Honesty and truth in travel writing
28 March 2013
My philosophy is very simple: tell the truth so that when someone follows up on your journey they cannot fault you for inaccuracy. That is it. It is essential that a travel writer must always be meticulously truthful, accurate and honest. Anything short and the very purpose of travel writing is defeated, nay, killed.
Bear in mind that Plato suggested that travel writers must be examined vigorously upon their return in order to ascertain the quality of the knowledge he/she has acquired during the journeys. He went on to say that a traveller returning with corrupted knowledge should be forcibly isolated, perhaps even killed. This is as quoted by Roxanne Euben in her book Journeys to the Other Shore.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 15:32,
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Why I travel
09 March 2013
I travel very much for the same reasons as Professor Santayana: to escape ‘into open solitudes’. I have this rather primordial desire to be where few people have been and where I can be by myself. It was for this reason that for most of my life as a traveller I went alone. The late and much lamented Saneeya Hussain, my friend and first editor at the Star, used to call me Lone Wolf. I have to use the professor’s words again to explain the urge to travel alone: ‘running some pure hazard’. There is a great thrill in it. This is a thrill that tingles up and down the spine. Imagine a walk in pre-dawn darkness in Thar Desert or somewhere in the foothills of the Khirthar Mountains – both places where the infamous krait of the viper family, hardly noticeable because of its sandy colouration – lurks under the bushes and stones. If you are alone and bitten, there is no chance of survival. The poison attacks the nervous system and one dies within minutes.
There is also the ‘taste of hardship’ that Allama Iqbal has the parent shaheen telling the shaheen child: 'sakht koshi say hai talkh e zndagani angbeen.'
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 12:20,
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