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Write a Good Travel Essay. Please.

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Kathleen Boardman

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Editor’s Note: We know that many of you are looking for help writing travel experience essays for school or simply writing about a trip for your friends or family. To inspire you and help you write your next trip essay—whether it’s an essay about a trip with family or simply a way to remember your best trip ever (so far)—we enlisted the help of Professor Kathleen Boardman, whose decades of teaching have helped many college students learn the fine art of autobiography and life writing. Here’s advice on how to turn a simple “my best trip” essay into a story that will inspire others to explore the world.

Welcome home! Now that you’re back from your trip, you’d like to share it with others in a travel essay. You’re a good writer and a good editor of your work, but you’ve never tried travel writing before. As your potential reader, I have some advice and some requests for you as you write your travel experience essay.

Trip Essays: What to Avoid

Please don’t tell me everything about your trip. I don’t want to know your travel schedule or the names of all the castles or restaurants you visited. I don’t care about the plane trip that got you there (unless, of course, that trip is the story).

I have a friend who, when I return from a trip, never asks me, “How was your trip?” She knows that I would give her a long, rambling answer: “… and then … and then … and then.” So instead, she says, “Tell me about one thing that really stood out for you.” That’s what I’d like you to do in this travel essay you’re writing.

The Power of Compelling Scenes

One or two “snapshots” are enough—but make them great. Many good writers jump right into the middle of their account with a vivid written “snapshot” of an important scene. Then, having aroused their readers’ interest or curiosity, they fill in the story or background. I think this technique works great for travel writing; at least, I would rather enjoy a vivid snapshot than read through a day-to-day summary of somebody’s travel journal.

Write About a Trip Using Vivid Descriptions

Take your time. Tell a story. So what if you saw things that were “incredible,” did things that were “amazing,” observed actions that you thought “weird”? These words don’t mean anything to me unless you show me, in a story or a vivid description, the experience that made you want to use those adjectives.

I’d like to see the place, the people, or the journey through your eyes, not someone else’s. Please don’t rewrite someone else’s account of visiting the place. Please don’t try to imitate a travel guide or travelogue or someone’s blog or Facebook entry. You are not writing a real travel essay unless you are describing, as clearly and honestly as possible, yourself in the place you visited. What did you see, hear, taste, say? Don’t worry if your “take” on your experience doesn’t match what everyone else says about it. (I’ve already read what THEY have to say.)

The Importance of Self-Editing Your Trip Essay

Don’t give me your first draft to read. Instead, set it aside and then reread it. Reread it again. Where might I need more explanation? What parts of your account are likely to confuse me? (After all, I wasn’t there.) Where might you be wasting my time by repeating or rambling on about something you’ve already told me?

Make me feel, make me laugh, help me learn something. But don’t overdo it: Please don’t preach to me about broadening my horizons or understanding other cultures. Instead, let me in on your feelings, your change of heart and mind, even your fear and uncertainty, as you confronted something you’d never experienced before. If you can, surprise me with something I didn’t know or couldn’t have suspected.

You Can Do It: Turning Your Trip into a Great Travel Experience Essay

I hope you will take yourself seriously as a traveler and as a writer. Through what—and how—you write about just a small portion of your travel experience, show me that you are an interesting, thoughtful, observant person. I will come back to you, begging for more of your travel essays.

Take Notes in a Cute Journal

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How To Write A Travel Guide

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How to write a travel guide: ’48 Hours in’

This article is a step-by-step guide showing you how to write a travel guide for the 48 Hours in series of travel guides.

I am subdiving this writing guide into three chapters that cover (i) the aspiration of a 48 Hour guide, (ii) its structure and (iii) its content

Chapter #1: 48 Hours guides are authentic

Each episode of  the 48 Hours in series wants to introduce one city to the single male traveler from the point of view of a local. Just think about what kind of advice and tips you would give to a single male friend who is coming to your city for the very first time and you have all you need in order to write a good guide.

For the 48 hours in guides it is the local’s perspective that makes them so interesting. The episodes are no tourist brochures that tell you what sights are a “must”. If you do a Google search for “what to do in Paris” you will come across millions of articles telling you that you should visit Eiffel Tower and the Louvre — nice, but who really wants to read that?

In a 48 hour in guide local tells things how they are, mentioning the good and the bad.

If you were writing about a city where most hotels/apartments have bad service, but high prices then you should mention that (see my article on Kiev hotels ). And if you were writing about a city that, in your opinion, is nicer, cleaner and more lively than any other city in the country then you should mention that as well.

Here’s an example of authentic writing:

In the 48 hour guide to Wroclaw Poland I had to find a hotel in the middle of the night when almost all hotels were booked.

What I did was walk to the main railway station and enter the first hotel I saw in the hope they had a spare room. As the hotel was across the railway station where drunks were bumbling around I didnt expect much. To my surprise the hotel was not only cheap, but also newly refurbished. It could easily pass as a 4-star hotel in Munich or London and cost just 44€ for the night.

I added a nice picture of the hotel room and then put the mini-anecote into the guide. Here is what it looks like:

How to write a travel guide - screenshot 1

Screenshot taken from https://euromentravel.com/48-hours-in/48-hours-wroclaw-poland

People liked it. Why did they? Because it is authentic. The main thing is to give the reader little insights that stem from your own personal experience . This makes it so much easier for the reader to relate to what you are saying.

Chapter #2: The structure of the guide

All guides follow a simple 3-step structure. Each step is about a specific topic. These are:

  • Flights/driving/buses
  • The city & places to stay
  • Activities.

Let’s start with the first topic titled “How to get there”:

“How to get there” – The most common way to reach your city?

“the city of [name] [country]” – brief outline of the city and hotels & apartments, “what to do” – b est daytime actitives & nightlife venues.

This is the most creative part. Think of your male friend coming to town and tell him about the ins and outs of your city: What is interesting to do during the day time?

This is not so much about sightseeing, but more about the lesser known spots in your city.For example, the guide to Varna Bulgaria tells you everything about the number one daytime activity in Varna, the beaches. But it also tells you about everything Varna’s Retro Museum with Soviet memorabilia that is not located in oldtown Varna, but somewhat hidden inside a shopping mall.

Chapter #3: The content of the guides

Now that we know the structure all we need to do is fill it with information. Here are some guidelines to what information the three chapters should contain:

How to get there

Here, you need to do some research by looking up prices on the websites of airlines, bus services etc.:

  • Name 3-5 airlines that offer cheap flights to your city and link their names to their websites.
  • Name 1-3 bus services that offer cheap rides to your city and link their names to their websites (if applicable).

How to write a travel guide - screenshot 2

Screenshot taken from: https://euromentravel.com/48-hours-in/48-hours-jakarta-indonesia/

Note that you do not need to put any screenshots of city maps/special offers/nice apartments/great hotels into your guide. I will do that for you. However, what you need to do is tell me where these special offers can be found so I can implement them.

The City of [XYZ]

  • What is traffic in the city like? Is there good public transport? What is a good part of the city to stay in?
  • How much is a taxi ride from A to B? There is a local smartphone app that everybody uses to order taxis? There is? Great, mention it and write about it!
  • Write about some good offers that you see on apartment sites like Airbnb.com or booking.com and name 3-5 good hotels . Link their websites to their names.
  • Look up the prices for a night in a hotel room/apartment and add the price after the hotel’s name Another very important factor is communication:
  • What does a local SIM card cost?
  • With a local SIM card: What’s the average price level for calls/texts/internet?
  • Write a continuous text that describes your experience with about 3 daytime activities. This can be anything from spending a day at the beach to the picturesque old town or the area with the best local food.
  • In your text, add 5-8 links to the names of popular daytime locations.
  • Have a look at the other 48 hours in guides for inspiration.
  • Write a continuous text that describes your experience with about 3 nightlife venues.
  • Again, have a look at the other 48 hours in guides for inspiration.

And last but not least:

  • Send in 10 high quality pictures of your city that you took yourself. If you can then send in more than 10. Actually, send in as many high quality pictures as you can! Choosing the cream of the crop from a large pool is always nicer.

In total, your 48 Hour guide will now have 1200-1600 words and is ready for editing.

Do not forget to give me your Twitter, Instagram and a short bio if you like and then allow me some time to do the editing. And before you know it your travel guide will go live on euromentravel.com.

This short synopsis on how to write a travel guide for the ’48 hours in’ series should cover most of your questions. If you have any other questions, do not hesitate do contact us via the form below.

See you around and happy traveling!

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Posted on Jun 21, 2017

12 Types of Travel Writing Every Writer Should Know

So, you want to be a travel writer?

There are plenty of reality doses out there already, so we’re going to focus on the positives, and what you can do to maximize your chances of travel writing professionally. One of the first steps: you should absolutely know your markets, and what types of travel writing are popular in them. In today’s competitive market, this knowledge can both help you structure your article  and target the right audience.

In this post, we break down modern travel writing into three distinct categories: freelance journalism , blogging, and book-writing. Then we identify the prevalent types of travel writing each category is known for, to give you an initial sort of compass in the industry.

Freelance Travel Journalism

Types of Travel Writing - Mosque

The truth is this: the travel sections in major publications (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal) are slimmer now, so competition will be tall. But there are other outlets. Local newspapers are sometimes open to travel pitches from freelancers. Certain websites pay for travel articles, while magazines can be great for targeting niche audiences.

So what are the common types of freelance travel journalism?

Destination articles

Here, the game’s in the name: destination articles tell readers about a place to which they might want to travel one day. One of the most standard type of travel stories, these pieces act as the armchair reader’s bird-eye view of a place. Useful or interesting facts pepper the writing. History, points of interest, natural scenery, trendy spots: a destination article can touch upon them all within the framework of a broad narrative.

Where the average article gives readers a sense of the destination, the best of the best convinces readers that this is a destination they want, nay, need to visit. As such, though some destination articles are written in first person, the focus is rarely on the writer. Instead, the destination is the star of the show.

For examples of destination articles, check out:

  • Besalú, the most interesting Spanish village you probably don’t know (LA Times)
  • In Indonesia (Washington Post)
  • 36 Hours In The Finger Lakes Region of New York (New York Times)

Types of travel writing - Bagan

Special-interest articles

Special-interest articles are offshoots of destination articles. Instead of taking the reader on a tour of an entire country or city, these pieces cover one particular aspect of the destination. This kind of writing can cover anything from art in Colombia, ghost towns in the U.S., trekking in Patagonia, alpaca farms in Australia, motorbiking in Brazil, railroads in France, volunteering in Tanzania — you get the gist.

Since special-interest articles are narrower in topic, many writers tailor them for niche magazines or websites. Before you start pitching, we recommend flipping through the Writer’s Handbook , one of the most useful guides to the freelance publishing market, to see which publications fit your target audience.

For a taste of some special-interest articles, see:

  • Exploring Portugal — From Pork To Port (epicurious.com)
  • This Unsung Corner of Spain is Home to Fabulous Food (Washington Post)
  • Karsts of China's Getu River region attract rock climbers, other travelers (CNN Travel)

Holiday and special events

Holiday and special events travel articles ask writers to write about a destination before the event takes place. The biggest global events are magnets for this type of travel writing, such as the World Cup, the Olympics, the World Expo, fashion weeks, and film festivals. Depending on the publication, regional events work just as well.

Want to see what special events pieces look like? Have a read through these:

  • This summer’s solar eclipse is southern Illinois’ chance to shine (Chicago Tribune)
  • How To Plan A Trip To The 2016 Rio Olympics (Travel & Leisure)

You’ll recognize a round-up article when you see one, as it’ll go, “40 best beaches in West Europe,” or, perhaps, “20 of the greatest walks in the world!” It’s a classic tool in any magazine or newspaper writer’s toolbox, taking a bunch of destinations and grouping them all under one common thread.

Ultimately, a clear motif makes this type of article a breeze to read, as they’re a play on the ubiquitous List Format. But, OK, before you jump at this excuse to sacrifice your belly at 99 food trucks in New York City, remember that your premise should be original, not to mention practical. What’s tough is coming up with X ways to do Y in the first place, as that demands you put in the travel and research to produce a thorough write-up.

Types of Travel Writing - Prairie

Want even more examples of round-up articles? Here you go:

  • 12 new art exhibits to see this summer (Smithsonian)
  • 21 ways to see America for cheap (Huffington Post)
  • 41 places to go in 2011 (New York Times)

Personal essays

Publishers are experiencing something of a personal essay fatigue , so the market for more might be scarce these days. However, quality trumps all, and a good personal travel essay is just plain good writing in disguise: something that possesses a strong voice while showing insight, growth, and backstory.

