The Meaning of Travel With Emily Thomas

Books And Travel

In this wide-ranging interview, Emily Thomas talks about the importance of perspective and time in travel writing, how sublime moments of pleasurable terror make travel so interesting, how to overcome fears both real and imaginary, as well as the ethics of doom tourism, and how VR (virtual reality) might change how we travel in future.

Dr. Emily Thomas is an associate professor in philosophy at Durham University in England. She’s also the author of several books, including The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad.

• Traveling is about experiencing otherness, going to places that are new and unfamiliar and trying to figure out how to make sense of them
• Sublime moments in travel as a kind of pleasurable terror
• Tackling fears, both real and imagined
• Research before a trip, and arriving in Malawi, Africa
• How do travel books blur the line between fiction and nonfiction, and why is this so important to address stereotypes
• “There is no view from nowhere.” Perspective in travel writing
• Maps as processes, and how they change over time. The importance of knowing ‘when’ a book was written and the perspective of the writer.
• Doom tourism
• How VR (virtual reality) might improve aspects of travel, and what we want to keep as in-person experiences
• Recommended travel books

You can find Emily at www.EmilyThomasWrites.co.uk and on Twitter @emilytwrites

Shareable and header image generated by Jo Frances Penn on Midjourney.

Transcript of interview (lightly edited)

Jo Frances Penn
Dr. Emily Thomas is an associate professor in philosophy at Durham University in England. She’s also the author of several books, including The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad, which we’re talking about today. So welcome, Emily.

Emily Thomas
Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jo Frances Penn
I’m excited to talk about this topic.

What drew you to write a book about travel and philosophy, since one seems quite internal, and the other one quite external?

Emily Thomas
That’s right. So I have been a professional philosopher for more than 10 years, but far longer than that I have been a backpacker. So I did buckets of traveling when I was younger. And at some point, when I was writing about philosophy, I began wondering, does philosophy have anything to say about travel? Is there some way that I can bring these two parts of my life together, and I started doing some research. And to my delight, I found that philosophy has lots to say about travel. And that was how the book was born.

Jo Frances Penn
What does travel mean to you?

Emily Thomas
For me, traveling is all about experiencing otherness. It’s all about going to places that are new and unfamiliar. And trying to figure out how to make sense of them, how to map them on to the world that you do know.

My best travel experiences have actually been ones where I have gone to some place where I haven’t understood anything around me. Not not the language, not what’s going on in the street, not the social cues and I have very slowly, by reading and talking to people, come to put the pieces together and come to understand the place.

Jo Frances Penn
That’s interesting. So you have otherness and the new and the unfamiliar. Does that mean that for you, traveling say within England, doesn’t count as travel?

Emily Thomas
There are definitely places within England that I don’t know at all and might give me that travel unfamiliarity experience. But you’re right, I think that to be really immersed in the unknown for me, I’m going to have to go farther afield than that.

Jo Frances Penn
Absolutely. So you have this chapter on sublime tourism, which is so often the special moments we remember, rather than all the difficulties around it.

Tell us a bit more about some of your own sublime moments in travel.

Emily Thomas
So I should explain that I use the word sublime in a technical way, to mean a very specific kind of feeling that was picked out by 18th-century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke.

When you have a sublime feeling, it’s a kind of pleasurable terror. So it’s the kind of enjoyable fear that you get from standing close to a waterfall, but not too close. You can feel the spray on your face, but you’re not actually afraid of falling over.

And I had definitely had a lot of those kinds of moments whilst traveling that often because I’ve done almost all my traveling by myself, just rocking up in a new place that I find really terrifying. And also really exciting on the other. I think the first time I really powerfully experienced that. I was 18. And I spent a couple of months wandering around China, the very first time I arrived in a big new city, and I stepped out of the hotel room, just not understanding anything that was going on around me it was really scary, but also exhilarating.

Forbidden City, Beijing. Photo licensed from BigStockPhoto

Jo Frances Penn
That’s really interesting that you call it that ‘pleasurable terror.’ And in the book, you also quote Camus, “what gives the value to travel is fear.” And it’s interesting.

You talk there about terror, you’re using the word fear in the book.

What are some of the fears that you’ve had to face? When have they been real? When have they been imagined?

Emily Thomas
Some of the fears, I think, are very reasonable to have and they are not pleasurable. So for example, walking through a city by yourself where you’re conscious that it’s not very safe, that the crime rates are very high, and you’re afraid of being attacked or mugged. That’s not fun. They are not imagined fears either.

