Travel Literature: A Bombing Ground.

Part I 

I find that Old Glory: A Voyage down the Mississippi to be the most effective out of the rest because of the diction that the writer uses was able to engage me throughout the whole extract. 

The diction, was as if he was writing a thriller, and he wasn't really concentrating on his car or mood, what he really was thinking about was the landscape, "the white-painted farms set back behind good fences, each one with its grain silo topped by an aluminum cone like a witch's hat, the long sweep of freshly harvested valleys reduced to hog's bristle". This helps me imagine the environment he was driving through.

The thought of no one but himself was on the road, seemed suspicious. At first, I thought that he was on a somewhat busy road, but when the first line had said, "the road was empty - not a truck or a car in miles," it seemed like he wasn't welcomed into the place he is travelling to.

Part II

On the 15th of April 2013, an ambulance blared its horns in the city of Boston. I had laid inside, staring at the blank ceiling, with my mother and a doctor by my side. The pain in my right arm and my right leg was excruciatingly painful. I couldn't help it, but I cried. My mother was staring at me, with horror and tears in her eyes. I could hear people outside crying like there's no tomorrow. I wished it could all stop.

After 30 minutes, I was rushed straight into a room, which we all call, an ICU. I saw my mother pushing away the nurses and she ran towards me, only to be caught in the doctor's arms. I heard my mother shouting and screaming at the doctor, so she could follow me inside the cream coloured room. She kept screaming and I could still hear her, even when the doors were shut tight.

Mother... I had thought while crying out salty tears, stop... I have heard enough shouting, screaming and crying today, so please, just stop.

The next second later, I saw the world darken, the few hours of surgery was about to commence.

After two weeks, my limbs on the right were still not healed, the doctor had warned me about the third-degree burns, saying that it would take more than a month to heal. I sat on my bed, thinking about that afternoon, and how frightful it was, and I could still remember the bright light, flashing in my bloodshot eyes.

Three people were killed and there were 264 casualties, and that is including me. I was glad to watch the police arresting of the two brothers that planned the 'party', they both deserved it.

"Dear, do you need help? Are you able to walk?" My mother would call me from the kitchen.

"I'm fine!" I would reply, usually.

I still remember that sickening day, especially the horrible sounds that echoed through my ears.

The 15th of April 2013, was the day I nearly lost my life.

Travel Literature: Malaysian Mount Doom

Part One

I find Old Glory: A Voyage down the Mississippi to be the most effective because of its engaging diction and atmosphere. His road trip is told as if it is a thriller. He focuses on describing the landscape more than his car and his mood, which makes it more about the area he travelled to than himself: “The road sliced through a broken, hilly landscape of forest, corn and cattle.”

The way he turns his road trip into a thriller not only engages the reader in the story, but also draws the reader into the situation he is in: “I twiddled my way through the burble on the radio.” He makes himself sound superior to his surroundings, which is necessary in travel literature, even vice-versa.

Part Two

After what a madman might call “rest”, my father and I woke to prepare for our journey in the darkness. Once we had eaten a mediocre breakfast, we walked into the chilly night.

Endless wooden steps began to mark a pathway through mountainous forest. Crickets spurred on the walkers with their soothing chirps, as did frequent breaks. Each step seemed like an arch-nemesis as we crawled up the beginnings of the peak.

Massive slabs of rock painted the second section like a post-apocalyptic final frontier. Torn ropes were our only support now, with a three thousand kilometre drop either side. But as the steepness died down, we had nut bars to feed our hungry leg and arm muscles.

With only half a kilometre to go, frozen plants were illuminated by the beginnings of a sunrise. The top of this mountain seemed like the end of the universe, like a rocky heaven with clouds far below. “We’re so high,” we joked.

Half a kilometre turned into a third as we dragged our dying legs over the desolate plateau of frosted rock. Little cracks where slabs joined gave me comfort, providing me with something to observe.

The peak was a random arrangement of boulders into a wave shape. Ropes were draped down our destination, although they were of little help.

After fifty thousand photos were taken, we edged back down the peak. Then galumphed over the plateau before I leaped down the steps.

The nut bars had kicked in.

With little rest, I sped down the forest, rocks and ridges I had climbed before. Pitcher plants turned into signposts as rock turned to dirt. The vapour dripped on my shoulders no more, because tropical air was in its place.

It was only when I hopped on the coach that I realized how hard climbing Mount Kinabalu was. 

Travel Literature

Travel Literature

Part 1

To me the extract from Old Glory: A Voyage down the Mississippi was the most effective. To me it is attention grabbing from the start when there was the part where he compared the raccoons to a school boy and a beggar, he says they are good at somethings but not at others. He says this when he said that they were "Supremely talented, in a schoolboy way, at night exercises, at noisy raids on garbage cans, at climbing trees, they had no gift at all for crossing roads. Bright lights mesmerized them, and they died careless hobos' deaths on the wooded edges of tiny unincorporated towns." This added some humor into the text already. To me some of the most important parts of a Travel Log are things like humor, interesting happenings and being able to relate, which I mean like when you say "that could happen to me". But things also have to be close to the truth and not exaggerated to get it right or else you won't believe a word of the text.

