Beyond the Map: Freya Stark and the Art of Writing the World
Write Your Way Around the World: What we can learn from Freya Stark versus contemporary travel writers about travel writing then and now
If you’re new here, every week I share tips, insights and actionable ideas on writing, travel writing and green travel through the lens of a novelist and travel writer (Lonely Planet, DK Travel, etc.) in three newsletters: Storycraft, Write Your Way Around the World and The Green Travel Guide. Welcome, and thanks for coming on the journey!
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In the beginning, there was the map (or no map as yet) - and with it, a promise of the unknown. To awaken alone in a strange town, as travel writer Freya Stark once wrote, “is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.”
Stark’s life and work invite us into that adventure: into the uncharted spaces of geography, language, culture - and by extension, the uncharted territory of what travel writing can be.
One of the travel writers I read early on, I was drawn to Stark’s writing as a fellow polyglot, and someone equally curious about the world around me. The world of travel writing has changed radically since the desert adventures of Freya Stark, and her writing was of course a product of her times. However, by exploring her singular mixture of linguistic curiosity, personal daring, and literary sensibility, we can explore travel writing both then and now. And ask, what ways can a writer best ‘travel’ these days.
As we trace her journey and reflect on the shift in travel writing’s purpose, we can ask: what of her spirit remains in today’s world of Google Maps, Instagram feeds, and curated “experiences”?
A Portrait of Stark: Languages, Landscapes, and a Life in Motion
Born on 31 January 1893 in Paris to artistic parents, Stark grew up steeped in multiple tongues and cultures. Although she had “no formal education as a child,” she mastered French, German, and Italian before entering the University of London in 1912.
From her early years among northern Italy’s landscapes to her later travels in Persia, Yemen and the Arabian deserts, Stark carried languages, maps and notebooks as companions.
What distinguished her among explorers and travel writers was not just where she went - but how she went: with a belief in the power of language to open doors, and of writing to honour what she found.
Here is a traveller who respected the world she entered by trying to meet it on its own terms - learning Arabic and Persian, studying regional histories, and making space in her prose for detail, nuance and the unexpected.
In her book A Winter in Arabia, she wrote:
“I had to write a decalogue for journeys… Then would come the capacity to accept values and to judge by standards other than our own. A knowledge of the local history and language…”
Stark was also one of the first non-Arabs to travel through the southern Arabian desert in modern times.
Her journeys were physically demanding, culturally unfamiliar, and deeply personal. Her books - The Valleys of the Assassins (1934), The Southern Gates of Arabia (1936), The Lycian Shore (1956) - exemplify a travel writing that is part adventure, part ethnography, part poetic meditation.
“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday … placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear.”
Stark not only travelled; she reflected on what travel does to the self and to the surroundings.
The Age of Maps and the Mapless Writer
In Stark’s era, large portions of the world remained ‘unmapped’. The “blank space” on the map was real. The possibilities of going somewhere no one from your world had gone - or at least not recently - were tangible.
Stark thrived in that space. She derived wonder not only from the foreignness of place, but from the intimate encounter: the desert she crossed, the languages she acquired, the people she met, the traumas she witnessed (illness, war, slavery) and the moral questions these raised.
“One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one’s own.”
The explorer-writer of that age wrote of routes, of new ground, of discovery. The very notion of “unknown” meant something. And the prose bore that out - not as Instagram captions or listicles, but as sustained reflection and description.
Fast forward to today: the map is full. Satellites have seen the peaks, apps have tracked the trails, almost every place has been written about. Travel writing has shifted: from the external frontier to the internal frontier. We no longer travel simply to see what’s out there - we travel to see what’s within, to explore identity, to reflect on otherness, to engage with the global and the local, the self and the “other”.
In that sense Stark may belong to what we now call a “mapless writer”: someone whose journey matters less for novelty of destination, and more for the quality of attention and curiosity.
Writing: Then and Now
Stark’s writing exists within a complex historical frame. The 1930s -1950s were the tail end of the colonial era; Western travellers frequently entered non-Western spaces with inherent power imbalances. Stark was aware of that complexity but also a part of those structures. She sought to adapt, to learn, to write with respect - and yet she was still a product of her time.
The shift in travel writing ethics is one we must acknowledge.
