I got into travel writing accidentally: it’s not something I intended to do, but a series of circumstances happened which made me into a travel writer. But from the start, I found the genre lacking: it seemed controlled by narratives which were rife with exoticism, commercialism, and outdated perspectives. I realised there was room for lots of different approaches to travel writing, but I wondered what travel literature made up the backbone of the genre.
...A traveller by definition is a person far from home, and as such, is receptive to a never-ending stream of impressions roused by the strange. It started as a lark, a self-assigned challenge to combat boredom. I get antsy sitting around between trips. So I decided to reset my reality, or rather my perception of it, to venture out and rediscover my own city with the eyes, ears and nose of a deliberate stranger.
...It’s 1989, my brother’s fourth birthday. We all huddle together on Towan Beach, our backs against the autumn sea-gusts, and anoint him with headphones and a wired-up beeping stick. His present is a metal detector and we’re here to seek our fortune.
...The thunder and lightning crash so hard around my home it knocks paintings from the wall and tchotchkes to the floor. A wall of rain smashes down so thick I can’t see the road just metres from my front door, nor the community pool out back. I wait for the inevitable sound of sirens that follow these epic peals of skyscape fury — the majority of my town’s residents are elderly retirees; someone once had a heart attack from the noise.
...We present our panoramic vision of travel literature in our Spring ‘Open’ issue. A carefully curated collection of travel poetry, fiction, and memoir, the selections for the ‘Open’ issue invite readers into the landscape of the personal journey, and redefine what that can be.
...Less than 9km from Mount Vesuvius, near the entrance to Pompeii, a vendor sells bottles resembling penises. The corked bottles are red, white, blue, and yellow and painted with kissy faces or with sad or surprised expressions. Some simply read ‘Saluti de Pompeii’ (Regards from Pompeii) while written on others is ‘Ricordo de Pompeii’ (Remember Pompeii). The souvenir phalluses stand next to bottles cut in that iconic boot shape of Italy, while next door another vendor prepares mozzarella and tomato sandwiches.
...When I was a girl, I didn’t think much of road trips. For one thing, we just didn’t take them. The only real one we ever took as a family was when we moved to Georgia from Pennsylvania when I was five years old. I remember the tops of trees passing by as we drove down the East coast; I remember gas stations off highway exits, the sweet candy sticks sold at the counter at Cracker Barrel restaurants, the boredom that set in as we made the fourteen-hour trek from one city to another, new city. We wouldn’t take another epic road trip like that until ten years later, when my grandfather, passed away.
...When I quit smoking the night before we left, it felt like a joke. My first attempt, in Korea, had been cutting down to five a day, ‘easing’ out of it. Nearly a decade had passed since. But, this time there was to be no easing. Quitting smoking, I’d decided, would help with the budget.
...In July 1961 Grace Bumbry strode onstage at the Bayreuth Festival. She was 24, and had earned positive reviews at a few major opera houses up to that point. But her voice was special, and in singing to acclaim, first at Paris, then at Basel, she had captured the imagination of the innovative young director of Bayreuth. Bayreuth is a Richard Wagner festival. Or, rather, it is the Richard Wagner festival.
...In Spain, they are looking into neglected corners of the national psyche. They are rummaging their collective memory, retelling their history, prying into wounds that have never healed. They are looking for Lorca. They are sifting through testimony, weighing the words of dead men, reading a dark, hidden poem. They are looking on the hillside, near the olive tree, off the road between Alfacar and Viznar, where, in the dark before dawn of August 19, 1936, early in Spain’s Civil War, Lorca and another man were led out across the wet grass and executed—shot—by Franco’s Nationalists, then buried in an unmarked grave. Now, in Spain, they are turning up the earth where his bones should be; they are bringing the remains of the country’s great poet and playwright into the light at last.
...I sat alone in a cosy cabin perched atop a small hill on the banks of Nuuk fjord. Locals called it Ghost City because the sprawling view of the bay is obstructed from the other side of my hill. You’d never know there was something spectacular on the other side until you crossed over it. Dotted with four cabins enough to accommodate about sixteen people in total, the grounds were stark and quiet. I was the only guest.