But I think there are other fears are more exciting. And in a pleasurable way. I might have a fear that if I walk into a city I don’t know very well. I’m going to get lost. Well, actually, really, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? You know, I get lost it and I ended up asking for directions in a coffee shop or something. The feeling of oh, maybe I could be lost. That’s quite nice.

Have I personally been in some scrapes? I have. What especially springs to mind when people ask me that question. I was once in a taxi in Zimbabwe that caught fire, and the driver refused to pull over. It was just there was smoke, I mean, we could see flames on the bonnet. And he was like, no, it’ll be fine, like we don’t have to stop the car.

Jo Frances Penn
Oh, wow. Okay. So you’ve talked about solo travel, and fear of being attacked, specifically as a solo woman. I mean, that can happen if one is just in London late at night or in Newcastle late at night or something. I mean, that doesn’t have to be a foreign fear.

But if it’s in a foreign country, it feels like things will just be more difficult, even like asking someone where the bathroom is, like when I traveled in India, that can be a moment of fear.

How can we overcome some of these fears in order to travel to new places?

Emily Thomas
I’ve recently been reading about stoicism, which is a particular kind of philosophy dating back to Roman times. And one of the suggestions they have is that when you’re afraid of something, you should actually sit down in your mind and work through what could possibly happen. Like what is the worst case scenario? And how would you deal with that, if that comes up.

And I personally get scared by the unknown. So the idea of landing in a new place that I find quite scary, I find it scary, because I have no idea what to expect when I’m there. But if I actually really go back and start thinking, Okay, this is where I want to go. And okay, and this is how taxis or whatever it might work here. The more knowledge that I have about the place that I find that the fear goes away. It’s like horror movies, right? You know, the unseen monster or ghost is always much scarier than when you actually see the ridiculous special effects that the producer has drummed up for your movie entertainment delight,

Jo Frances Penn
Which is why you don’t often see the monster — then the actual fear is like, Oh, right. It’s just another vampire.

Emily Thomas
Yeah, exactly. Right.

Jo Frances Penn
That’s really interesting that you say that in terms of a guidebook, for example. So let’s put that under the category of research. You can research a place and for me, it’s like I often I will research lots of places, but then I just concentrate on getting off the plane to the first night’s accommodation.

And even if I’m doing more free-range travel, I will have a first night’s accommodation booked. And also as a solo woman traveler, I will make sure the plane arrives at a time of day that is appropriate.

I had a terrible experience arriving at 2 am in Tel Aviv, Israel, back in the early 90s. And the war with Iraq was going on. And it was honestly one of the scariest times. I was in a new city. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I was before the internet, etc.

So you’ve just arrived in Malawi in Africa, which I have talked about on the show in episode 1 because I went to school there.

Jo Frances Penn in Malawi in the early 1980s

How has this research and discovery process worked with Malawi?

Emily Thomas
One thing that makes this trip a bit different for me is that I’m actually living here for a few months. So rather than traveling around moving on every night or two, that I’m actually settling in. It was quite similar in some ways, I had the first couple of nights’ accommodation booked, but then I had to go out and look at apartments to set myself up.

And now it’s a case of really trying to understand how basic things work. So things I was not expecting include there are many power cuts every day. And so it is not a good idea, for example, if you are working as I am to let your laptop go very low on battery, because otherwise when the next power cut comes you might run out of battery quite quickly. So really, really basic things about how to live here is what I’m now trying to get to grips with.

Jo Frances Penn
I think money is something really interesting because before the pandemic, one would turn up in various countries and you might have been able to get some local currency or you just take US dollars or another currency that people accept. But what I’ve discovered is post-pandemic, even really out-of-the-way places take mobile payments or digital payments. And of course, Africa has a lot of mobile payments. So how’s the money working? I know it’s very practical, but money is a big deal, right?

Emily Thomas
It is a really big deal. And you’re absolutely right. I’m making payments via mobile phone payments, which is not something I have ever done before in the UK.

I’ve had to download the correct apps and figure out how it works. And part of the issue is that people want to avoid the government taking a slice out of certain payment apps. So they always want you to use their particular payment app, but the government takes less money. It has been a learning curve. And I definitely find post-COVID people want to handle objects less, including notes and coins. That is a big deal. And so electronic payments are hugely on the rise.

