out at Unorthodox Travel.