讀游記，行天下

William H.H. Murray1）’s guidebook to the Adirondacks “kindled a thousand camp fires and taught a thousand pens how to write of nature，” inspiring droves of American city-dwellers to venture into the wild and starting a back-to-nature movement that endures to this day. Of course， Murray’s slender volume was part of a great literary tradition. For more than two millennia， travel books have had enormous influence on the way we have approached the world， transforming once-obscure areas into wildly popular destinations.

A detailed selection would fill a library. So what follows is a brazenly2） opinionated short-list of travel classics that have inspired armchair travelers3） to venture out of their comfort zone and hit the road.

Homer’s Odyssey is often referred to as the first travel narrative， creating the archetypal story of a lone wanderer， Odysseus， on a voyage filled with mythic perils. As may be. But the first real “travel writer，” as we would understand the term today， was the ancient Greek author Herodotus， who journeyed all over the eastern Mediterranean to research his monumental Histories. His vivid account of ancient Egypt， in particular， created an enduring image of that exotic land， as he “does the sights” from the pyramids to Luxor， even dealing with such classic travel tribulations5） as pushy guides and greedy souvenir vendors. His work inspired legions of other ancient travelers to explore this magical， haunted land， creating a fascination that reemerged during the Victorian age and remains with us today. In fact， Herodotus qualifies not just as the Father of History， but the Father of Cultural Travel itself， revealing to the ancient Greeks—who rarely deemed a foreign society worthy of interest—the rewards of exploring a distant， alien world.

When the 13th-century Venetian merchant Marco Polo returned home after two decades wandering China， Persia and Indonesia， the stories he and his two brothers told were dismissed as outright fiction—until （legend goes） the trio sliced open the hems of their garments， and hundreds of gems poured to the ground in a glittering cascade6）. Still， Polo’s adventure might have remained all but unknown to posterity if an accident had not allowed him to overcome his writer’s block： Imprisoned by the Genoans in 1298 after a naval battle， he used his enforced leisure time to dictate his memoirs to his cellmate， the romance writer Rustichello da Pisa. The resulting volume， filled with marvelous observations about Chinese cities and customs and encounters with the potentate7） Kublai Khan， has been a bestseller ever since， and indelibly defined the Western view of the Orient. The vision of fabulous Chinese wealth certainly inspired one eager and adventurous reader， fellow Italian Christopher Columbus， to seek a new ocean route to the Orient.

Writers of the Gilded Age8） produced thousands of earnest and tedious travel books， a tendency that Twain deftly deflated9） with The Innocents Abroad. Sent as a journalist on a group cruise tour to see the great sights of Europe and the Holy Land10）， Twain filed a series of hilarious columns to the Alta California newspaper that he later reworked into this classic work. With its timely， self-deprecating humor， it touched a deep chord， lampooning11） the naiveté of his fellow Americans （“The gentle reader will never， never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.”） and the modest indignities of exploring the sophisticated Old World12） （“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French！ We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”） The result was to embolden many more of his fellow countrymen to fearlessly cross the pond and immerse themselves in Europe， and， hardly less importantly， to begin a new style of comic travel writing that echoes today through hugely popular modern authors.

The Victorian age produced a surprising number of adventurous women travel writers—Isabella Bird13）， for instance， wrote about exploring Hawaii， the Rocky Mountains and China—but the authors were regarded as rare and eccentric exceptions rather than role models by female readers. In the more liberated era of the 1930s， Freya Stark’s tome14） revealed just how far women could travel alone and live to write about it. Her breakthrough book， The Valley of the Assassins， was a thrilling account of her journey through the Middle East. Its highlight was her visit to the ruined stronghold of the Seven Lords of Alamut， a medieval cult of hashish15）-eating political killers16） in the Elburz Mountains17） of Iran whose exploits18） had been legendary in the West since the Crusades19）. The bestseller was followed by some two dozen works whose freshness and candor inspired women to venture， if not by donkey into war zones， at least into exotic climes. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world，” she enthused in Baghdad Sketches. “You have no idea of what is in store for you， but you will， if you are wise and know the art of travel， let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes to you.”

This thinly veiled autobiographical novel， about a group of young friends hitch-hiking and bumming their way across the United States， has inspired generations of restless readers to take a leap into the unknown. Although the publisher made Kerouac change the actual names （Kerouac became Sal Paradise， the wild driver Neal Cassady became Dean Moriarty and poet Allen Ginsberg became Carlo Marx）， its episodes were almost entirely drawn from life， qualifying it as a classic of travel writing. It was also a cultural phenomenon： Kerouac legendarily hammered out the whole lyrical work on a giant scroll of paper， and carried it about in his rucksack for years before it was published， becoming an instant icon of the rebellious “beat generation，” thumbing its nose at20） the leaden21） conformity of the cold war era. Today， it is still a dangerous book to read at an impressionable age （at least for younger males）. The delirious22） sense of freedom as Kerouac rides across the wheat fields of Nebraska in the back of a farm truck or speeds across the Wyoming Rockies toward Denver is infectious.

It was one of history’s great self-publishing success stories. When two young travelers roughed it in a minivan from London to Sydney， they decided to write a practical guide about their experiences. Working on a kitchen table， they typed out a list of their favorite budget hotels and cheap restaurants from Tehran to Djakarta， stapled the copied pages together into a 90-page booklet and sold it for $1.80 a pop. Their instincts were correct： There was a huge hunger for information on how to travel on a budget in the Third World， and the modest booklet sold 1，500 copies in a week. The hit became the basis for Lonely Planet， a vast guidebook empire with books on almost every country on earth. The young and financially challenged felt welcomed into the exotic corners of Nepal， Morocco and Thailand， far from the realm of five-star hotels and tour groups， often for a few dollars a day. The guidebooks’ power quickly became such that in many countries， a recommendation is still enough to make a hotelier’s fortune.

威廉·H·H·默里的阿迪朗達克旅行手冊“讓很多人點起了篝火，也教會了很多人怎樣去描寫大自然”。這本手冊鼓勵了大批的美國城里人到野外探索，引發了一場回歸自然的風潮，這股風潮直至今日還未衰退。當然，默里這本薄薄的小冊子是偉大的文學傳統的一部分。兩千多年來，游記作品一直深刻影響著人們了解世界的方式，把那些一度不為人知的地方變成了極受追捧的旅游目的地。

如果要列一個詳細的游記清單，恐怕都夠裝滿一座圖書館了。所以，以下我就斗膽根據個人觀點列出一個經典游記作品的短清單。它們曾經激勵那些足不出戶的“旅行者”勇敢地離開自己的安樂窩，踏上真正的旅途。

荷馬的《奧德賽》是以一位名叫奧德修斯的孤獨的流浪者為原型的故事，他的旅程充滿了神話般的危險。《奧德賽》通常被認為是第一部旅行敘事體著作。或許確實是那樣的。但按照我們今天對“旅行作家”這一術語的理解，第一位真正的旅行作家是古希臘作家希羅多德。希羅多德游歷了整個地中海東部，為完成他的巨著《歷史》進行研究。特別值得一提的是，他對古埃及的生動描寫為那個充滿異域風情的國度創造了一個經久不衰的形象。他描述了從金字塔到盧克索城沿途的景色，甚至描述了旅行經歷的經典磨難，如粗魯固執的導游和見錢眼開的紀念品小販。這部作品鼓舞了古時的大批旅行者去探索這片充滿魔力的神秘土地。……