Travelling in our day and age is easier than it has ever been. The increase in low-cost flights, backpacker’s hostels and homestays, an explosion of travel forums and blogs, and of course, newer technologies, have all contributed to this, allowing for ease in terms of planning and execution.
Depending on how safe you feel on the roads (no doubt your identity plays a role in this, if not your guts), it is even possible to travel with almost no money at all, thanks to the many hitchhiking and couch-surfing options available. But a ubiquitous realisation of the otherwise uncontroversial desire to see the world has also raised complicated questions tied to climate change and neocolonialism.
The colonial world order made it easier to travel eastward, and that continues to be the case today- whether because of discriminatory visa and border policies, different values of currency, or simple privileges afforded to travellers deemed “less threatening”, i.e. White and European.
In the post-colonial world, travelers from WENA (Western Europe and North America) regularly travel eastwards as part of ‘soft’ colonial institutions, such as study-abroad schemes, English-teaching or research programmes, international NGOs, or simply as tourists in exorbitantly priced resorts – or their more ‘egalitarian’ iterations the ‘digital’ nomads. Ironically, the WENA region is also increasingly crowded by foreigners, but less as hobby travellers and more as cheap labor and economic migrants (many driven out of their home countries that have been sucked dry of resources since colonial times).
The contemporary travelling scene has driven many to conceptualise the desire to travel as inherently problematic or ‘colonial’ in nature. Those who enjoy travelling, on the other hand, often do end up mimicking the same colonial pathways and travelling etiquettes that are set as normative by WENA travellers and the tourism industry.
But travelling is as ancient as the first human. There is nothing novel or modern about being able to stay at a stranger’s home or travelling in their vehicle for free; it is rather the incorporation and commodification of these existing socialities into the platform economy that is new. To let our current circumstances paint a uniform picture of travelling as a sole avocation of the coloniser and the rich, or instead to imagine that the only way we can pleasure-travel is through indiscriminate consumption aided by capitalist invasion on native resources, is to do a disservice to our curiosity as a species, deny the fact that pleasure is a human right, and erase histories and ethics of knowing the world and relating to its people that are based on love and curiosity, and not on violence and theft.
So how did our ancestors travel? What is the history of non-colonial, non-western adventures? Has travelling always been exclusively for the senses or did people have other motives for it? For a brief look into the history, ethics, and politics of non-western travel writing, I have gathered ten books that challenge the myth of travelling as a colonial pastime.
Most of these books are published by university presses and edited by academics, so in addition to first person travel narratives, they include essays, annotations, and in some cases expanded commentary and analysis from the editors.
1. Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from Imperial China
Edited by Richard E. Strassberg and published by University of California Press, 1994.
Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing From Imperial China is the only English language collection of Chinese travel writings that has such a breadth of scope. It is an anthology of Chinese travelogues spanning 2000 years – from the 1st to the 19th centuries – that presents China through the eyes of 50 Chinese travelers and is accompanied by paintings, portraits, maps, and drawings.
2. One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage
Edited by Michael Wolfe and published by Grove Press, 1997.
One Thousand Roads to Mecca recounts Muslim pilgrimage (Hajj) travelogues over the course of a thousand years (1050-1990). Edited by Michael Wolfe, it assembles 20 accounts of the Hajj by authors including Ibn Battuta, J. L. Burckhardt, Sir Richard Burton, the Begum of Bhopal, John F. Keane, Winifred Stegar, Muhammad Asad, Lady Evelyn Cobbald, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Malcolm X, as well as the editor (Michael Wolfe) himself.
3. In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the 17th Century
Edited and translated by Nabil Matar, published by Routledge in 2002.
In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the 17th Century captures the perspectives of 17th century Arab travelers who headed westward. The book is made up of Nabil Matar’s original translation of four Muslim and Christian Arab writers’ travelogues about various parts of Western Europe and America, including Spain, France, Holland, as well as parts of South and Central America.
4. Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing
Edited by Tabish Khair, Justin D. Edwards, Martin Leer, and Hanna Ziadeh, foreword by Amitav Ghosh and published by Indiana University Press, 2005.
Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing is an edited collection of 33 African and Asian travelers’ stories spanning 15 centuries. It begins with these lines from Imam Shaf’i, the Muslim theologian:
“Travel! Set out & head for pastures new –
Life tastes the richer when you’ve road-worn feet.
No water that stagnates is fit to drink
For only that which flows is truly sweet.”
5. Women in Argentina: Early Travel Narratives
Mónica Szurmuk, published by University Press of Florida, 2009.
Women in Argentina centres the narratives of more than eight women explorers. Mónica Szurmuk’s collection includes Argentinian women’s travel writing on Argentina, US, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as Euro-American women’s travelogues on Argentina from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.
6. Atiya’s Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain
Edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Sunil Sharma and translated from Urdu, published by Oxford University Press, 2010.
Atiya’s Journeys is a translation of Atiya Fyzee (1877-1967), the first Indian Muslim woman’s original 1922 documentation of her travels in the West with a focus on everyday life, accompanied by 48 photographs.
7. Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America
Edited by Claire Lindsay, published by Routledge, 2010.
Claire Lindsay’s Contemporary Travel Writing of Latin America uses the accounts of native travellers to dispel long-standing colonial narratives and myths about Latin America. It presents an analysis of eight late 20th century Latin American writers’ Spanish-language travel narratives on the region (with a focus on Patagonia, the Andes, Mexico and the Mexico-US border).
8. At the Crossroads: Nigerian Travel Writing and Literary Culture in Yoruba and English
Edited by Rebecca Jones, published by Boydell & Brewer, 2019.
At the Crossroads: Nigerian Travel Writing and Literary Culture in Yoruba and English presents Rebecca Jones’ close reading of 16 Nigerian writers’ Yoruba- and English-language narratives about their sojourns through Nigeria from 1914 to 2014. It features travel writings by Samuel Ajayi Crowther, I.B. Thomas, E.A. Akintan, Isaac Delano, D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Ben Okri, Babatunde Shadeko, Damilola Ajenifuja, Chibuzor Mirian Azubuike, Pelu Awofeso, Lape Soetan, Teju Cole, Adewale Maja-Pearce, Noo Saro-Wiwa, and the Invisible Borders collective.
9. Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women, 1870–1940
Jayati Gupta, published by Routledge, 2021.
Jayati Gupta’s Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women, 1870–1940 chronicles 15 Bengali women’s travelogues in Indian subcontinent, Japan, and the West during the British colonial era.
10. Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women
Edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma, published by Indiana University Press, 2022.
Finally, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women scheduled for release in 2022, features 45 Muslim women traveller’s writings, translated from 10 different languages, from the 17th to 20th centuries.
