Travel writers’ connections with locale

It is ideal to live in a place for extended period of time to write about it. For example, visiting Herat (Afghanistan) in March 2006 for four days was enough to fall in love with this magical city. But I never came back to write of my experience. I simply had too little a feel of that city. I should have been there for at least ten days. But in Pakistan, four days in Rohri in Sindh were enough back in 1986 to write a little piece because I had read so much about this, one of our most magical cities.

If it is a ruined building, an abandoned mansion, I generally spend a full day there. But the precondition is to be left to myself. I must be alone to let my imagination work; nobody should be constantly bombarding me with banter. The same is true for battlefields, forts etc. The rule of the thumb about writing on places, therefore, is three to four days for cities and a full day for a particular building.