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Some Travelers in the Middle East

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Dromedary Camel

In the heat of summer, I tend to read books written by travelers in the deserts of this world. Here are just a few of my favorites, with an emphasis on older sources.

Charles M. Doughty: Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888)

This is the gold standard. Doughty, a poet and Anglican minister, spent months on the Arabian peninsula at some considerable danger to himself. Interestingly, his book inspired one T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, in his own travels during the First World War. In fact, Lawrence wrote the introduction to my Dover edition. By the way, this is not an easy read; but it is a rewarding one.

T. E. Lawrence: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926)

Read Lawrence’s own account of his attempt at mobilizing the Arabs against the German-allied Turkish sultanate. What are the seven pillars of wisdom? Well, actually, Lawrence never made that clear. He planned to write a more massive work but used the original title for the one he finally published.

Sir Richard Francis Burton: Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madina and Meccah (1855-56)

This one’s a classic. Burton successfully posed as an Afghan doctor and visited the forbidden cities of Medina and Mecca during the Haj pilgrimage, which he describes in great detail. Burton was a linguist and polymath, so he was able to beard the Arabs in their own den.

Freya Stark: Multiple Works

How was a British woman able to travel by herself through the Middle East and still live over 100 years? She wrote over twenty extremely readable books, many of which are still in print today. Check out the list of her works in Wikipedia.

Gertrude Bell: Syria, the Desert& the Sown (1907)

Yes, another of those talented and indomitable British women. This one was well connected with the Foreign Office and had some say in the region’s sad history.

Classics of Travel Literature

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I have always loved reading classical travel books—even if they were written long ago. Here is a list of some of my favorites, listed below in no particular order:

  • Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694). This is the earliest book on the list including a poetic rendering of the author’stravels to shrines in Japan, written in haiku.
  • Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (1977). A not entirely reliable account of the author’s journeys through Patagonia.
  • John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841). The book that made we want to go to Mexico. Great illustrations by Frederick Catherwood.
  • Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express (1979). Still my favorite of his works, made me want to visit South America.
  • Freya Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (1934). She traveled alone throughout the Middle East and lived to be 100 years old.
  • Robnert Byron, The Road to Oxiana (1937). A travel book in which the author fails to reach his destination, but what he does see his so interesting that it doesn’t matter.
  • Sir Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Medinah and Meccah (1855-1856). It took incredible gall for an Englishman to pass himself off as an Afghan physician and visit the holiest sites of Islam.
  • Jonathan Raban, Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings (1999). Life doesn’t stop just because you want to pilot a yacht to Juneau, Alaska.
  • Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus (2007). A brilliant Polish travel writer tells how the ancient Grfeek historian informed him on his travels.
  • D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia (1921). It was written in just a few days, but it’s great anyhow.
  • Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons (1957). The author of The Alexandria Quartet describes his years spent on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
  • Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts (1977). Travels through Central Europe just before the Second World War.

I cannot help but think some of my other favorites are missing. What you won’t find on this list are books like Eat, Pray, Love and such bourgeois fantasies as A Year in Provence. If that’s what you prefer in travel literature, I would prefer that you don’t undertake to read any of my recommendations. Ever.

A Sack of Cobwebs

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Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936) was a world traveler par excellence, a splendid horseman, a controversial member of Parliament for North West Lanarkshire, and one of a handful of super-great travel writers. I am currently reading his Mogreb-el-Acksa about a trip to the forbidden city of Tarudant in Southern Morocco. He never made it to his destination, but his descriptions of his attempt are world-class literature. The following single long sentence is taken from his Preface to the book.

So I apologise for lack of analysis, neglect to dive into the supposititious motives which influence but ill-attested acts, and mostly for myself for having come before the public with the history of a failure to accomplish what I tried; and having brought together a sack of cobwebs, a pack of gossamers, a bale of thistle-down, dragon-flies’ wings, of Oriental gossip as to byegone facts, of old-world recollections, of new-world practices half understood; lore about horses’ colours, of tales of men who never bother much to think, but chiefly act, carving their lives out, where still space is left in which to carve, and acting thus so inconsiderately whilst there still remain so many stones unbroken, social problems to be solved, and the unpuncturable pneumatic tyre not yet found out.

