In one line: Travel writing takes you somewhere through a writer's eyes — vivid description plus a personal voice make a place come alive and reveal how the writer feels about it.
Good travel writing isn't a list of sights.
🗺 “The market hit me all at once — frying garlic, a man shouting prices like poetry, and somewhere, a goat that clearly hated everyone.”
You can smell it. The writer mixes sharp sensory detail with a dry voice, so you don't just learn about the place — you feel their experience of it. Analyse how.
What to look for
Sensory description
Sights, sounds, smells and tastes put you right there in the place.
A personal voice
Dry, awestruck or exhausted — the writer's personality colours everything.
Observation + reflection
It notices the place AND what the writer thinks or feels about it.
Selection of detail
The writer picks the telling detail (the angry goat), not everything.
The key move: Ask ‘how does the writer make me feel this place and their response to it?’ Travel writing works through sensory detail plus voice — analyse both.
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Why it matters in the exam: Travel writing can appear in Paper 1. Examiners reward you for analysing how description and voice bring a place alive and convey the writer's experience — not just what the place is like.
Analyse this travel line: “The bus had no brakes I could hear, no seatbelts, and a driver who crossed himself at every bend. By the top, so had I.”
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Watch out: Don't just say ‘the writer describes a place’. The marks come from the specific detail and voice — how the place and the writer's response come alive.