Why Losing the Destination Gives Travel Writing Its Depth
Honestly, every travelogue begins with a sentence about its destination: “to make a pilgrimage,” “to see such-and-such a city,” “at the invitation of such-and-such a university.” If that sentence is taken too seriously, it kills the book. Enduring Persian travelogues are usually not the ones that cling tightly to their destination; they are the ones that lose their purpose midway and find, in its place, something that was not on the map. This article is about precisely that kind of getting lost: not as carelessness, but as a structural choice that gives depth to the prose.
The Map Is the Enemy of Discovery
When the writer knows in advance where they are going, their mind involuntarily turns into an inspector, and the text comes to resemble a progress report: I arrived, I saw, it was confirmed, I moved on. The reader, too, knows from the outset what to expect, and this very expectation destroys the sense of discovery. A good report is documentary; but literature deals with something that was not written on the to-do list.
When the plan falls apart—the visa does not arrive, the money runs out, illness strikes, a stranger extends an invitation—the narrator is forced to improvise. Improvisation creates two things in the text that a travelogue needs: attention to the present moment, and a voice that makes decisions. This is precisely where the travelogue distances itself from the diary of a mission.
A travelogue becomes literature when the writer no longer knows where the next step lies and is forced to put that very not-knowing onto the page.
Three Journeys Whose Purpose Changed Along the Way
In the Persian and Islamic travel-writing tradition, there are clear examples in which the original intention dissolves within the text and the narrative takes shape from that very dissolution:
- Ibn Battuta: He set out from Tangier to perform the Hajj; twenty-nine years later he returned to the Maghreb. The book that later became known as “Tuhfat al-Nuzzar” was arranged not according to the travel plan but according to chance events. The destination was pilgrimage, but the subject of the book became the world.
- Naser Khosrow: He began his seven-year journey with the intention of pilgrimage, but the pilgrimage falls in the middle of the text, not at its climax. What remains at the end is the return to Balkh and a man who is no longer that man.
- Jalal Al-e Ahmad in “Khasi dar Miqat”: The destination is Mecca, but the book’s real subject is people, exhaustion, heat, and the narrator’s social gaze; the narrator constantly steps outside the rituals so that what he has seen can be recorded.
A non-Persian example confirms the same pattern: in “Italian Journey,” Goethe flees Weimar under an assumed name, and the declared aim of his journey is the study of art; but the book he writes is more a narrative of liberation than a report on museums. In all these examples, losing the destination is not a flaw; it is the engine of the narrative.
How to Build Wandering into the Text?
None of these writers designed their journeys without a purpose. They merely allowed the purpose to change through contact with the world and recorded that change in the structure of the text. A few practical techniques:
- State the intention at the beginning, then let it go. Announce the destination clearly, then, in the middle third, make a decision that cancels the original plan and explain what event caused it.
- Keep the scene of waiting. The consulate, the pier, the midnight bus, the doctor’s office. These spaces are places where the narrator has no choice but to think, and the text benefits from that.
- Delete the progress summary. Replace the sentence “and then we went to Shiraz” with a short scene; the reader will construct the route on their own.
- Give doubt its due. The narrator is permitted to write that they do not know why they came; if this sentence comes after two concrete chapters, it is not weakness—it is depth.
- Take the ending somewhere that was not named at the beginning. If the final sentence returns to the same destination as the first chapter, the book closes itself off and the wandering remains ineffective.
The Boundary Between Wandering and Verbosity
We must be honest: not every sloppy text is a profound travelogue. The difference lies in one thing—wandering must have structure, meaning the narrator must know they are lost and must convey that knowing to the text. If the writer ignores their own lostness, the reader will mistake tedium for depth.
| Feature | Destination-Driven Travelogue | Travelogue of Disorientation |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Based on route and arrival | Based on decision and change |
| Unit of progress | City to city | Awareness to awareness |
| Role of the narrator | Observer and describer | Someone who changes themselves |
| Main risk | Report-like quality | Rambling, if the disorientation is not deliberate |
Conclusion: The destination is the last thing you find
Persian travel writing depends above all on the narrator’s honesty, not on the perfection of the route. If you want the text to rise above reportage, you don’t need to take an unusual trip; you need to let the goal you set out with dissolve through contact with people, roads, and delays. Don’t erase the destination—but let it shift in the text, become complete, or even remain out of reach. That is precisely why the reader keeps reading.