Stark’s journeys confronted difficult realities: for example, during her Yemen voyages she encountered slavery and wrestled with the deep discomfort this caused her in contrast to her status as a ‘visitor’ in someone else’s land. She would become increasingly reflective on the role of traveller as bearing witness.
During WWII, she was also called upon to help in what she termed, “the war of ideas”. In a 1943 letter from Cairo, she wrote: “There is a kind of battle to be fought - not with arms but with arguments - to prove that liberty is better than tyranny.” And so she found herself drawn into ethical issues and concerns that went beyond her role as a curious observer in a foreign land. (For an excellent in-depth piece on Stark and the political perils of life as a propagandist read this The New Yorker article by Claudia Roth Pierpoint)
Today the frame has changed from conquest, discovery or drawing up boundary lines on maps, to connection, listening, understanding and responsibility. Modern day travel writers’ work is informed by ethics of representation alongside increasing awareness of tourism’s impact, and of issues such as climate change, and the lived impacts that follow in its wake. The best travel journalism will grapple with challenging moral issues, and shine light on injustice.
Yet the values Stark emphasised remain relevant:
curiosity (In East is West (1953) she wrote: “Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.”)
humility and adaptability: She wrote of the unexpectedness of life and had a true traveller’s resilience, undertaking physically demanding journeys.
linguistic and cultural effort: learning the local language is key to understanding at a deeper level. Her language learning continued throughout her long life.
style and accuracy: a vivid observer, not dismissing detail or nuance, even when uncomfortable.
Thus a modern travel writer might ask: how do I travel with rather than in a place? How do I give voice? How do I listen as much as describe? Stark’s legacy invites such questions.
The Lost Art of Getting Lost
There’s a kind of poetic paradox in travelling well: you must allow for disorientation. Stark understood that. She described a city where one wakes alone, ignorant of what’s to come, and surrenders to the unknown. “You are surrounded by adventure,” she wrote.
In her time the traveller got lost because maps were incomplete, roads were unpaved, languages were unknown, guides were limited. Today, getting lost is harder - Google Maps recalibrates, route-planning apps reassure, location-sharing keeps us tethered. In that sense, the modern “getting lost” must be metaphorical: losing one’s assumptions, stepping into unfamiliar frameworks, embracing pace instead of rush, befriending discomfort instead of avoiding it.
Stark’s journeys remind us that the art of travel lies not only in arrival, but in the unplanned turn, the unexpected encounter, the place you didn’t intend to visit but stay with longer than planned, the sense of the edge of the unseen.
That horizon still beckons - though perhaps now it lies not in uncharted terrain but in uncharted ways of seeing.
Writing Today: Themes and Reflections
As travel writing evolves, the emphasis increasingly shifts from place to theme: food, migration, climate, identity, belonging, solitude. The story is less about “I went to X” and more about “I found myself/others in X”.
In that sense, the legacy of Freya Stark is not outdated.
She taught us that travel writing can be literary; it can ask ethical questions; it can bear witness; it can be rich in language and humble in stance.
Her linguistic skills mattered: learning Arabic and Persian, writing with precision, attending to implication and bridging understanding in her prose. In fact, her language skills saved her life many times over during her travels.
Today’s readers of travel writing often look for depth: not just beautiful destinations, but meaningful detours; not just journeys of escape, but journeys of attention. The modern travel writer might ask: What happens when I find that place I didn’t intend? What happens when the host becomes teacher? What happens when the journey changes me more than the place?
Stark’s method remains instructive: respect the language, respect the culture, reflect on what you bring and what you leave behind.
The Map of the Imagination
The maps may now be full - the satellite images comprehensive, the guidebooks plentiful, the social-media feeds endless. But the imagination remains open. The terrain for travel writing has shifted: from unknown places to unknown perspectives; from lines on maps to lines of thought.
Freya Stark’s journeys may have begun in deserts and remote valleys, but what she ultimately travelled was attention. Her method was not simply to arrive - but to listen, to learn, to write with humility and precision. She urged the traveller to discard luggage, discard the tourist’s shell, and let themselves be carried “on the stream of the unknown.”
In a world saturated with images and experiences, the value of travel writing lies less in novelty and more in humanity.
Perhaps what Stark teaches us now is this: the journey is the inward one - curiosity, respect, linguistic regard, and the capacity to be changed rather than merely entertained.
