Travel literature

Outdoor literature, guidebooks, nature writing, and trip memoirs are all examples of the genre of travel literature.

Travel memoirist Pausanias, a Greek geographer from the 2nd century AD, was one of the first known writers in Western literature to have written about his travel experiences. During the early modern era, James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) had a significant role in the development of the travel memoir genre.

Early examples of travel literature include the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (generally considered to have been written in the first century CE, though its authorship is debated), Pausanias' Description of Greece in the second century CE, Nasir Khusraw's Safarnama (Book of Travels) (1003-1077), Gerald of Wales' Journey Through Wales (1191) and Description of Wales (1194), and the travel journals of Ibn Jubayr (1145–1214) In mediaeval Arabic literature, the genre of travel was a very popular one.

It is considered a classic of travel literature. Il Milione, or The Travels of Marco Polo, is a book that describes Marco Polo's journeys around Asia between 1271 and 1295.

During the Song dynasty (960–1279) in mediaeval China, travel literature grew more popular among the people. It was referred to as 'travel record literature' ( yóuj wénxué), and it was often written in the manner of a storey, a prose piece, an essay, or a journal. Writers of travel literature, such as Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641), included a plethora of geographical and topographical information in their work, whereas the 'daytrip essay' Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) served the purpose of presenting a philosophical and moral argument as its central theme.

Petrarch's (1304–1374) climb of Mount Ventoux in 1336 is one of the oldest documented examples of someone enjoying enjoyment in travel, travelling for the purpose of travelling, and writing about it. In his own words, he travelled to the peak only for the pleasure of witnessing the iconic height at its highest point from a distance. They were frigid incuriositas, which means "frozen curiousities," and they were his pals who lingered at the bottom ("a cold lack of curiosity"). A few days later, he published a journal entry on his trek, drawing parallels between ascending the mountain and his own moral development in life.