Just don’t make it a diary entry. In an interview with The Atlantic , travel writer Paul Theroux said: “The main shortcut is to leave out boring things. People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I’m not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don’t want to hear about it.”

Here’s a jumping-off point for personal travel essays:

  • Taking the Great American Roadtrip (Smithsonian)

Have a burning opinion to share? Sometimes publications end up giving op-eds to staff, but there are always open calls for opinion pieces.

Travel op-eds are much rarer than political opinion pieces, but there’s a pattern to the ones that make the cut: good persuasive writing. If you can come at a topic from a unique angle (and argue your case clearly) then you may be able to publish your opinion.

If you’re in the mood for travel op-ed articles, see:

  • The West Coast Is The Best Coast For Food In America (Food & Wine)
  • Why Climate Change Is Actually Relevant To Travel (Conde Nast)

Travel Blogging

Types of Travel Writing - Malaysia

When typing “travel blog” into Google returns 295 million results, we can guess it’s a fairly competitive market.

Here’s the plus side: bloggers get to write what they want and go where they please. When it comes to blog posts, there are no editors, no gatekeepers. Only you and the “PUBLISH” button.

We won’t go revisit the types of travel writing we covered earlier (such as the roundup format). Instead, we’ll explore some of the other formats bloggers use to tell their travel stories. Since the rules of travel blogging are next to non-existent, our tally below is by no means definitive. And, again, our best advice is to note what your favorite bloggers do on their blogs.

Already running a successful travel blog? You might consider turning that blog into a book !

How-To articles are already fairly popular in magazines, but they’re positively omnipresent in the travel blogging world. Blogs provide a direct communication platform, allowing trust to build up quicker with the readers. As a result, for the search query, “How to travel Europe on a budget,” six out of the top ten results are posts from trusted independent blogs.

A How-To article is the most standard form of advice column a travel blogger can produce. It’s intrinsically useful, promising that it’ll teach something by article’s end. A blogger’s challenge is delivering fully on that promise.

How to read more How-To articles? We got you covered:

  • How To Start A Travel Blog (Nomadic Matt)
  • How To Travel Solo To A Party Destination (Adventurous Kate)
  • How to Visit Penang’s Kek Lok Si Temple (Migrationology)

Itineraries

Itineraries reveal the schedule that the writer took at a given destination, city-by-city or sight-by-sight. They’re meant for the traveler who’s embarking on a similar trip and needs a template. Typically, you’ll find that an itinerary post is an easy place for you to slip in recommendations, anything from the accommodation you used or the restaurants you tried.

You can use itinerary posts to reinforce your blog’s brand. For instance, an itinerary posted on a blog focused around budget travel will probably maximize cost-saving chances.

For more itineraries, see:

  • My Trip To Japan (A Complete Japan Itinerary)
  • Backpacking Vietnam on a budget: 2-3 Weeks Itinerary + Tips

Longform posts

Longform travel blogging tells a travel story through extended narrative content, as it takes a week’s worth of adventure and shapes it into a story. Longform blog posts about travel often end up being creative nonfiction : a way to present nonfiction — factually accurate prose about real people and events — in a compelling, vivid, dramatic manner.

Photography can add another dimension to the form, as Emmanuel Nataf (our co-founder!) shows on his travel blog . And Reedsy's very own Arielle provides a glimpse into why she prefers longform travel writing on her blog, Steps, a Travel Journal :

My favourite kinds of stories are the ones that give you a real sense of place. That’s why I enjoy longform travel blogging: I get to describe the character of a place through the experiences I encountered there.

If you want to dip your toe into the sea of longform posts, you can also read:

  • The Cow Head Taco Philosopher King of Oaxaca (Legal Nomads)
  • The Best Worst Museum In The World

Types of Travel Writing - Hot Air

When it comes to writing a book, you can take all the challenges about travel writing from above and magnify it times 2,000. If you’re asking readers to commit to you for more than 100 pages, you’d best make sure that your book is worth their while.

As far as examples go, travel writing’s boomed in the mainstream book market recently. But there’s much more to it than Eat, Pray, Love and its descendants.

Travelogues

In travelogues, authors record their adventures in a way that illustrates or sheds insight upon the place itself. Travelogues possess a storied past, from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters in 1763 to Mark Twain’s 1867 The Innocents Abroad , which paved the way for the sort of comic travelogues that Bill Bryson’s perfected today.

Up for some travelogues? Check out:

  • Notes From A Small Island , by Bill Bryson
  • In Patagonia , by Bruce Chatwin
  • Travels with Charley In Search of America , by John Steinbeck

Travel memoirs

Nowadays, travel memoirs are practically synonymous with Elizabeth Gilbert’s wildly popular Eat, Pray, Love and Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling Wild , which were both recently adapted into Hollywood blockbusters.

That said, be aware that you’ll need a pretty exceptional personal story for your memoir to compete in today’s market . If you’re still set on writing or self-publishing a travel memoir, it’s tricky to balance personal backstory and travel for 400 pages, so think about taking on a professional for a second pair of eyes.

Did you know? You can find Nicki Richesin , a top Bloomsbury editor who’s edited for Cheryl Strayed, on our marketplace.

In addition to Eat, Pray, Love and Wild , you can read:

  • Under the Tuscan Sun , by Frances Mayes
  • Coasting , by Jonathan Raban
  • Wind, Sand, and Stars , by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

As Oscar Wilde said, “I never travel without my diary. One should always keep something sensational to read in the train.” But these days, people are replacing diaries with travel guides — the ubiquitous Lonely Planet becoming one of the more common sights on transit.

Travel writing in guidebooks is straightforward, informative, and fact-filled. In addition, there’s a certain amount of responsibility that comes with the job. Lonely Planet alone is read by millions of travelers worldwide.

General Tips and Guidelines

Types of Travel Writing - Chile

As we mentioned before, the trick to producing great travel writing is ultimately simply writing well . To that extent, you should make sure to follow all the guidelines of good writing — not least, spell-checking your article before submitting or publishing it anywhere. You don’t want an editor or reader to see it while it stilll reads lik edis.

Also, keep in mind the tone, style, and vibe of the publication and platform (and by extension, your audience). A story about a moon-rock could go into a kid's magazine or it could go into Scientific America .

Finally, some category-specific tips:

  • If you’re freelance writing, always check submission guidelines. Publications may accept only pitches or they may welcome articles “on spec” (pre-written articles). Some sources only take travel articles that were written within 6 months of the trip.
  • If you’re blogging, brand your website (same advice if you’re an author who’s building an author website ).
  • If you’re writing a book, get a professional editor! An unedited book is an unwieldy thing, and professional eyes provide direction, continuity, and assonance. ( Layout designers can be important if you’re publishing a travel photography book, in the meanwhile.)

Travel writing isn't a cinch. In fact, it's a long and often hard grind. But by figuring out what type of travel writing you want to try your hand at, you're taking the crucial first step.

Have you tried travel writing before? Want to show us the cool travel blog that you're keeping? We're always in the mood for great travel writing + pretty pictures. Leave us a note in the comments and we'll be sure to check it out! 

7 responses

Amanda Turner says:

20/03/2018 – 16:20

Thank you, this was very helpful. Here's one of mine: http://vagabondingwithkids.com/every-mothers-guide-to-piranha-fishing-in-the-amazon/

Travalerie says:

24/05/2018 – 18:42

I landed on this page Googling for one thing and coming up with another. Haha! But what I found instead was helpful as I'm devouring as much as I can on travel writing. A few months ago, I started a new travel business, revamped my website including a new blog, and am in the process of writing, writing, writing. I took 2 trips this year so far and wrote what seemed like a mini-novella. Burning out in the process. I know I can do better. But I had no idea what I was writing could be re-worked to fit a certain category of travel writing -- which is what I found helpful in this post above. Thanks https://www.travalerie.com/blog

Surya Thakur says:

04/03/2019 – 12:39

Very good information. Lucky me I discovered your blog by chance (stumbleupon). I’ve saved as a favorite for later! KuLLuHuLLs

David Bishop says:

08/05/2019 – 12:28

Thanks for this good article. I'm in my third year on the road and recently started my senior solo adventure travel website. I think my site has some pretty good stuff, of course. Take a look and tell me what you think. www.davidhunterbishop.com

Iris C. Permuy says:

23/05/2019 – 18:03

Thank you very much for all of these useful pieces of advice. I will make sure to implement them all on my travel blog, which is a combination of travel and gastronomy and uses the memoir and itinerary types, apart from recipes. Come check it out if you feel like it! I am more than open, eager for some professional feedback :)

Serissa says:

26/10/2019 – 14:53

This post is the perfect diving board for aspiring travel writers. I plan to link to this page from my travel blog if that is alright! ?? The link on my website will appear as "[title of this post] by Reedsy Blog". I assume this is alright, but if not, please email me directly to let me know! Thanks so much!

↪️ Martin Cavannagh replied:

29/10/2019 – 10:11

We'd be absolutely delighted if you shared this article on your blog :)

Comments are currently closed.

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How To Write a Good Travel Essay

Home / Blog / How To Write A Good Travel Essay - Guide With Examples

How To Write a Good Travel Essay - Guide with Examples

Introduction

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

-Gustav Flaubert

Packing the duffel with the bare essentials and hopping into the car, getting behind the steering wheel and driving with no perfect destination in mind – we all dream to live such a life, don't we? Travelling to unseen places and exploring what it has to offer can be an enriching experience. However beautiful can travel be as an experience, writing a travelling essay can be quite a challenge. It may seem easy to come up with the ideas that you want to include in the essay but putting them into coherent sentences can be difficult. Your words should be impactful enough to be able to sweep the readers off their feet and take them on the cliff or make them feel the saline breeze on a beach.  

A perfect travel essay must reflect the journey and highlight the little-known facts about the region. It should be infused with the character and culture of the place. If you are feeling stymied while writing a travel essay, then we have some brilliant tips for you that can make the task considerably easy for you.

8 tips for an outstanding essay on travelling

Here are 8 tips that you can cash on to produce a winning travelling essay:

  • Be specific with the destination

Before you choose a topic for your travel essay, keep the time spent in the location in mind. If your trip is just for a couple of days, then do not make the mistake of writing about an entire city. Think it out practically – is it possible to travel through a city in just a few days? Take for instance your essay is about London. It is quite an insurmountable task to be able to cover all the distance even in a week. So stick to a particular destination so that you can include the nuances and minutest details of the place to paint a picture in the reader’s mind with your words. 

  • Less guide, more exploring

Also, the destination need not be about an exotic locale. It can be a story about an idyllic rustic location in the suburb of the teeming city. It can be about a cottage up on the hills with just the view of snowy valleys and iced peaks. Your words should give the sense of exploring and not touring. The essay should not be like a guide. It should be a view of the location through your lens.

  • Know the location like the back of your hand

Before starting to write a travel essay, do your research. A travel essay isn’t a made-up story so there should not be any fake information. Readers will be looking for more than just the necessary information about the must-visit tourist attractions. So you need to go beyond the surface and include more about the history of the place. Just do not write about the restaurants – talk about the cuisine of the place and the story behind it, if any. To get into the innermost recesses of the location, you can speak to the residents of the area. To bring richness in your travel essay, you must reveal another side of the destination.

  • Include the nitty-gritty

The key to an impressive travel essay is to be able to break down the location into kernels and write the core details about them. As mentioned earlier, so not just write about the tourist attractions and restaurants in the destination. Write about the lesser talked streets and unknown landmarks and the history behind them. If the place is known for its delicacies, write about how the cuisine has evolved and who had started it. From quaint bookstores to ice cream parlours to run-down shabby pubs – shed light to such nuances to bring your essay to life. You can even mention the negative things that you have faced in the place – like irregular transport modes or impolite locals. These little details will help you make your essay more impactful.

  • Be creative with the writing style

Since a travel essay is more like an anecdote, there is no specific format to write it. Therefore, a travel essay gives you the scope of setting your foot into the unchartered areas of creativity. You have got the creative freedom to write what you want. You can study how the natives of the locale speak and learn some of the basic words and phrases they use. To put them into writing you can read the local newspaper to get the pulse of the city you are in. Using the colloquial lingo can help the reader get a closer peek into the lives of the people living in the place. It will reflect a slice of how they live their way of life. Your words should be simple and yet impactful to portray and not just merely narrate. Touch every bit of the rust in the roof to make the reader feel like they are on the same journey with you.