Part 2

A Cross Country Tour

I cruised along in my car, the highway was relatively empty with only a few 16 wheelers and travelers like me. Besides the roadkill every once in a while and some big dairy farms once every twenty five kilometers where wasn't much, maybe those diners too. I turned on the radio and skimmed through the stations, there were your news stations, pop stations and so on. I stayed on a  country station and hummed to the tune of the song. I checked my gas meter and saw it was running low but I was fifteen kilometers to the nearest town and my remaining gas would only last eight. Either I had a long walk ahead or I had to be really, really lucky. I decided to get as far as I could then try my luck.

Eight kilometers and an empty gas tank later I pulled over to the side of the road. I got out and I tried to flag down some cars for some help but none would stop, but God help me when I looked and saw what was maybe, ten or twenty bikes riding towards me. The riders looked bad to the bone, part of a biker gang most likely. I hoped they would keep on going but of course, that didn't happen they stopped. Their leader, or at least what looked to be approached me. I was expecting some mean words or something from them but maybe that was my naivety. He flashed me a great big smile. His voice was deep and rich, not unlike that of Morgan Freeman's. He said five words. Five words that were those of an angel's.

"Do you need help son?"

Turned out they were quite nice guys despite everything that's said about them. They even gave me some gas, free of charge. I thanked them and they went on their way, even giving me an extra gasoline can in case I needed it. And so, I started up my car and drove on, towards Juarez.

Task 6: Travel Literature

This week, I am going to ask you to experiment in a genre usually associated with non-fiction (although there have also been plenty of fictional accounts): travel literature.

Just like the others this term, your task will consist of two parts; however, unlike the other tasks, which will predominantly deal with genres with which you have some familiarity, your success with this task will depend massively on how much you are able to learn from Part One - and how much you are able to demonstrate what you have learnt when you write your own piece in Part Two.

Part One

Mrs Gougeon will put on the weebly all FIVE EXCERPTS from famous and successful pieces of travel literature. You need to READ them carefully, CHOOSE which one you thought was the most effective of its genre, and EXPLAIN, in some detail and with examples (i.e. quotations), why you made your choice.

This is your chance to identify some of the most successful ingredients of good travel literature - e.g. witty anecdotes, figurative descriptions etc. - in order that you can try to embed those very same techniques in your own travel writing in Part Two.

Part Two

First of all, you will need to DECIDE on your subject matter. Unless you have spent the last 12-16 years locked 24/7 in a darkened room, you have all travelled considerably, whether it be internationally, nationally or just in the local area. And it is important to realise that good travel literature does not need to be about some exotic location: one of my favourite pieces by American travel writer, Bill Bryson, is simply about a small section of the Central Line on the London Underground.

Then, using some of the techniques you have observed in one/some/all of the excerpts I have sent you to bring your writing to life and engage and sustain the interest of your reader, you should WRITE (approx) 300-400 words in which you describe an episode from one of your own travels. N.B A tip: don't try to write about an entire holiday, as you will, inevitably, end up just skimming the surface; a brief episode, a particular segment of a journey, one chance encounter - these are ample around which to base such a short piece of travel literature.

The DEADLINE for this task is midnight on Saturday 1st June 2013.

Finally, here is my attempt:

When I was 21, I nearly died.

It was only on 31st October 1996, from the tectonic safety of a house I shared with another trainee teacher, the right side of the walls of H.M.P. Wakefield, home to some of the country's most dangerous and violent criminals, that I first realised quite how close I had come to extinction just under a year earlier. A brief item towards the end of the news mentioned that Gunung Merapi, an active (and, evidently, rather angry) volcano in the middle of the Indonesian island of Java, was erupting. Burning ash was raining down on houses on the mountain's flank, after part of the lava dome itself had collapsed earlier that day.

January 1996. In hindsight, certain details should have spoken louder to us, as we unpacked our rucksacks in the Merapi View hostel the night before our ascent: the eery absence of life emanating from almost all the houses we passed as we strolled around the village upon arrival; the still raw, lifeless canyon carved where half the village had been only two years previously; the fact that the puddles by the side of the road were all bubbling! The incessant plume of smoke from the summit should have warned us that someone was definitely at home; and the distinct absence of any vegetation whatsoever around the entire peak should have made it perfectly clear that visitors were definitely not welcome.

Was it the arrogance of youth? Or the naivete of the foreign traveler? Perhaps we were guilty of exactly the same disrespect we had villified in the hoards of tourists who scaled the holy arc of Uluru in Australia the month before? Deaf to common sense and blind to our own mortality, we duly rose in the middle of the night, donned our waterproofs and walking boots, and joined our brave guide as he took us on the three hour hike to the treeline. Had the sound of the rain abated, had our feverish pace slackened just for a moment, I might have called out to him, and asked him if this was really safe.

However, to be honest, the blackened stumps which spiked the grass as far as the eye could see gave me my answer; as did the thunder which shook the mountainside several times during our climb and descent. For it wasn't thunder. At the end of the news item back in Wakefield, the reporter explained, in sober tones, that the recent eruption was, in fact, nothing more than a continuation: Gunung Merapi had actually been erupting constantly since late 1994.

Note to self: if in close proximity to the fiery peak of an active volcano, walk the other way.