As she said:
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
And perhaps, to write from that state of wonder, is one of the finest tasks a writer can undertake.
Modern Writers Who Echo Her Spirit
Freya Stark’s writing still is relevant today.
She wasn’t simply a traveller; she was a linguist, philosopher, and storyteller of curiosity.
The modern writers who echo her spirit tend to share three qualities:
Attentiveness (they observe before judging)
Curiosity about difference
Lyrical intelligence (they write travel as literature, not content).
Here are six contemporary travel writers who evoke that same combination of intellect, humility, and wonder:
Kapka Kassabova
Key works: Border (2017), To the Lake (2020)
Kassabova, born in Bulgaria and now based in Scotland, travels through the liminal zones of Europe - the borders between Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and North Macedonia - to explore how landscape and memory shape identity. Like Stark, she blends linguistic sensitivity, history, and personal reflection, turning geography into metaphor.
“The border is not where something ends, but where something begins its presencing.” — Border
Both women use travel to question boundaries - physical and cultural - and both write with poetic clarity about human resilience.
Pico Iyer
Key works: The Global Soul (2000), The Art of Stillness (2014), Autumn Light (2019)
Iyer writes about place as a mirror of inner movement - how global living affects the soul. He, like Stark, has a philosophical yet humane curiosity: he travels to understand the meanings of belonging, impermanence, and attention.
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” — Why We Travel
Both write in prose that’s spare but luminous, and both see travel as an act of ethical noticing - of learning how to live more consciously among others.
Colin Thubron
Key works: Shadow of the Silk Road (2006), The Amur River (2021)
Thubron is the most direct literary heir to Stark’s era - he walks, listens, and learns languages wherever he goes. A quiet observer, he avoids spectacle, focusing on people’s voices, ruins, and traces of history.
“Travel is not about finding something new but about noticing what is.”
He carries forward that old-world travel writer’s precision and humility, writing with deep respect for culture and history.
Rebecca Solnit
Key works: A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005), Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000)
Solnit treats walking, movement, and attention as philosophical acts. Her writing collapses the line between travel essay and cultural meditation.
“Getting lost is not a matter of maps; it’s a matter of consciousness.”
Both are intellectual wanderers who understand that the real journey lies in perception - that travel is a means of thinking, not simply moving.
Kate Harris
Key work: Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road (2018)
A modern-day explorer, Harris bicycled the Silk Road - the same world Stark explored nearly a century earlier. Her book fuses scientific curiosity, literary grace, and philosophical depth, reflecting on what exploration means in an era when the world is mapped.
“Maybe the last great journeys are the ones that take us inward.” — Lands of Lost Borders
Both are introspective, and driven not by conquest but by wonder. Harris consciously situates herself in Stark’s lineage of explorers who sought the edges of meaning.
Ryszard Kapuściński
Kapuściński (The Shadow of the Sun) was a journalist who wrote about Africa with poetic introspection and moral questioning, walking a line between witness and storyteller - a blend of observer and participant.
All these writers - Kassabova, Iyer, Thubron, Solnit, Kapuściński and Harris — continue Stark’s legacy by turning travel into a form of attention and ethics.
They remind us that the truest journeys aren’t to “discover” new lands, but to see freshly, to translate across cultures, and to hold wonder and complexity in the same breath.
Also this Week:
In Storycraft: We Build Our Libraries the Way We Build Our Dreams (what library design tells us about our societies and how we value story)
In The Green Travel Guide: Travel By Invitation-The Rise of Community-Led Travel and last week’s What if You’ve Been Travelling All Wrong (Slow Travel)
If you liked this post, you’ll enjoy:
Travel Writing Closer to Home (plus insights from Solnit + Dillard)
The Art (and Hustle) of Travelling Writers: 25 Ways to Fund the Journey
New Travel Writing Anthology Out Now
Around the World in 65 Years, a BGTW Travel Literature Anthology, published by Bradt Guides, is published today. You can order a copy here. Delighted to have a story about Montserrat in the Caribbean featured.
Things I loved on Substack recently:
This beautiful piece by Laurie Forrest Moy moved me and is a real call to follow your creative path in life.
I’ve been following along with Sue Reed as she heads to Venice to write (the writer’s dream city!).