  • Make it personal

The travel essay is your story. So add some personal experience in the story and at the same time do not make it self-indulgent. Include stories that can resonate with all your readers. Your experiences should be able to bring the reader back to the travel destination and connect him with the place. It should be the perfect blend of narration of the experiences you had while on the trip along with a vivid description of the place. To achieve the balance, write your essay in first person perspective to give a real touch to the story. Include the most interesting bits that will help the reader connect with you. You can even include the quotes of natives living in the area you had visited.

  • Start with a captivating catch

Like every essay, the introduction is the key to make it an impressive read. The opening should be capturing enough to attract the reader’s attention. It should leave an impact and should make them want to go on reading the piece. Start with an unknown fact about the place and leave it hanging from the cliff. Use a tone of suspense to excite the readers to keep them guessing about the contents of the essay.

  • Make it vivid with images

For certain places, words may fall short in being able to explain the exact description of a place. You cannot describe how the sky looked with the mountains seemingly touching the clouds or the horizon fading beyond the sea. Certain things cannot be explained in words – like the color of the sky or the water! This is where pictures come in! Providing real images of the place in between can help the readers stay connected. Vivid photos can also make the readers understand the story better by bringing them closer to it. So make sure you take breathtaking pictures of the place you are writing about. The images will help your essay stay in the readers’ mind longer.

With the above tips, we are sure you will be able to write an excellent travelling essay  that will impress your professor and fetch you a good grade.

And if you are still unsure about putting these to use, then below is a winning sample to show you how it is done!

Travelling essay sample

I have visited London several times, and yet it is amazing how I find something new to explore every time I visit the capital city. My visit last autumn too did not fail to surprise me. With the hustle and bustle and the rich royal history, London city has a lot to offer. Since I just had a few days to spare, I wanted to make the best out of this trip.

Although vast and sprawling, I decided to visit most of the city on foot this time. Now since in my previous visits I had seen most of the tourist-y attractions already, I wanted to take the path less travelled this time to discover the hidden gems of the city. The last time I had been to London, I had missed out on the chance to visit the chock full of literature and history that awaited me in the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. Being a student of literature, visiting the place where the Bard of Avon once enacted the plays he wrote was a spellbinding moment. And guess what? I also caught a staging of the Macbeth before I left the place. Before heading towards the Hyde Park tube station, I grabbed some of London’s famous Fish ‘n’ Chips from the oldest food market of the city, the Borough Market. From Hyde Park to Tower Hill in under fifteen minutes by Tube, I began exploring the Tower of London. It was there that I heard a guard speaking about where he hailed from. A quick conversation with Peter, I had gotten intrigued to know more about his village – Suffolk in Lavenham. I asked him how to get there and Peter, being the quintessential helping guide that Londoners are known to be, told me that I could either take a car from central London. Or I could wait for the next day and take the train from Liverpool to Sudbury and then take the bus route 753 and reach in around two hours. Having nothing to do, I spent that day in the British Museum and walking on Oxford Street.

The next morning, I started my journey to the quaint village of Suffolk. I had picked up a book about the village where I learned that the village had once housed Henry III in 1257. And a bonus for all the Harry Potter fans – the village also starred in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as Godric’s Hollow where Hermoine and Harry are seen to be visiting Bathilda Bagshot. On reaching the village, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the picture-perfect silhouette of prosperous medieval England with all the half-timbered houses. The lime-washed and brightly coloured buildings added an idyllic element to the village with the De Vere House standing out from the rest. Adding to the rustic touch was the fifteenth-century St Peter Church with its soaring height of a 141ft tower. The autumn breeze welcomed me as I walked on the leaf-covered high streets. I saw some young guns cycling around in a park and called out to them for directions. My stay for the trip was an Air BnB home-stay where I had to put up with an elderly couple – the Havishams. I still remember how on reaching the gate of the house, I had caught a waft of crumpets and hot scones. After an exchange of banalities followed by me gorging on the scones, I had found out about the hidden gems from Mr Havisham who happened to be quite a cheerful talker. He told me what a must-visit Hadley’s was when in Suffolk. I had then set out with a local map to find the hidden gem. On reaching I had found that Hadley’s was a cutesy ice cream shop, almost run down, run by an old lady. Here Rebecca told me how the ice cream parlour was opened back in the 1850s and was still known for their hand-made sorbets.

Like the sorbet, my stay in Suffolk had been a sweet experience – a trip of revelation. The tour – with all the lonely walks – had in an inexplicable way helped me to get my perspectives right. It isn’t the exotic locales and the flight above the clouds that make travelling my drug. Rather, it is little but beautiful discoveries like Suffolk that feed my wanderlust. Thank you, London. Thank you for being a wonderful experience, once again.   

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8 Travel-Writing Tips From Professional Travel Writers

Devon Delfino

​​Travel writing has a way of transporting the reader to new places. When done well, it can even inspire others to explore, experience new things, and gain an appreciation of different cultures. But when you sit down to start writing about your own travel experiences, it can be challenging to know where to start.

A place is so many things, after all. It’s the people, the architecture, the sounds of the city, the smells and tastes of the food, and more.

Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your writing shines? Grammarly can check your spelling and save you from grammar and punctuation mistakes. It even proofreads your text, so your work is extra polished wherever you write.

Your writing, at its best Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly

So how do you take everything that happened and condense it into a readable blog post? How do you take your experiences and turn them into a story ? To find out, we talked to six professional travel writers and bloggers.

Here’s what they said:

1 Understand why you’re writing

Before writing a travel post, think about what you want to get out of it. That way, you can work toward something and have a starting point you care about.

“I feel accomplished when I get feedback that travel posts on my blog sparked interest for someone to go to a place or exposed them to a locale they’d never heard of,” says Lola Méndez, the writer behind Miss Filatelista , a travel blog with a focus on sustainability. “For me, the elements that are important are those that will make someone wonder or question something . . . I’m trying to spread awareness about how we can all be more mindful travelers as we explore the globe.”

Your approach will depend on what you value most. For Amanda Kendle of NotABallerina.com, that’s getting other people to value travel as much as she does.

“I start with what makes me most excited,” says Kendle. “Rather than write a ‘Top 10 things to do in Venice’ post, I tend to start with the event or story that affected me the most, or that I’ve found myself telling people over and over . . . what I love to do is talk about something I learned from the experience and how I pushed the borders of my comfort zone, perhaps by making a bigger effort to talk to strangers, or by taking part in an activity I wasn’t sure I’d like.”

Having your ‘why’ in place at the start allows you to easily build in a sort of theme into your post. Then you can thread that throughout your work and create a stronger, more cohesive post and blog.

2   Make it your own

“Travel writing should be exciting to read. It should make the reader feel like they are next to you on the powdery beach with a warm breeze tickling their shoulders. They should be able to taste the curry, rich with coconut milk, lime, and lemongrass. They should be able to hear the chaos of the city traffic and smell the sewage wafting from the grimy streets,” says Katie Diederichs of Two Wandering Soles, which she runs with her husband, Ben Zweber.

In other words, details matter, and so does your unique perspective.

“Figure out what’s important to you and focus on that; write about your experience, and what’s unique about it. We live in a world where so much information is at our fingertips, but the way you experienced a trip—your emotions, your reactions, the crazy things that went wrong, the people you met and chatted with—is unique. That’s what makes interesting writing,” says Kendle.

3   Know the general rules of travel writing

Every type of writing has its own conventions—things that are expected and generally agreed upon as best practices within the space. For travel blogs, that often means the writing should:

  • Be written in first-person
  • Tell the story in the past tense
  • Be conversational in tone ( dialogue can be useful here)
  • Contain sensory details
  • Give the reader value in some way, whether that’s providing useful tips for navigating or insight into a culture
  • Make it relatable to the audience

Since you’ll also be writing online, readability is key. For Diederichs, that means doing things like including a table of contents so the reader can jump to what they’re looking for, using short paragraphs, bolding key sentences, and segmenting the article with subheads. She adds, “Also, keep in mind that the majority of your audience is likely coming from mobile, so make sure that the text is an appropriate size and it is easy to read while scrolling.”

You don’t have to stick to the established rules and conventions, but it’s helpful to know what’s common—that way you’ll be able to break those rules with intention and purpose, rather than accidentally.

4   Edit your travel writing

Writing is a skill, and first drafts—whether they’re novels, articles, or travel blog posts—are rarely, if ever, perfectly executed. That’s where editing comes into play.

“The editing process really is the most important part, as that’s when I take my rough idea and hone it into something useful,” says Matthew Kepnes of travel blog NomadicMatt. “Anyone can start a blog these days. What separates the good blogs from the great blogs is the quality of writing.”

While editing your work, you’ll want to consider several key aspects, like: Storytelling (including things like word choice and evocation); grammar (word processors and editing software can help); and overall effect (is there a consistent tone and voice? Does everything serve the larger purpose of the post?). Reading the post out loud can help you identify inconsistencies.

“I learned early on from re-reading my much-too-detailed travel diaries from various trips that there really is no need to reproduce a trip in every detail. I find the most important part, the message I really want to share, and focus on that,” says blogger, and host of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, Kendle.

5   Avoid travel writing cliches

The travel-writing space is awash in cliches. But those are never something you want to include in your posts because it makes for a stale, rather than engaging, reading experience.

“Everyone has their own experiences and voice. Tell your story, and don’t copy others,” advises Diederichs.

If you’re working on a description and you just can’t seem to avoid the cliches —crystal blue waters, breathtaking vistas, “a place out of time”, bustling marketplaces or city streets, authentic anythings, places that are “off the beaten track”, cultural melting pots—try focusing on the truly evocative details, the things that stick out you most, the themes or comparisons you want to make, and break out the thesaurus.

If that doesn’t work, consider using a photo to convey the information instead. A travel blog is a multimedia platform. Writing is the core of it, but the photographs, videos, and audio recordings contribute as well.

6   Be confident in your abilities

It’s easy to see the many existing travel blogs and think, ‘what could I possibly have to add?’ But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a valuable and unique contribution.

“Don’t hold back because you think it’s a saturated field or you only have the budget to visit the town next door,” says freelance journalist and travel blogger Méndez. “Your experiences are valuable. Write from your heart—people will keep coming back to your blog if you’re authentic in the way you share what you saw or felt in a place.”

Your writing should sound like you and should reflect your unique perspective. And the more you write, the more confident you’ll become in the value of that point of view, as well as your own expertise.

“Over the years I’ve also become much more focused on what’s important to me about a travel experience (which is usually the life lessons) and less concerned about what I thought ‘should’ be in it (like an analysis of a painting at a gallery). I write what I want to read,” says Kendle.

7   Continually hone your craft

Practice is a necessary part of learning any new craft. Travel writing is no different in that respect.

“I’ve gotten much better at using things like Grammarly to help with my writing…I kick myself all the time that I didn’t have the courage to start earlier. The more you write, the better you get at it and if you help even just one person, it’s rewarding,” says Kristen Guglielmo of KristenAbroad.com.

If you want to be a better travel writer, it’s a good idea to build your skills by writing every day and reading great travel posts to get inspired, notes Kepnes, adding, “It’s a long, slow process to improve your writing, but as long as you stick with it you’ll make progress!”

8   Remember: It isn’t only about the Instagram-worthy stuff

Good travel writing doesn’t have to focus solely on the beautiful and expected. It’s about all aspects of your experience, and taking the reader somewhere new often means showing them the unexpected.

“I want it to look good and I want to inspire, but I don’t want it to be so unrealistic that people think they’re failing because they can’t live up to it,” says Eric Stoen of Travel Babbo, where he chronicles his trips with his kids.

Travel isn’t always beautiful, and as Stoen points out, people tend to bring their real-world problems with them on vacation and that impacts the experience. But more than that, places are no more perfect than humans are. And sometimes they don’t live up to our expectations.

Even though it may feel like you have to conform to certain standards as a travel writer, there’s room for more than one kind of experience of travel.

“I think being authentic and honest is one of the biggest things to separate the mediocre bloggers from the great ones. The goal is for the reader to see, feel and taste what you are describing. Even if it’s not pretty,” says Diederichs.