Summer Reading

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During the Heat of Summer, My Mind Turns to India

Most people’s idea of summer reading is of some cheap paperback to be consumed on a beach towel or on a long plane, train, or bus ride. There are a large number of trashy novels written each year to satisfy this undemanding audience. My taste in reading material, however, is more of what you would describe as deep-dish.

When the temperature rises into the 80s F (30s Celsius), there are certain books that appeal to me. Looking back over July and August in the last several years, here is what appeals most to me during temperature spikes:

  • Books about India, such as those written by William Dalrymple, author of City of Djinns
  • The novels of William Faulkner set in Mississippi
  • The novels of Brazilian author Jorge Amado set in his native State of Bahia
  • The novels and short stories of Chilean author Roberto Bolaño
  • American and French noir novels
  • The Travis McGee novels of John D. MacDonald set in South Florida
  • Travel books such as those written by Freya Stark, who traveled extensively by herself in the Middle East

Sometimes, I go in the opposite direction: I recently read Chauncey C. Loomis’s Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, about a failed trip to discover the North Pole.

I am currently rereading William Faulkner’s Go Down Moses and have Jorge Amado’s Home Is the Sailor in my TBR pile.

Travel Without Leaving Home

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Vicuñas Seen on the Road to Puno, Peru

Why should I care that you become an armchair traveler rather than an actual traveler? Curmudgeon that I am, if I ran into you on my travels, all eager to talk about your lovely home town of East Jesus, Arkansas, you would be met with a torrent of Hungarian and not a word of English. I would be perfectly happy to see you indulge your desire for travel by reading a book rather than obtruding with your actual presence.

As for myself, I not only like to travel, but I like to read about travel. Here is a list of an even dozen travel classics. Curiously, they are all written by English or American travelers. Not that other peoples have not written travel classics: Only, they tend to be more obscure in the Anglo-American world of publishing. And besides, the English are so damned good at it!

The following are presented in alphabetical order by author:

  • Robert Byron: The Road to Oxiana (1937). Driving through Persia to reach Afghanistan at a time when roads were few and hairy.
  • Bruce Chatwin: In Patagonia (1977). Not everything Chatwin says is 100% true, but it always is 100% fascinating.
  • Lawrence Durrell: Prospero’s Cell, A Guide to the Landscape and manners of Corcyra (1945). All Durrell’s travel books are worth reading.
  • Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time to Keep Silence (1957). About the first part of a walking tour from Holland to Istanbul, just as the Second World War is about to break out.
  • John Gimlette: At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig (2003). A fascinating book about Paraguay, its history and people.
  • Graham Greene: The Lawless Roads (1939). Greene’s research for his novel The Power and the Glory, about a trip to Mexico during a persecution of the Catholic Church.
  • Eric Newby: Slowly Down the Ganges (1966). About an attempt to navigate the sacred river of India all the way to the Indian Ocean.
  • Freya Stark: The Valley of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (1934). By a woman traveling alone in the Middle East!
  • John Steinbeck: The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951). Travels in the Gulf of California doing oceanographic research.
  • John Lloyd Stephens: Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán (1841). Travels in Maya land in the middle of a civil war.
  • Paul Theroux: The Old Patagonian Express (1979). The book that inspired my own travels to South America.
  • Colin Thubron: To a Mountain in Tibet (2011). A religious pilgrimage to Mount Meru, a magnet for three religions.

I could have added another twelve without too much further thought. Hell, I could have added another hundred.

Born in Cleveland, we were too poor to afford travel far beyond Northeastern Ohio. That resulted in my case with an insatuiable desire to see the world, which I started to do in 1975. God, how I wish I could live long enough to continue in the same vein.