As someone who has lived in Andalucia, I’m appreciating The Andalusian Edit - lots of neo-Moorish design, art and interesting things to read.
And many, many more… Thank you so much to all who have read, commented, subbed, liked, shared and restacked. Greatly appreciated! ❤️
And elsewhere… the British Library has an excellent exhibition on Secret Maps currently open - examining the power structures and hidden stories linked to cartography. I recommend reading Brian Friel’s Translations alongside (about identity, language, map-making). There’s a programme of events alongside the exhibition for anyone in London over the coming months.
Travel Writer Starter Pack
If you are tired of feeling lost with your writing, you’re passionate about travel and stories, picture yourself travelling the world and writing but you want some support and guidance to get started, then the Travel Writer Starter Pack is for you. Written by an experienced author and travel writer (published by Lonely Planet, DK Travel, Bradt Guides, featured in BBC, Newsweek, New Internationalist ++), the Starter Pack contains:
Travel Writers Starter Kit (99 pages of guidance and exercises: all you need to understand the landscape of travel writing and get started)
Pitch Pack (tailored pitch templates, advice on where to target, how to work with editors and get published)
Travel Writer’s Masterclass (an audio introduction - 7 lessons - into the world of travel writing and how to build a portfolio and get pitching)
Write With Purpose (powerful programme focusing on your voice as a writer - includes 17 audio lessons + 54 page workbook + bonuses)
Special Price of £99 (full value: £141 ) - only available through November. Any questions, feel free to DM. Click below to learn more:
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Travel Journal Club
Travel Journal Prompt: The Unexpected
Freya Stark wrote about the unexpectedness of life and the joy of encountering the unknown. Channel that curiosity into your own writing:
Choose a place - it can be a city street, a local park, a café, or even a familiar route you walk every day.
Observe without pattern - try to see it as if for the first time, without comparing it to other places you’ve been.
Notice the small things - a smell, a sound, a gesture, a light falling across a wall. Let these tiny details guide your writing.
Reflect on what you can’t control - people, weather, chance encounters. How does letting the place surprise you change your perception?
Write freely - aim for 10–15 minutes of unbroken reflection. Don’t edit; just write the place through close observation.
Imagine you are visiting this place alone, in a distant country you’ve never been to, as Freya Stark or any of the other travel writers mentioned above might have. How does your curiosity shift your attention?
What You’ll Learn Here — Every Tuesday
If you’re new here, a good place to start is: Think You’re Not a Travel Writer? Think Again and to find all the latest writing and info click here.
Every Tuesday in Write Your Way Around The World, I share:
Practical guidance on writing craft, pitching, editing, and freelancing
Encouragement for staying resilient and consistent as a writer
Real talk about money, mindset, rejection, and career-building
Inspiration from great travel writing and emerging trends
Resources to help you go further, faster
Future weeks will dig deep into how to make a living doing this, how to get published, how to find your niche/s or not (just write what you love), how to turn your travel notes into paid work. Grab my Travel Writer’s Starter Pack if you want a detailed framework to get started travel writing, along with guidance on how to get paid and published for your writing.
Let me know which topics you would like to know more about.
Happy writing!
Laura
Laura McVeigh
Author, Travel Writer, Storyteller
lauramcveigh.com | lauramcveightravel.com | travel-writing.com | greentravelguides.world
Laura McVeigh is an internationally bestselling Northern Irish novelist and travel writer. Her work is widely translated. She has authored books for Lonely Planet, DK Travel, had travel writing published by Bradt Guides, bylines in the Irish Times, Irish Independent, featured by the BBC, Newsweek, New Internationalist & many more. A polyglot and former CEO for a global writers’ organisation, she has worked with writers from 145 countries. She is founder of Travel-Writing.Com and Green Travel Guides. Laura writes on storytelling, travel writing and mindful travel on Substack.
P.S. Writer’s Edition members now also get access to the Explorers’ Club.
Great piece. You are right to say pretty much every space is explored. But what remains for us to discover are the narratives that have been built on the foundations of the past to create The Now, and how it synthesises with our personal experience. In such ways, those of us writing travel today are continuing the age old impulse driving most creatives, embodied in EM Forsters edict: only connect.
Thanks for some reading inspiration!