Places, like people, are seldom what we think they’re going to be. That’s a good thing. The world would be a lot less interesting if we knew how every new experience, every trip, every new encounter, was going to play out. And it’s ok, and even encouraged, to talk about those discrepancies.

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Pure Travel

How to write a travel essay?

  • August 25, 2020

What could be more exciting than a trip? One finds himself in it, understands what is wrong with the place where he was born and grew up, and rethinks his whole life. An exciting journey is a sort of sip of freshness and inspiration for new beginnings. However, it’s not easy for everyone to describe and talk about their travels. We spoke to essay writers from EssayShark and discovered all the secrets of writing about travel.

What is a travel essay?

A travel essay is a story about the author’s journey to a certain place and a description of his or her emotions, feelings, and experiences resulting from that journey. The trip does not need to be to a remote or extreme location. A visit to a village with relatives whom you have not seen since childhood can be more precious and memorable than climbing to the highest peak in your country. This type of essay is usually written in the first person and includes a large number of personifications. Today travel blogs are becoming more and more popular and are not just about colorful photos. Texts play an equally important role.

Tips on writing a travel essay

It is important to be able to interest your reader and make them read the story to the end. If you start your story with “Last summer, I went to a neighboring state,” you are unlikely to intrigue anyone. Try to start your essay with a quote or a phrase that will make you want to dig deeper. “Jump faster, what are you waiting for? He’s already right behind us! “my friend shouted.” The reader immediately has many questions: Where should he jump? Who is chasing them? Will they be able to run away? Then comes the story, and the intrigue of jumping with a friend is revealed only at the end.

Breaking the chronology also works fine if you have the task of enticing the reader. For example, the story begins with a description of a situation where the author of the text finds himself in some incredible situation. Then the text follows the phrase: “Two hours before these events, I had no idea that this could happen to me.”

Never write an essay when you are still traveling

During the trip, it is better to write down the details and emotions that you get in new places, but not to write the whole essay. You’ll do that when you get back. You need the information to calm down, and the analytical part of the brain will come into play.

Do not rewrite Wikipedia

No one is interested in reading about the Eiffel Tower in Paris for the thousandth time or about the year the Colosseum was founded and who fought there. Leave it to Wikipedia. Stop and think about what you know that’s not on Wikipedia. For example, it doesn’t know what flavors fill the streets of Paris, where they sell delicious buns in Amsterdam, and where to find the biggest bicycle parking .

Tell Stories

The most powerful “hook” to attract readers or listeners is a good story. Something that brings the story to life and what is ultimately memorable. When you tell a story about an architectural monument, no one will remember what year and style it was built. They will remember the legend associated with it. Stories can be written about anything.

Add emotions and dynamics to your essay

When approaching the text critically, however, do not forget about the emotional component. Try to write not so much in words as in images. A genuinely fascinating text should capture the reader, teleport him to the very heart of your story. The reader should feel the air temperature, sounds, tastes, and fragrances that surround you. Do not be afraid of metaphors and epithets.

Do not emphasize the negative aspects of the journey, but do not hide the mishaps

Everyone knows that delicate things can spoil the mood. You get off on the wrong foot, and the day is ruined. You should not confuse your expectations with the actual state of things. However, when you stand on a sea urchin with that very foot, for example, where the encounter with him could not have happened, that’s another story. This experience makes your report special. That’s where practical advice is born.

What should you remove from the travel essay?

  • pathos and pathetic (they kill the text and make it dull);
  • other people’s ideas (use your own words and feelings);
  • the beautiful (magnificent, luxurious, delightful — these epithets no longer have any meaning). It’s better to talk about tactile sensations, smells, and tastes;
  • lengthy descriptions, unnecessary details — banalities and common places;
  • cliches and stamps (“narrow, cobbled streets,” “indelible impressions,” “the fall was due to a loss of balance”);
  • exclamation points and ellipses (their abundance reveals the author’s powerlessness).
  • figures, dates;
  • proper names;
  • geographical titles;
  • everything that indicates the “biggest,” “oldest,” (it often turns out to be false).

Fact-checking

You should especially double-check those facts where you are 100% sure.

If the truthfulness of the story cannot be confirmed, but it is fascinating, there are magic expressions such as “they say,” “there is a version that,” “according to a local legend…”.

Related Topics

  • student travel
  • travel blogging
  • travel essays
  • travel writing

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What You Should Know About Travel Writing

  • An Introduction to Punctuation
  • Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
  • M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
  • B.A., English, State University of New York

Travel writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator's encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject. Also called  travel literature .

"All travel writing—because it is writing—is made in the sense of being constructed, says Peter Hulme, "but travel writing cannot be made up without losing its designation" (quoted by Tim Youngs in  The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing , 2013).

Notable contemporary travel writers in English include Paul Theroux, Susan Orlean, Bill Bryson , Pico Iyer, Rory MacLean, Mary Morris, Dennison Berwick, Jan Morris, Tony Horwitz, Jeffrey Tayler, and Tom Miller, among countless others.

Examples of Travel Writing

  • "By the Railway Side" by Alice Meynell
  • Lists and Anaphora in Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There"
  • Lists in William Least Heat-Moon's Place Description
  • "London From a Distance" by Ford Madox Ford
  • "Niagara Falls" by Rupert Brooke
  • "Nights in London" by Thomas Burke
  • "Of Trave," by Francis Bacon
  • "Of Travel" by Owen Felltham
  • "Rochester" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Observations About Travel Writing

Authors, journalists, and others have attempted to describe travel writing, which is more difficult to do than you might think. However, these excerpts explain that travel writing—at a minimum—requires a sense of curiosity, awareness, and fun.

Thomas Swick

  • "The best writers in the field [of travel writing] bring to it an indefatigable curiosity, a fierce intelligence that enables them to interpret, and a generous heart that allows them to connect. Without resorting to invention , they make ample use of their imaginations. . . . "The travel book itself has a similar grab bag quality. It incorporates the characters and plot line of a novel, the descriptive power of poetry, the substance of a history lesson, the discursiveness of an essay , and the—often inadvertent—self-revelation of a memoir . It revels in the particular while occasionally illuminating the universal. It colors and shapes and fills in gaps. Because it results from displacement, it is frequently funny. It takes readers for a spin (and shows them, usually, how lucky they are). It humanizes the alien. More often than not it celebrates the unsung. It uncovers truths that are stranger than fiction. It gives eyewitness proof of life’s infinite possibilities." ("Not a Tourist." The Wilson Quarterly , Winter 2010)

Casey Blanton

  • "There exists at the center of travel books like [Graham] Greene's Journey Without Maps or [V.S.] Naipaul's An Area of Darkness a mediating consciousness that monitors the journey, judges, thinks, confesses, changes, and even grows. This narrator , so central to what we have come to expect in modern travel writing , is a relatively new ingredient in travel literature, but it is one that irrevocably changed the genre . . . . "Freed from strictly chronological , fact-driven narratives , nearly all contemporary travel writers include their own dreams and memories of childhood as well as chunks of historical data and synopses of other travel books. Self reflexivity and instability, both as theme and style , offer the writer a way to show the effects of his or her own presence in a foreign country and to expose the arbitrariness of truth and the absence of norms." ( Travel Writing: The Self and the World . Routledge, 2002)

Frances Mayes

  • "Some travel writers can become serious to the point of lapsing into good ol' American puritanism. . . . What nonsense! I have traveled much in Concord. Good travel writing can be as much about having a good time as about eating grubs and chasing drug lords. . . . [T]ravel is for learning, for fun, for escape, for personal quests, for challenge, for exploration, for opening the imagination to other lives and languages." (Introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2002 . Houghton, 2002)

Travel Writers on Travel Writing

In the past, travel writing was considered to be nothing more than the detailing of specific routes to various destinations. Today, however, travel writing has become much more. Read on to find out what famous travel writers such as V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux say about the profession.

V.S. Naipaul

  • "My books have to be called ' travel writing ,' but that can be misleading because in the old days travel writing was essentially done by men describing the routes they were taking. . . . What I do is quite different. I travel on a theme . I travel to make an inquiry. I am not a journalist. I am taking with me the gifts of sympathy, observation, and curiosity that I developed as an imaginative writer. The books I write now, these inquiries, are really constructed narratives." (Interview with Ahmed Rashid, "Death of the Novel." The Observer , Feb. 25, 1996)

Paul Theroux

  • - "Most travel narratives—perhaps all of them, the classics anyway—describe the miseries and splendors of going from one remote place to another. The quest, the getting there, the difficulty of the road is the story; the journey, not the arrival, matters, and most of the time the traveler—the traveler’s mood, especially—is the subject of the whole business. I have made a career out of this sort of slogging and self-portraiture, travel writing as diffused autobiography ; and so have many others in the old, laborious look-at-me way that informs travel writing ." (Paul Theroux, "The Soul of the South." Smithsonian Magazine , July-August 2014) - "Most visitors to coastal Maine know it in the summer. In the nature of visitation, people show up in the season. The snow and ice are a bleak memory now on the long warm days of early summer, but it seems to me that to understand a place best, the visitor needs to see figures in a landscape in all seasons. Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. You see that the population is actually quite small, the roads are empty, some of the restaurants are closed, the houses of the summer people are dark, their driveways unplowed. But Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. Boats are repaired, traps fixed, nets mended. “I need the winter to rest my body,” my friend the lobsterman told me, speaking of how he suspended his lobstering in December and did not resume until April. . . ." ("The Wicked Coast." The Atlantic , June 2011)

Susan Orlean

  • - "To be honest, I view all stories as journeys. Journeys are the essential text of the human experience—the journey from birth to death, from innocence to wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, from where we start to where we end. There is almost no piece of important writing—the Bible, the Odyssey , Chaucer, Ulysses —that isn't explicitly or implicitly the story of a journey. Even when I don't actually go anywhere for a particular story, the way I report is to immerse myself in something I usually know very little about, and what I experience is the journey toward a grasp of what I've seen." (Susan Orlean, Introduction to My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere . Random House, 2004) - "When I went to Scotland for a friend's wedding last summer, I didn't plan on firing a gun. Getting into a fistfight, maybe; hurling insults about badly dressed bridesmaids, of course; but I didn't expect to shoot or get shot at. The wedding was taking place in a medieval castle in a speck of a village called Biggar. There was not a lot to do in Biggar, but the caretaker of the castle had skeet-shooting gear, and the male guests announced that before the rehearsal dinner they were going to give it a go. The women were advised to knit or shop or something. I don't know if any of us women actually wanted to join them, but we didn't want to be left out, so we insisted on coming along. . . ." (Opening paragraph of "Shooting Party." The New Yorker , September 29, 1999)

Jonathan Raban

  • - "As a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where different genres are likely to end up in the bed. It accommodates the private diary , the essay , the short story, the prose poem, the rough note and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality. It freely mixes narrative and discursive writing." ( For Love & Money: Writing - Reading - Travelling 1968-1987 . Picador, 1988)
  • - "Travel in its purest form requires no certain destination, no fixed itinerary, no advance reservation and no return ticket, for you are trying to launch yourself onto the haphazard drift of things, and put yourself in the way of whatever changes the journey may throw up. It's when you miss the one flight of the week, when the expected friend fails to show, when the pre-booked hotel reveals itself as a collection of steel joists stuck into a ravaged hillside, when a stranger asks you to share the cost of a hired car to a town whose name you've never heard, that you begin to travel in earnest." ("Why Travel?" Driving Home: An American Journey . Pantheon, 2011)
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Writing a great essay about traveling is a common academic assignment. It’s a simple task if you know useful tricks to tell readers an interesting story. Find enough information and use vivid observations. Know relevant facts to convince the audience. Follow helpful guidelines to submit a perfect essay about traveling experience.

Your College Essay About Traveling: Research a Certain Place

An essay about traveling is all about a specific place you visited. Look at relevant sources and try to write something unique or different. Recreate this place in your readers’ imagination. Be specific and creative in its descriptions. Before you start writing your essay about traveling with family, conduct your research. You should read more about a given place. Learn more about its backgrounds, religion, culture, and so on. This simple strategy will boost your curiosity and reveal other sides of your destination. If you struggle with remembering all the details, it is great to create a blog while traveling where you would put all the interesting stories, remember them and use them when needed.