...The shelves in the art deco bookshop are empty. We walk down to the malecón to bear witness to the slow erosion of the day as the metallic sky rusts into horizon. A man is lost in his tenor saxophone and the seawall mimics the meander of his instrument. Far out in deep waters white balloons bob upon the surf. Fishermen use government issued condoms as floats for their hooks, each one hoping for a useful catch, a thirty-pound carpenter shark, perhaps. Tarpon and barracuda are more likely.
...The first time I left Colombia, I was six. We were on our way to visit Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and our first stop was Miami. My dad had traveled to the U.S. before on business, but the experience was completely new for the rest of us. In the mid-eighties, the drug trading from Colombia was starting to become more prominent in the news, but still had not reached the full-blown proportion of the narcomania of the nineties. We had no idea of the dimensions of the cartels’ intimidation, no one imagined that airplanes would explode in mid-air, shopping malls would be bombed without mercy in major cities, and our society would produce an army of teenage hit men for whom a life was worth the same as a pair of imported American sneakers.
...Emma says home is where I am, and I say that my home is where she is. Sometimes, we joke that the spot she nuzzles into me, below my right armpit, is a magical place called Inglenook. We got that from the name of a wine we shared the first year we were together: My last name being Engels, which I pronounce as if it is “Ingles”, and nooks being what they are, it fit, as she seems to. Funny thing is we moved to North Carolina this year and the local supermarket here is called Ingles.
...The path is marked at regular intervals by plaques bearing the symbol of the journey, a scallop half-shell, set into walls and street signposts.
My own half-shell swung against my backpack, keeping my pace in a rhythmic whisper. The grooved lines of the shell represent countless paths that lead in scattered rays towards a single point of convergence. The image denotes the many individual interior pathways that lead to a shared center of spirit. It’s an old non-verbal sign that the bearer is a Camino pilgrim, and an invitation for other pilgrims to talk.
...We all heard the shots, a faint crack at first, then growing louder and more insistent, like a parade with the drummer gone wild. I counted them right away – one, two, three, four, five… I turned to my family gathered round the dinner table and pointed with a shaky finger – one, two, three, four, five – me, one husband, two sons and a golden retriever that has zoomed under the table at the sound of the third bang. It has become an unspoken standing order for us these days; if you hear a shot, you turn around and count the members of your family, especially if you have sons. Make sure they’re all accounted for. I already knew mine were, but perhaps it was my body tensing up and curving my index finger into fight or flight.
...Maps are instruments of knowledge, science, and faith. One trusts the ability of the mapmakers and their associates to measure the terrain accurately, and then to render on paper what exists in three dimensions. Also, one has to trust their motives for making a map; are they honest or expedient?
...Welcome to Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’s SPACE issue. From the very small to the enormity of our imaginations, essays grow from the furtive earth-bed of mushroom forests to the stars. Granville Carroll’s afro-futuristic cover artwork “Becoming” places us in space. John Angerson provides the obligatory rocket-propelled photos. Matilde Gattoni reminds us that one’s freedom to explore space can suddenly be taken away. The connection with space doesn’t stop there. Melissa Tuckman’s aptly titled poem “Space Junk” connects space debris to modern living. A new section on New Nature Writing probes the world beyond our urban confines. In the second outing for Decolonising Travel, there are excruciating, painful stories, sexual imaginings in the steam room, and personal reflections on historical ties to oppression; all whilst giving writers who have come through VONA/Faith Adiele’s writing programme space to share their work. We finish the issue with a stroll through London — the most ethnically diverse world capital — through the lens of Books Editor Nicolas D. Sampson.
...Every pilgrim is familiar with trail blazes, and for long-distance walkers of any brand waymarking is something of an unreflective activity. But during the pilgrimage I and my husband took to Santiago, a chance encounter with a fellow pilgrim opened my mind to the deep phenomenological significance of blaze-marking.
...During a recent flight-free trip from Berlin (Germany) to Fès (Morocco), I crossed the borders between Germany, France, Spain, the strait of Gibraltar and Morocco. This led me to experience borders in a completely different way. As a white able-bodied woman holding French and Belgian passports, this journey reminded me of my privilege and the ridiculous irony of border controls in a time of climate and humanitarian crises. Here is a playlist that echoes these feelings and features some of the music I’ve been digging recently.
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