Writing the Best College Essay About Traveling Experience

If you’re interested in the art of travel essay writing, make sure your paper fits these basic criteria:

  • Has a coherent structure and proper sections.
  • Gives the audience a good grasp of relevant data.
  • Meets the highest academic standards and contains clarity of expression.
  • Includes counter-examples and counter-arguments if appropriate.
  • Uses smooth transitions and signposting to help readers navigate your thoughts.
  • Contains proper references in the required citation style.
  • Offers strong claims with evidence.
  • Has a catchy essay introduction with a thesis and a clear conclusion.

Writing an Essay on Traveling Experiences: Useful Tips

There are certain tips that can help you submit the best essay about your last trip. What are they?

  • Use a capturing introductory section.
  • Use the 1st person perspective.
  • Include smooth essay transitions .
  • Conclude it correctly.

The introduction plays an important role in writing a great paper. Use excellent essay hook examples to grab readers’ attention. Introduce your major argument and use a specific tone to excite the audience. Your essay on traveling is a certain narration of personal experiences. That’s why you need to use the 1st person perspective to make this story real. Including all the experiences is a mistake because some of them are boring. Use only the most interesting ideas. Include people living in the chosen area and quotes or short stories of their lives. Why use transitions? Your story must flow from its beginning to the end. Add smooth transitions to achieve this goal. Use a few interesting details to connect all the parts of your story. How to conclude an essay about traveling expenses ? You need not only to start your paper strongly but also conclude it effectively. Sum up key ideas and include a call to action. Feel free to restate a thesis to do that.

What Else You Can Do: Improve Your Essay About Traveling

To enhance your traveling essay, use these tried and tested tricks:

  • Use images.
  • Avoid clichés and formal language.
  • Avoid assumptions.
  • Specify your story.

Avoid clichés or formal language to make your piece of writing sound more natural. Be sure to use only original and meaningful descriptions and let readers understand everything with ease. Use images in your thematic essay about traveling experience because visual descriptions are an effective way to make the audience understand your story. They bring the audience closer to it. Use breathtaking pictures because they’ll stick in people’s mind for a long time. There are certain errors that many students do when completing this academic assignment. Failing to specify a story about traveling is one of them. Cover minor details to make your paper interesting. Making assumptions is another common error that students make. You need to get facts about a specific place. Assumptions only tell readers a false story. Don’t assume if you aren’t sure about details.

Key Points When Writing a College Essay About Traveling

Keep these basic points in mind when writing your essay about why traveling is important:

  • Take a prompt question into account when reading relevant sources of information.
  • Before you start writing a rough draft, outline what you will say, what evidence you want to use, and how you’ll structure all paragraphs.
  • Use the essay introduction to state your thesis and outline major ideas.
  • Include only the facts relevant to your topic because using irrelevant information won’t bring you high grades.
  • Ensure that every point is clear because readers shouldn’t be puzzled over your words.
  • Use plain and simple language to make strong points and avoid writing confusing or complex sentences. Verbosity will only frustrate teachers. Use a readability tool to make your writing easy-to-comprehend.
  • Demonstrate your awareness of relevant materials.
  • Make sure all paragraphs are in their coherent order with smooth transitions.

The above-stated secrets will help you write a brilliant essay about traveling. If you still find this task challenging, pay for an essay at StudyCrumb and get proficient help from academic writers. They will solve all of your problems easily.

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How to write a travel article

Did you know.

The first examples of travel writing came from Ancient Greece, with writers such as Pausanias who started describing his many journeys around AD 150. Later, during the Middle Ages, travel writing became popular in Arabic and Chinese civilisations as well as in Europe.

Introduction to travel articles

Key learning points:.

  • What is travel writing?
  • What it’s used for and who it is written for.
  • How to write a successful travel article using the techniques and conventions of effective travel writers.

What is a travel article?

Travel writing can be defined as writing that describes places, peoples and cultures.

Types of travel writing literature include:

  • Adventure travel – travel that includes descriptions of memorable experiences, daring expeditions, long arduous journeys, and other adventurous or exciting events.
  • Travel guides – factual information on places, people, culture, customs, languages and history, with recommendations and guidance provided to inspire and inform other travellers.
  • Travelogues – personal experiences of travelling, with descriptions of places, customs and people. Travelogues are often written by authors during their travels.
  • Promotional travel writing – marketing and advertising of places, resorts, activities, events and services, intended to sell holidays or inspire travel to particular locations.

Travel articles can be found in many daily newspapers and popular magazines, in specialist travel publications, or online in blogs and on websites.

Purpose and audience

A travel article’s purpose is primarily to provide information to readers. This can come in the form of researched facts or a description of the writer’s own experiences.

Travel articles are often designed to entertain and so use anecdotes, vivid descriptions and interesting, unusual or impressive facts.

Travel writers think carefully about their target audience.

  • A travel review written for readers of a pensioner's magazine would consider their interests and capabilities, perhaps focussing more on visits to art galleries and other cultural attractions, rather than family theme parks.
  • A travel website aimed at families with young children would contain information detailing if there was childcare available at a resort, if there were activities suitable for children, or if the nearby beach was safe for swimming.

Conventions of travel writing

Travel writing can inspire others to explore, to experience new things and appreciate different cultures. Travel writing has its own conventions :

  • often written in the first-person, using ‘I’
  • tells the story in the past tense
  • relatable and conversational in tone
  • contains sensory details (tastes, smells, sounds, sights)
  • provides useful tips, facts or insights

Here is the opening to a travel article about Victoria Falls, located on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The article is designed to both inform and entertain.

As I walked along the summit of Victoria Falls, through an unexpected lush rainforest, towards the deafening ferocious downpour of the Zambezi River, anticipation coursed through me. Clothes, shoes, hair, skin, every stick, stone, plant, animal, the air itself was soaking wet. At the mouth of the gargantuan 108 metre (354 ft) drop, was an awe-inspiring view of water clouds and a gorge.

In the above extract several travel writing conventions are used:

  • Sensory imagery – ‘deafening’ sound, feeling ‘soaking wet’.
  • The description of the writer’s emotions – ‘anticipation coursed’ and ‘an awe-inspiring view’.
  • Dramatic language – ‘gargantuan’ (meaning massive).
  • Facts – ‘108m (354 ft) drop’.

Structural conventions

This is how to structure a travel article:

Start with a headline , for example:

Victoria Falls: a majestic sight.

Follow with a standfirst – a sentence that summarises what the article will be about, for example:

A natural wonder of the world for both adrenaline junkies and those who prefer more relaxed activities.

Use the opening paragraph to hook the reader. Many travel articles start in the middle of the action – for example, here you could be in the middle of bungee-jumping from Victoria Falls bridge. Then use the next paragraph to explain how you got there.

Use the following paragraphs to build more description. They should include both the adventurous activities and relaxing ones to match the standfirst you used at the beginning. It is important to signpost what you are writing so the reader can keep track of what is happening. For example:

The next day I decided to head for calmer conditions, in contrast, my daring family headed for the helicopter.

  • In the final paragraph , end with a reflection or summary of your experience.

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travel guide essay

How to Write Travel Essay

impressions and unforgettable experience, but how to write about all these things? Some people write essay during the trip, when they are under the impression and can note all their feelings more detailed and clear. Others prefer traveling and enjoying the moment to the full extend and only later setting up to writing. No matter what way you chose, the following guideline will be effective support in creation such type of the think piece.

Select Location

You can visit different places or take a tour, which includes numerous cities or countries. Your task is to choose the place, which seems the most special and interesting for you, that one, which inspires you for writing and sharing with people. Furthermore, the essay can be devoted not only to far countries or cities. Travel essay does not certainly mean writing about something new or exotic. It is also great to describe some neighborhood destination. Sometimes it is great to notice nice and attractive features in the well-known and usual things and places.

Perform Preliminary Research

In order to perform interesting and worthy essay, certain preparation is required. If you go to foreign country, it will be useful to view its sight in the Internet , so that you will have idea where to go. Also it is great to monitor what other people write about this place and define things that can become attractive for you. Knowledge in history , traditions and culture of the location will upgrade your level of feelings and impressions about the place. Besides, it is always appropriate to mention your additional knowledge, which you acquired while your preliminary research.

Choose Your Attraction

For sure, you can find a lot of information about the location, which you have chosen. Numerous guide-books, articles and overviews will help you while travelling and writing. However, we recommend selecting two or three sights for your essay, depending on the required volume. While being on the trip, find your attractions - the sights and places, which you liked most of all. Many people choose famous and well-known locations for their essay; in fact it can work in different way. Beloved by everyone place seems to be a safe choice, but sometimes it is great to write about something special, new and unnoticed by wide audience.

travel guide essay

Add Specific Features

Do not make your essay typical and boring paper, which seems to be the list of sights and restaurants. Your story should be touching and vivid. Thus, if you write about a visit to the restaurant, tell about the atmosphere, national food and taste. Saturate your narrative manner with the spirit of adventure and surprise. While overviewing some architectural masterpieces or sights, describe details and nature . Try to transfer your fascination and impressions, so that the reader will have the feeling that he or she visited this place on his/her own.

Share Your Personal Aptitude

Your story will be better perceived by the readers if you include your personal emotions and thoughts. Writing your essay from the personal perspective makes it more believable, realistic and apprehensible. But at the same time it is important to know when to stop, so that the reader will have some freedom for imagination and creating his own ideas and representation. Tell about your experience, but leave some space for fantasy, excitement and desire to visit this place and view it with one’s own eyes.

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Essay About Traveling: The most unexpected benefits of seeing the world

The Earth is a wellspring of amazing places and fascinating cultures. It is such a shame that we only have one life to explore everything that's out there. There is a bundle of new experiences, feelings and human behaviors waiting just behind the door. Pack your things and go with the flow. It will take you far, far away, it will bring the real you to the surface, it will completely change your life. Do you want to know what other amazing benefits traveling has? Follow us while we unravel them. It's going to be quite an adventure!

Traveling is a history lesson

Learning about the V-Day in school is one thing, traveling to Normandy to actually see with your own eyes the battlefields, is a completely different story. Nothing can compare to the feeling of actually walking barefoot on the beach where so many have fought, where some were victorious, and some were defeated. This is something that no book or movie can offer and nobody can feel it but you.

Connect with your inner self

Being practically connected to our social lives, either online or offline, we often forget how to live outside networking. We share ideas, dreams and hopes with our friends and family but we almost never ask ourselves for advice. Sample expository essay topics can help you to reveal your true inner self.

essay about traveling

"What should we cook for dinner", "where should we spend the night," "should I put one teaspoon of sugar in my coffee or maybe two"? We expect answers almost every day. However, we fail to ask ourselves this one important question: "what do I really want?" The answer, prove to be much more difficult than it seems. That is because you need to go deep within and ask your soul. Somehow we've forgotten to do that, isn't it? Rush, rush, rush, that's what defines our lives now.

You need to travel so you can break this race against time. So you can find who you truly are, for it somehow forces you to break rules, to get out of the comfort zone you’ve nestled for some time. Never pictured yourself hitchhiking? Well, maybe you’ll find it enjoyable. The best part? You can travel solo, get spiritual and bond with nature and people. Push your limits. Get lost. Write a journal. Write traveling business management essay . Start a traveling blog. Take photos. There are no limits on what you can do when you’re having the journey of your life.

Find out what “home” really means

They say that “home is where your heart is” and we couldn’t agree more. A house is not a home. Well, at least not literally. Go out there, travel, find all the pieces of your heart and put them together. Then decide where you feel like you truly belong. There are people who travel around for years until they decide to settle down. You’ll know when you find it. There is no place like home!

You get to strengthen bonds

Traveling is a big deal. Going out there and exploring the unknown is a life-changing experience. The thought of being alone can be frightening for many people, but you don’t have to do it alone. Actually, packing luggage is more fun when you’re doing it with your loved ones. Trying new, crazy things can only bring benefits to your relationship. 
You get to try new things, discover new places, connect with different people and, most importantly, you can have a deeper understanding of you are as a couple. There will be certain situations which can push you to the limit. It’s soothing to know that you can hold somebody’s hand when you need it.

You gain knowledge

One of the most generous compensations of traveling is that you get to know and understand so many new things. You’ll get to know places and people that maybe you have disregarded before. The world is monumental, and we are just a small part of it. This is the first lesson you learn when you make traveling a habit. Getting this fresh perspective will then change your entire vision on what is really important. You will learn to truly value simple things like drinking bottled water or having an Internet connection.

Imagine that there are cultures who worship cats, people who cannot imagine taking a shower without clothes on. Pretty interesting, right? The world does not revolve around you, shake off your pride. You, on the other hand, can literally spin around the world. It will only take you 20 million steps and quite a few years to do so. But you can take the car anytime.

The idea is to breathe knowledge and be open minded. It is the only way traveling can get you wiser. It isn't type of wisdom that can help you to write dissertation outline or teach you how to write a follow up letter but our blog can help with those ones. Traveling is the only way you can get to tell your grandchildren really amazing stories.

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  • Travelling Essay

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500 Words Essay On Travelling

Many people travel for different purposes. Whether it is for a business trip or a holiday trip, we see people travelling often. Some people prefer a hilly area for travelling while the others like travelling to places with beaches. In this travelling essay, we will look at the importance of travelling and how it has changed ever since the old times.

travelling essay

Importance of Travelling Essay

While the reasons for travelling are many, we must not forget that it can be a refreshing experience. Travelling is an experience that can teach us so many things that you cannot possibly learn while living at home.

Firstly, it teaches you how to make new friends . The world is full of people who love interacting. You get to make friends when you travel to new places and spend quality time with them.

Moreover, it also helps you enhance your social skills. After that, travelling is great for learning new skills. For instance, going to mountain regions teaches you how to trek. Similarly, going to beaches helps you learn scuba diving or surfing.

You can also enjoy the beauty of nature when you travel. Similarly, you get to explore nature like never before and find discover the earth’s beauty. Travelling also helps us understand people.

After you spend time at a new place, you interact with the local people of the place. You learn so much about them and their culture. It makes you more open-minded and be mindful of the culture and beliefs of different people.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Travelling: Then vs. Now

Travelling has changed significantly thanks to technology. In the earlier days, it was not easy to travel. Travelling on foot or on animals was the only option back then. Ships were also an option but they were too risky.

Further, people use bullocks and horse carts and even camels to travel. Sled was an option for people travelling to snow-covered regions. Moreover, it was a hassle to travel even to a short distance as it consumed too much time.

However, with the changing times and revolutionary technology , travelling has become one of the easiest things to do. There are so many new ways and means to travel that the travel game has changed drastically.

We can board a variety of vehicles now to travel such as bus, train, truck, aeroplane, submarine, hovercraft, and more. You can reach a place far away within no time thanks to all these transport options.

Further, there are no barriers now. You can use online maps and translators when travelling to a different city or country to help you. Cab service and food service is readily available too. Thus, travelling is very easy now thanks to technology.

Conclusion of Travelling Essay

All in all, travelling can be a fun and learning experience for everyone now. Moreover, with technology, you can travel to any corner of the world without having to worry about barriers of language, distance, and more. Everyone must travel at least once in their life to enjoy an unforgettable experience.

FAQ of Travelling Essay

Question 1: Why is travelling important?

Answer 1: Travelling is important as it teaches us a lot of things. You can learn new skills, new languages, new cultures. Moreover, you get to make new friends and try out new foods when you travel to a new place. It can be a real learning experience for all.

Question 2: How is travelling different now?

Answer 2: Travelling has changed drastically thanks to technology. Earlier, people had to take animals to travel to a new place and it would be time-consuming. Now, there are many transport options available that help you reach within no time. Further, the internet has made travelling easier by offering maps, translation apps, food services, cab services, etc. available at our fingertips.

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Traveling Essay & Tour Guide Paragraph

Traveling is a favorite hobby of many of us. Tour guides are needed to assist foreign tourists. Here is a bunch of essays and paragraphs on traveling and a tour guide. They highlight the importance of traveling, the benefits of an educational tour, and the role and qualities of a tour guide.

Tour Guide Paragraph

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Tourism in Bangladesh Essay, 400 Words

Sentences: 37, Words: 400, Characters: 2412

Introduction: Bangladesh is a treasure trove of nature. There are many beautiful places in Bangladesh. Nature comes to have lavishly bestowed on this land all her beauty and bounties. in fact, Bangladesh is one of the world’s first attractions for tourists.

Who is a Tourist: A tourist is a person who makes a tour just for pleasure.

Difference between a Tourist and a Visitor: A visitor is a known person but a tourist is an uncommon person. A visitor visits a place to see his friends and relatives. But a tourist visits an unknown interesting place for sightseeing.

The Tourist Spots in Bangladesh: Bangladesh has many tourist spots. Some are noted for their natural beauty. Some have great religious and historical associations.

The sea-beach at Cox’s Bazar has charming natural scenery. There are green hills by the side of the beach. The beach is the longest in the world. There are many hotels and restaurants for tourists there. The scenery is charming.

The natural sights of the Kaptai lake are also beautiful. The lake is surrounded by dense forests. It abounds with fish. It has been made by constructing a dam across the river Karnaphully. Tourists like to visit the place.

The deep forests  Sundarbans have a great attraction for tourists. The famous Royal Bengal Tigers live there. Various kinds of birds and beasts are found there.

Sylhet has many natural tourist attractions. Jaflong is the most crowded. She is called the ‘daughter of nature’. There is a river coming down from the high mountains. Ratargul, the only freshwater swamp forest in Bangladesh, is also in Sylhet, which always tops the list of tourist destinations. The huge tea gardens, Hakaluki Haor, and Tangua Haor are very popular tourist destinations.

The Mahasthangarh of Bogra, the Paharpur of Jaipurhat, and the Mainamati of Comilla were seats of Buddhist culture. Many interesting relics have been found there. Tourists interested in history visit these places.

The Shat Gombuj Mosque in Bagerhat, the Lalbagh Fort and Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka, the Dargah of Hazrat Shah Jalal in Sylhet, and Bayazid Bostami in Chittagong are sacred places. Devotes from far and near come to visit these places.

Conclusion: There are many more tourist spots in beautiful Bangladesh. Though tourism has not yet developed as an industry in this country. We can earn more foreign exchange from this sector if we increase security and facilities for tourists.

Tourism & Tour Guide Essay & Paragraph

Travel Essay 300 Words Traveling as a Part of Education

By: Haque , For class 9-10/SSC

In the Arabian Nights Entertainment’s we read of the strange adventures of a sailor, Sindbad by name. In fact, Sinbad’s lust for travel represents the natural wonder lust of man. He is curious by nature. He always wants to know the unknown and see the unseen. Books and pictures do not give him full satisfaction; he wants to know, see with his own eyes. This is why he is so fond of traveling.

The educational value of traveling cannot be overestimated. It gives us first-hand knowledge of the places through which we pass; their physical features, their crops, and minerals, their natural beauty. It also brings us into contact with different ways of life. These lessons in nature are more vivid and effective than what we learn from reading books. We read of the majesty of the Himalayas and the vastness of the ocean, of the aboriginal tribes like the Santals and the Kolas, and the lives of the village people in the interior. But we cannot have a clear idea about them until we see them with our own eyes. This is why educational tours are encouraged everywhere. Travelling gives us pleasures too. Even a short trip to an ordinary new place relieves monotony and fills the mind with joy.

We have now different means of travel. However, the best way to visit natural tourist destinations is to travel on foot or by bicycle. It enables us to communicate directly and to study thoroughly with the places we go through or the scenes we see. In this way, the joy of adventure is combined with the joy of knowledge and experience, and we can enrich ourselves. Besides, it offers a good lesson in bearing hardships of all sorts—hunger, sun, rain, fatigue, etc. And this is good training for success in the struggle of life.

Tour Guide Paragraph

In 140 words, for class 5 to 10

Write a paragraph about a tour guide. Include answers to the following questions in your paragraph:

  • Who is a tour guide?
  • What does a tour guide do?
  • What are the things a tour guide should be interested in?
  • What are the essential qualities of a tour guide?

The person who shows the interesting places of his own country to a tourist is known as a tour guide. A tour guide helps the tourists in many ways. He helps them to get accommodation in a suitable and beautiful hotel to stay in. He welcomes them to a hotel. He is helpful with heavy bags and packets of the tourists. He shows them important and interesting places and things. He guides them as they desire. He must be interested in history and historical places. A tour guide must be smart, well-behaved, friendly, hard-working, and helpful. He is a man of learning, ready wit, and understanding. He must have the knowledge of English to speak to them. He must have training about this job from the Porzoton Corporation. Needless to say, a tour guide is a friend to the tourists.

Tour Guide Paragraph

A Tourist Guide Paragraph

Sketch a paragraph on a tourist guide. Write the importance and the qualities of a tourist guide. Never forget writing the role of him.

Tourism is a part and parcel of education. So, a tourist tours a country to see the places of historic importance and natural beauty. As, a tourist is a stranger, he (or she) needs a guide. A tourist guide must be keen on history and geography and at home in English and other languages because he has to draw a clear picture of the country’s culture, history, and tradition. He also arranges accommodation in hotels and motels, hires cars for traveling, and also provides the tourist with necessary help and information. He is a student, usually hired on a part-time basis and trained in Porzoton or tourism. His role is very important because tourism is a source of earning foreign exchange. A successful tourist guide is the one who can introduce his country to the rest of the world.

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A travel guide

A travel guide

Read a travel guide about Bangkok to practise and improve your reading skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then read the text and do the exercises.

Preparation

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Whether you're travelling to the islands or the mountains of Thailand, you're likely to spend at least one night in its capital city on the way. Bangkok might be noisy and polluted but it's also an exciting city with plenty of things to see and do. Why not make it a longer stay?

Where to stay

The Khao San Road was a famous traveller spot even before Leonardo di Caprio's character in the film The Beach stayed there. But it's noisy, not very pretty and not very Thai. For something more authentic, Phra Kanong offers an alternative place to stay, with its fantastic street markets where everyday Bangkok people eat, work and live. It's not as convenient for the main tourist sites, but it has a Skytrain station so you can be at the Grand Palace in 20 minutes.

How to get around

Bangkok's traffic can be a nightmare. Sure, you can easily take a taxi – if you want to spend hours stuck in traffic jams – but there are two much better ways to get around the city. To explore the temples and historical sites, catch an express boat river taxi or a longtail boat along the Chao Phraya river and the canals. For the modern part of the city, the Skytrain is a fast, cheap way to travel from the river to the shopping malls and nightlife of Sukhumvit, and the famous Chatuchak street market.

Where to eat

The simple answer is: everywhere! Thai street food is among the best in the world, and for around $5 you can eat a filling and delicious meal. Some food stands have little plastic seats where you can sit and eat and they cook the same dish over and over, like fried chicken on rice or Pad Thai noodles. Head for Chinatown – Yaowarat Street – and choose whatever looks most interesting from the many excellent Chinese and Thai restaurants and food stands.  

After you've seen the main sites like the Giant Buddha at the temple of Wat Pho and the spectacular Grand Palace, and shopped at Chatuchak market, check out the snake farm and watch the live snake show. You can even touch a snake yourself if you want to!

Would you like to visit Bangkok? Why or why not?

Language level

I would like to visit Bangkok, because I like to travel. I like to see new places, make photos and meet new people. The culture of Thailand is completely different, I hope one day I'll have oportunity to go to Thailand.

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Of course, only if the opportunity were given because the place I have wanted to know since I was little is Spain, exactly Ibiza.

Maybe in the future, but not anytime soon. I would like to explore different places like Europe because it's closer and less crowded than Bangkok.

Actually, I don't want to visit Bangkok, it's noisy and dirty but I'd like to visit the another parts of Thai, for example, Pattaya or Phuket

I would like to visit the Thailand, Because I always watch the movie ‘ If drinking, not married’, and there it’s talks about the Bangkok, and since then, I want to visit Bangkok. And because I want to prove the Tailand foods, because I like pepper, and I think that the Tailand Food it has much pepper.

I would like to visit Bangkok, but only for one day. I know that Bangkok might be noisy and polluted. I would like to test their street food, to visit main sites and to travel by the river

I would like to visit Thailand to experiment delicious food and to discover the Thai landscapes that look very beautiful.

yes i want to visit Bankok because i want to experiment their culture, their food

Yes! I would love to travel to Bangkok because I've never been to Thailand. I heard their food is delectable.

At the moment I would not like it, I like the idea of ​​knowing Spain more, I am more interested in its culture.

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Writing Competition for Kids 2023

The writing competition 2023 is closed now! 

Wow! What fabulous essays you have sent through! We are excitedly looking forward to reading them all!

***Winners will be notified and announced here on 1 November 2023!*** 

All entries that reached us before 2 October 2023  were accepted. Apologies if your thank you note was only received slightly delayed. It seems our system was struggling with the many entries that were sent through during the few last days!

competition 2023 closed

Kids World Travel Guide's 8th annual essay competition

2023 Theme was: 'Wildlife: Nature’s Stars'

competition 2023

The world is changing rapidly while people move and travel all around the world. More than ever climate change impacts all regions of our planet and creates challenges to all living beings.

The overexploitation of the natural environment for a growing population poses danger to wildlife habitats. We know that travel and tourism can uplift communities and support wildlife conservation efforts but that the rising numbers of tourists also are a burden on many areas around the world. 

Let’s be responsible and explore the world in a meaningful way. We must protect our environment and thus must learn about wildlife and habitats.

Writing Competition 2023 Theme: 'Wildlife'

Nature was the inspiration behind many clever inventions and thus we must connect with nature and shall learn from nature to be able to give back as much as we can to improve our environment. This means protecting wildlife habitats while uplifting communities. If we learn to live with nature our planet will become a better place!

Now over to you, share your fascinating stories with us and our young readers once again.

Join our annual writing competition on Kids-World-Travel-Guide.com! Write about your ideas, experiences, insights and favourite wild animals and let all know what gives you hope and makes you happy thinking about wildlife and our natural environment!  

Be creative and above all keep it positive!  Tell us about all the wonderful things you already experienced or hope to experience in future, share your ideas on living peacefully with wildlife within our environment. Research about wild animals and natural habitats or tell us fascinating conservation initiatives and pionieering ideas and people in your communities.

And don’t forget to add in your essay some paragraphs about your personal dreams for the future of our planet.

Junior Category: 8 - 11 years

Essay length: minimum 300 words - maximum 500 words  

The essay may include the following topics:

  • My favourite wild animal (Research a wild animal and its habitat and tell us about it and why you choose this animal)
  • My dream of going on safari (What do you hope to experience when going on safari?)
  • My safari travel experiences (Tell us about your safari adventure)
  • A special wildlife rescue centre (Which wildlife rescue center would you love to visit and why?)
  • If a wild animal could speak ... (Imagine: You are an endangered wild animal. What would you tell us?Describe your animal life and your dreams for the future)
  • My favourite book about wildlife  (What is the book about, what makes this book so outstanding and why do you like it so much?)
  • My favourite wildlife hero  (Research a conservationist and tell us about the achievements of this person and what it can teach us.)

The essay has to be submitted in English, but may include words or phrases in a foreign language.

Senior Category: 12 - 15 years

Essay length: maximum 500 - 700 words

  • Wildlife habitats: challenges and achievements
  • Tourism's impact on wildlife: positive achievements
  • Wildlife conservation efforts worldwide
  • Inspirational people: Biography of a wildlife conservationist
  • Inspirational wild places: Tell us about fascinating nature reserves, national parks and safari travel adventures
  • Inspiring traditions and customs of local communities in protecting wildlife
  • Sustainable living for a better planet

The essay has to be submitted in English, but may include words or phrases in a foreign language (with comments and translations, please).

Competition 2023 Poster

Please spread the news about our new essay competition for buddying writers and young travellers. Looking forward to receiving all the wonderful essays from your students and children! 

Here is also our Competition Poster for your school.

competition 2023 poster

Last but not least here are some questions to start with when reflecting on the essay topic 'Wildlife':

  • What means 'wildlife'? Which wild animals do you know? What makes wildlife Nature's stars?
  • What are endangered species? Why are species threatened or endangered?
  • If a wild animal could speak, what would it tell us?
  • Do you have a favourite book or author that share info about wildlife and our environment.
  • What is a habitat? Which habitats do you find fascinating and why?
  • What are dangers to wildlife and what is done to combat these dangers?
  • Do you know wildlife conservation examples? Are there any wildlife rescue centres in your neighbourhood or nearby?
  • Do you know about famous wildlife conservationists or can you name people who work with endangered species? Special work, goals and achievements?
  • What kind of tourism involves wild animals?
  • What impact does tourism have on wildlife?
  • Which countries are famous and known for wildlife experiences or safaris?
  • Have you been on safari? Where would you like to go on safari and why?
  • Which wildlife initiative bring you hope? 
  • How can we build a better planet for us all? How can we share our planet with wildlife to provide a future for us all?
  • Are you part of a wildlife conservation initiative Please share your interest with us and tell us about your activities in regards to wildlife conservation? 
  • Which conservation efforts inspire you? Are there any heroes or heroines that you admire?
  • Do you have a favourite book about wildlife or life on our planet that you would recommend? Is there a story people should read to be inspired? Provide a short summary and tell us the reason why the book could be of good use to others.
  • Which places and customs in regards to wildlife conservation do you find inspirational? 
  • Which quote or proverb does motivate and inspire you? Please also research the author of the quote and give us an overview about the person and the saying, the reason for the quote and what it means to you personally. Here are some famous proverbs which might also provide you with some ideas for your essay entry:

“To reconnect with nature is key if we want to save the planet.” Jane Goodall

“nature is our biggest ally and greatest inspiration.” sir david attenborough, "i have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it." sylvia earle.

Now it’s up to you: Be a writer, journalist, poet or artist, let us know what wildlife protection means to you and share your inspirational story about nature's stars: wildlife!

The topic is quite broad this year again, so we trust you will be motivated to share your story! Maybe some of you want to write more than one essay now or write the essay with a partner or group? Please let us know if this is the case...

Now we wish you all a wonderful time planning and writing your essay!

And remember: This year’s deadline is strictly

1 October 2023 (10:00 pm/ 22:00 UTC)

Important info about this writing competition

Writing Competition Entry Fee: None. Entries are open from anybody in the specified age groups and from anywhere in the world. However, only online entries on the specified entry form are accepted. Entries open until 1 October 2023. See form below or click here.

Writing Competition Prizes: Each of the category winners (8-11 years/ 12-15 years) will receive a voucher of US $50. The runner-up in each category will win a prize worth $25.

No participation certificates will be provided if not agreed and confirmed by Kids World Travel Guide. Please note: See point 4. of Conditions and Terms below. Schools that request certificates please have a liaison teacher send in a list of your participants' names as described.

The best essays in each category of the writing competition will be published on Kids-World-Travel-Guide.com and thus will be seen by thousands of visitors! The winning essays are also great publicity for your school, so let your teacher or headmaster know about this valuable and free opportunity to spread the word.

Good luck and enjoy the journey!

Writing Competition Terms and Conditions

1. The 'Wildlife' competition is open to pupils in schools worldwide as well as to homeschooling students. Learners taking part in the competition must fall into one of the two categories, ages 8 - 11 years and 12 -15 years. Parents and teachers can  submit the children's essays online  and can contact us with  further queries via our contact form . Pupils also can apply but must be in possession of parental consent.

2. All information detailing how to enter the competition forms part of these terms and conditions. It is a condition of entry that all rules are accepted as final and that the competitor agrees to abide by these rules. Submission of an entry will be taken to mean acceptance of these terms and conditions. Any special considerations are at the full discretion of this site's editor. Also make sure to be familiar with our privacy policy.

Read our Privacy Policy here.

3. To participate in this competition, entrants must write a feature article on the topics as described above in approximately 500 words, see further details above. Entries must be the work of the individual submitting them and must not have been published elsewhere or have won a prize in any other competition. It is the responsibility of each entrant to ensure that no element of their entry infringes the copyright of any third party or any laws. Entries will be judged on which are the most original, interesting and entertaining. 

4. Entries should be submitted via  the online entry form  and must include the entrant’s (preferably the participant's school as well) full address and an email contact. Or your can send the entry within an email to info @ kids-world-travel-guide.com. Email attachments will NOT be accepted!

5. Entries for this writing competition must have been received by 1 October 2023  (10:00 pm/ 22:00 UTC) to be considered for the competition and possible publication on Kids World Travel Guide. 

6. The judging panel will be the editor and team of Kids-World-Travel-Guide.com. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence shall be entered into. 

7. Copyright in all submissions to the competition remains with the respective entrants. However, each entrant grants a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual licence to KidsWorldTravels to feature any or all of the submissions in any of its publications, its websites and/or in any promotional material connected to this competition. 

8. Illegible, incomplete or defaced entries will not be accepted. No responsibility can be accepted for lost entries and proof of sending will not be accepted as proof of receipt.

9. Two entries from all winning entries in the 2023 writing competition, one for each category, will be chosen for participation in a special blog article which will be published on the website on 1 November 2023. 

10. The winning entrants of the 2023 annual competition will receive prizes. Prizes must be claimed within 60 days of the winner and runner-up being notified. Notification of winners by 1 November 2023 . No correspondence or negotiation will be entered into after this period. 

11. The prizes in this writing competition as described are available on the date of publication and are subject to availability. Kids-World-Travel-Guide.com is responsible for the publication, adjudication of this competition and the provision of the prizes.

12. Events may occur that render the competition itself or the awarding of the prizes impossible due to reasons beyond the control of the organiser and accordingly the organiser may at its absolute discretion vary or amend the promotion and the entrant agrees that no liability shall attach to the promoter as a result thereof. 

Image credits on writing competition page: Shutterstock.com, Canva and own images

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St James Way: The return of the UK's medieval highway

St James Way: The return of the UK's medieval highway (Credit: Britpix/Alamy)

I was balancing on one leg, arms outstretched like a scarecrow. I turned my head in slow motion to look for my shoe over my right shoulder, which made my standing leg and arms flail like an inflatable tube man. I retreated back to my one-legged scarecrow, unsure of what to do next. 

It was a stormy afternoon and I was stuck in a cabbage field in rural Berkshire. Walking through flooded English farmland during one of the wettest Marches on record, I'd slipped out of my left boot, leaving me balancing on one foot over a muddy puddle that was big enough to bathe in. In the sky, two red kites circled above me, letting out high-pitched whistles between swoops. At first, I thought they were laughing at my failed attempts to escape the mud, but it soon dawned on me that I looked like a drowned field mouse, and they were likely eyeing me for dinner. 

With rain seeping through my jacket and my hiking boot lost to a cabbage field, I wanted to give up. But then I saw something ahead that urged me to continue: a yellow scallop shell on a blue roundel.

Scalloped yellow shells point pilgrims from all over the world towards Santiago de Compostela (Credit: RooM the Agency/Alamy)

Scalloped yellow shells point pilgrims from all over the world towards Santiago de Compostela (Credit: RooM the Agency/Alamy)

I was a just child when I saw my first Camino sign. Between the ages of three and 10, I lived in what was then a small dirt-road village on the south-east coast of Spain. The elongated scallop shell at the end of my road pointed north to Galicia, leading pilgrims across the Iberian peninsula to Santiago de Compostela , where the remains of St James the Apostle are said to be buried in the city's 10th-Century cathedral. 

A network of medieval routes across Spain, France and Portugal, the Camino de Santiago grew in popularity after the Galician priest Father Elías Valiña Sampedro marked the route with yellow arrows in the 1980s. But it wasn't until 2019 – when a record-breaking 347,585 people hiked the Camino – that pilgrim numbers approached those of the medieval period, when 500,000 people walked the Camino every year. After two years of pandemic restrictions, 2023 is expected to be the Camino's busiest year yet. 

The Camino's growing popularity has encouraged the revival of pilgrimage routes across Europe in recent years, the latest of which is in south-east England. I was walking the newly waymarked St James Way , a 68.5-mile trail from Reading – the seat of St James in medieval England – to Southampton, where medieval English pilgrims would have set sail for Spain to begin the so-called Camino Ingles from Ferrol or A Coruña to Santiago de Compostela. While this path sees far fewer pilgrims than the Camino's more-popular Camino Frances and Camino Portugues routes, new signposting, OS mapping and a network of pubs and churches offering stamps aim to revive England's lost pilgrimage culture. 

I eventually dragged the boot towards me with the help of a sodden stick. Back on two legs, I soon reached the scallop shell – one of 432 new waymarkers put up by volunteers to help navigate pilgrims – and continued on my way.

New signs now mark the 68.5-mile St James Way from Reading to Southampton (Credit: Gregory Davies/Alamy)

New signs now mark the 68.5-mile St James Way from Reading to Southampton (Credit: Gregory Davies/Alamy)

"Unless you see yellow arrows and scallop shells, it isn't a Camino," said David Sinclair, a Confraternity of St James (CSJ) volunteer who led the trail's waymarking project. Sinclair joined the CSJ in 2012 after walking the Camino Frances from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. "CSJ members had already done a lot of research on the route when I joined, but I felt that for the St James Way to be recognised as a Camino, we needed to waymark it. We also needed stamps." 

Sinclair's waymarking project came after Galician authorities reduced the minimum kilometres required to qualify for a Compostela certificate from 100 to 75 (the distance from Santiago de Compostela to A Coruña), with the condition that you complete at least 25km in your own country, in December 2016. Work to waymark the St James Way – seeking permission from local authorities and hammering more than 400 waymarkers by hand – began in 2020 and took 18 months to complete. Sinclair also encouraged pubs and churches along the route to offer stamps to pilgrims.

2023 is expected to be the Camino's busiest year yet

"Walking the Camino gave me something, so I wanted to give back," Sinclair said, as we passed the ruins of 900-year-old Reading Abbey , once one of the largest monasteries in Europe, at the start of my walk. "I used to think that if you weren't walking for religious reasons, you weren't a true pilgrim. But now I believe that to walk to Santiago is to be a pilgrim, regardless of your faith. The Way is for everyone." 

Sinclair had accompanied me as far as the Kennet and Avon Canal in Reading that morning, where the rain had already started to pour. I passed the Starbucks and Wagamamas of Reading's shopping centre before following the swollen canal towards Mortimer, where anchored narrowboats puffed with smoke and fallen branches floated in the muddy water like crocodiles in a swamp.

St James Way starts near the ruins of the 900-year-old Reading Abbey, one of Europe's largest monasteries (Credit: Michael Winters/Alamy)

St James Way starts near the ruins of the 900-year-old Reading Abbey, one of Europe's largest monasteries (Credit: Michael Winters/Alamy)

Six and a half miles after leaving Reading, I reached the waterlocked hamlet of Sheffield Bottom , home to migrating swallows, bitterns and the occasional wild Exmoor pony. It was here, not long before losing my left boot, that I stopped at the Fox and Hounds , one of 13 pubs along the route that now offers a stamp to Camino pilgrims. 

"You're the first person I've given this to," said the young bartender, watching me excitedly dip the pub's stamp – a scallop shell with "Fox and Hounds, Sheffield Bottom" inscribed above it – in the ink. I pressed it into my pilgrim passport, purchased at the Reading Museum that morning. "Are you really walking the whole thing?" she said. "It's awful out there."

By that point, I could sense everyone in the pub was listening in. A man tucking into his gammon, egg and chips, yolk running down his chin, chimed in. "What do you get out of it then?" he said, confused why I'd subject myself to four days in the rain. "Is it a mental thing, or something else?" 

I responded that I'd let him know once I reached Southampton.

In Hampshire, part of the trail traces the crystal-clear River Itchen, one of only 200 chalk rivers in the world (Credit: James Osmond/Alamy)

In Hampshire, part of the trail traces the crystal-clear River Itchen, one of only 200 chalk rivers in the world (Credit: James Osmond/Alamy)

Over the next two days, I crossed the county border to Hampshire, via the Roman city of Silchester and the Domesday Book villages of Monk Sherborne and Dummer, to New Alresford . A tannery town during Henry VIII's reign, today New Alresford is known as the UK's watercress capital : chalk streams clearer than glass filtered through dozens of plump watercress beds, where ducks tobogganed down sluices and pastel-coloured cafes served egg-and-cress sandwiches. I ordered a watercress and cheddar scone to go from The Courtyard Tea Rooms – there was still a long road to Winchester, my last overnight stop before pushing to Southampton. 

From New Alresford I followed the River Itchen, one of only 200 chalk rivers in the world. The water was so clear I could see right to its gravelly bottom: brown trout the size of my forearm swam upstream with mouths agape, hoping to catch dragonflies caught in the current. Water-crowfoot – long strands of fluorescent green that flower in the spring – danced under the surface, while warblers flitted between weeping willows bathed in a soft winter glow. Taking time to soak up this rare habitat, I reached Winchester , England's Saxon capital, long after dark.

The next morning, I started early to stop at the Hospital of St Cross , one of England's oldest charitable institutions. I'd heard that as well as pilgrim stamps, the "almshouse of noble poverty" – founded by William the Conqueror's grandson in the 11th Century to provide food and shelter for those in need – still gives a free morsel of bread and a cup of beer to anyone who asks. 

When I arrived, Catherine Secker, the Hospital's porter for more than two decades, was talking with a priest. "Oh, well you look like you've come a long way!" she said. Fifty-four miles in and both feet covered in blisters, I was now hobbling instead of walking. "Come on then, I'll give you your wayfarer's dole."

The Hospital of St Cross has been offering pilgrims the wayfarer's dole for nearly 1,000 years (Credit: Jessica Vincent)

The Hospital of St Cross has been offering pilgrims the wayfarer's dole for nearly 1,000 years (Credit: Jessica Vincent)

I followed Secker inside the Hospital's gift shop, where she filled a ceramic cup with Winchester-brewed ale and placed it on a wooden plate with a silver cross. A bite-sized chunk of white bread followed. 

"Medieval pilgrims were high society – they wanted the best of everything. Fussy lot they were," Secker said. Behind her were century-old black-and-white photos of pilgrims that had come before me, many with manicured moustaches. "They believed in them times that white bread was the best, and beer was safer to drink than water. The wooden plate was to stop the germs. We've been serving it like this since 1132." 

When I asked why the Hospital still serves the wayfarer's dole, Secker answered without hesitation. "Why stop?" she said. "The more you give, the more you get back." 

By the time I reached the Duke of Wellington in Southampton, the last pub on the Way, they'd stopped serving food. I got my final stamp before hobbling to Platform Tavern , where the Sunday roast came stuffed in a pie and doused in meat gravy. From my table, I looked out onto Southampton's port: it was here that the Titanic set off on its fateful journey to New York in 1912 and, before that, where medieval merchants and pilgrims sailed to Spain in search of riches and redemption.

The Duke of Wellington pub, the last pub where pilgrims can get their stamps, is set in a 12th-Century building (Credit: Pictures Colour Library/Library)

The Duke of Wellington pub, the last pub where pilgrims can get their stamps, is set in a 12th-Century building (Credit: Pictures Colour Library/Library)

Today, the ferry only goes as far as the Isle of Wight, so my journey – for now at least – ended here. But just like that moment my boot got stuck in the mud, there was a strange urge to continue – to follow the yellow scallop shell across the sea and all the way north, until my legs could carry me no further.

Slowcomotion  is a BBC Travel series that celebrates slow, self-propelled travel and invites readers to get outside and reconnect with the world in a safe and sustainable way.

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  5. How To Write a Good Travel Essay

    Writing a travel essay requires minimal creativity because trips are full of extraordinary events by their nature, as well as dramas and cultural findings. So, there's no need to make things up or think through ideas while you are writing this kind of essay. To make life even easier you can even order essay.

  6. 12 Types of Travel Writing Every Writer Should Know

    Round-ups. You'll recognize a round-up article when you see one, as it'll go, "40 best beaches in West Europe," or, perhaps, "20 of the greatest walks in the world!". It's a classic tool in any magazine or newspaper writer's toolbox, taking a bunch of destinations and grouping them all under one common thread.

  7. How To Write a Good Travel Essay

    A perfect travel essay must reflect the journey and highlight the little-known facts about the region. It should be infused with the character and culture of the place. If you are feeling stymied while writing a travel essay, then we have some brilliant tips for you that can make the task considerably easy for you.

  8. 8 Travel-Writing Tips From Professional Travel Writers

    Travel writing has a way of transporting the reader to new places. When done well, it can even inspire others to explore, experience new things, and gain an appreciation of different cultures. But when you sit down to start writing about your own travel experiences, it can be challenging to know where to start. A place is so many things, after all.

  9. How to write a travel essay?

    A travel essay is a story about the author's journey to a certain place and a description of his or her emotions, feelings, and experiences resulting from that journey. The trip does not need to be to a remote or extreme location.

  10. What You Should Know About Travel Writing

    Thomas Swick. "The best writers in the field [of travel writing] bring to it an indefatigable curiosity, a fierce intelligence that enables them to interpret, and a generous heart that allows them to connect. Without resorting to invention, they make ample use of their imaginations. . . . "The travel book itself has a similar grab bag quality.

  11. Compilation of Travel Writing Topics for Students

    Posted on April 21, 2020 Great Travel Topics to Write About for Students The student of the geography discipline is always in search of travel essay topic ideas for an essay. To help them with writing topics on travel, we created an extensive list of 50 ideas.

  12. Writing an Essay About Traveling: Tried and Tested Strategies

    An essay about traveling is all about a specific place you visited. Look at relevant sources and try to write something unique or different. Recreate this place in your readers' imagination. Be specific and creative in its descriptions. Before you start writing your essay about traveling with family, conduct your research.

  13. How to write a travel article

    What is travel writing? What it's used for and who it is written for. How to write a successful travel article using the techniques and conventions of effective travel writers. What is a...

  14. Guide for Writing a Travel Essay

    Do not make your essay typical and boring paper, which seems to be the list of sights and restaurants. Your story should be touching and vivid. Thus, if you write about a visit to the restaurant, tell about the atmosphere, national food and taste. Saturate your narrative manner with the spirit of adventure and surprise.

  15. Essay On Travel Tips

    709 Words3 Pages Travel Tips: Arrival Guide for First-Time Travelers According to Lao Tzu, "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving". If we take it literally it sounds intuitive, exciting and adventurous. Unfortunately, a successful trip requires careful planning.

  16. A Surprising Essay About Traveling (Example, 800 Words, Free)

    This is a free sample essay about traveling - 800 words. The Earth is a wellspring of amazing places and fascinating cultures. It is such a shame that we only have one life to explore everything that's out there. There is a bundle of new experiences, feelings and human behaviors waiting just behind the door. Pack your things and go with the flow.

  17. Importance Of Travel Guide

    • Travel guides can give reliable information that can help tourists to know more about the destination Conclusion A Travel Guide is a book information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists. It usually includes full details relating to accommodation, restaurants, transportation and activities.

  18. Travelling Essay for Students and Children

    2.1 Travelling: Then vs. Now 2.1.1 Conclusion of Travelling Essay 3 FAQ of Travelling Essay 500 Words Essay On Travelling Many people travel for different purposes. Whether it is for a business trip or a holiday trip, we see people travelling often.

  19. Traveling Essay & Tour Guide Paragraph » All Paragraph

    Here is a bunch of essays and paragraphs on traveling and a tour guide. They highlight the importance of traveling, the benefits of an educational tour, and the role and qualities of a tour guide. A tour guide shows tourists the important and interesting places. Tourism in Bangladesh Essay, 400 Words Sentences: 37, Words: 400, Characters: 2412

  20. A travel guide

    Where to eat. The simple answer is: everywhere! Thai street food is among the best in the world, and for around $5 you can eat a filling and delicious meal. Some food stands have little plastic seats where you can sit and eat and they cook the same dish over and over, like fried chicken on rice or Pad Thai noodles.

  21. English Project

    High Speed Travel and Tour Travel Agency Analysis Pages: 3 (712 words) Time Travel: If I Could Travel Back in Time Pages: 2 (581 words) Lonely Planet - Travel Guide Book Pages: 6 (1641 words) English Lifepac #8 Self Test #2 Study Guide Pages: 2 (310 words) Project Time Management in the Green Computing Research Project team Pages: 3 (822 words)

  22. Essay about Travel Guide

    Study Guide: To Completely Travel Around The World. Chapter 2-3 study Guide Vocab Moluccas A group of islands in eastern Indonesia; was the center of spice trade during the 1500's and 1600's Cartographer Mapmaker Circumnavigate To completely travel around the world Monopoly Where a country, company, person, etc. has absolute control over an aspect in business because they have eliminated ...

  23. Writing Competition 2023

    Kids World Travel Guide's 8th annual essay competition 2023 Theme was: 'Wildlife: Nature's Stars' The world is changing rapidly while people move and travel all around the world. More than ever climate change impacts all regions of our planet and creates challenges to all living beings.

  24. The British Camino de Santiago trail

    The growing popularity of the Camino de Santiago has spurred the revival of a newly marked 68.5-mile pilgrimage in south-east England. I was balancing on one leg, arms outstretched like a ...