Jo Frances Penn
Another thing you talk about in the book — obviously, you’re a professional philosopher, which sounds just amazing — is about truth with a little t. And then truth with a capital T.

You say in the book that “travel books often blur the line between fiction and nonfiction.” What are your thoughts on the truth of travel books/guides/memoir, especially if we’re using them to research places before we go?

Emily Thomas
Which we are doing all the time. Okay, so what I mean by this is, so with nonfiction writing, we tend to think of it as being very factual, you know, the temperature was 32 degrees today, and this place lives at a certain longitude and latitude.

But travel books, even though they are within the nonfiction genre, actually, they are using many, many devices from fiction. They are using metaphor or hyperbole, that kind of thing. Travel books often have a plot, where they will start you off at one point in time and then the author backtracks a little bit to kind of give a bit more context. And then we move forwards in time again.

And all these devices borrow from fiction, they obviously serve to make the travel book much more readable, but they also begin blurring the line. And I think one of the important consequences of that is that we get more and more of the author’s own perspective, as they are experiencing the place and writing the book.

If we were to have this list of facts, temperature and longitude, that there’s very little of the author in that, that when we begin to have the author saying, ‘Oh, I saw a hippopotamus in person for the first time and its skin was like this, and its teeth were like this,’ that we’re really starting to get the author’s window on to the world. And then that becomes quite non-factual. And that’s part of writing a good story. But it’s also part of what makes travel writing a bit unusual as a nonfiction genre.

Jo Frances Penn
So often, books can be written from a romantic point of view, or a way to try and perhaps make the author seem a certain way.

And of course, we understand that writing is also editing. So you don’t put in a lot of the stuff that happened because it doesn’t fit whatever overarching narrative you have.

I have a particular place in mind, which is Venice. [Note from Jo: Check out my solo episode: Myth and Reality: Beauty and Decay in Venice.]

St Marks Basilica, Venice. Photo by J.F.Penn

I’ve been to Venice three times. And the third time was by far the best. But when I went the first time, I feel like all the writing I’ve ever read on Venice, it was just completely wrong. In my experience, I got there, it was flooded. I’ve never read a book about the flooding, and how much it stank of the sewers, and how overcrowded it was, and those huge tourist ships, and it really impacted my experience.

How should we approach reading travel fiction or just travel books in general? Do we just have to take them with a pinch of salt?

Emily Thomas
Yes, we absolutely have to take them with a pinch of salt. I think travel books are always written with the author’s particular vision in mind.

When you arrive, you may well have a very different outlook on that. And you’re certainly right. Venice is one of those places that has been so heavily romanticized that in a way, it’s difficult to see how the reality can live up to those romantic images of it.

And I mean it historically, if we go back before the 17th century into medieval travel, travel writing was absolutely chock full of lies, you know, people describe going to the Middle East and encountering dragons or great whales that come off out of the sea, and they’re sort of wandering around on the local coasts. And the Mandeville Travels describes meeting people with the heads of dogs. A lot of this is coming from the idea that whatever is unknown, we can somehow fill in the gaps. And there’s less of that today, partly because the world is more known, but it’s not entirely gone, and our brains are still filling in gaps.

Jo Frances Penn
Absolutely. And I wonder, I mean again, Malawi — if people don’t know it’s in southeast Africa, but landlocked — and Africa is one of these continents that I feel travel writing has impacted, I would say negatively, because so many popular-cited travel books are old.

And they see Africa — which of course, is not monolithic, it’s very diverse — but many show Africa in a way that perhaps it was 40 years ago, but so much has changed in the last decade in terms of what’s happening in Africa.

How can we write responsibly about places to change stereotypes, or when we read, question those stereotypes?

Emily Thomas
That’s a really great question. I would start by saying travel books are about places, but they are also always about time. So it is always about the author’s experience of traveling to Malawi in 1970, or 2020, or wherever it might be.

When we are all reading travel books, we must bear in mind the date that they were published, that’s going to have a big impact on how we approach them. Of course, I’m a historian of philosophy, so I’m going to stress the importance of dates.

With regards to changing stereotypes or leaving us to question them, I think that good writers should be conscious of stereotypes as they are writing and flag them up. That seems like something that the best travel writers do, actually, they approach people as individuals, and if there are stereotypes, they are mentioning them in order to deconstruct them.

Jo Frances Penn
Well, then I have another challenge for you because you said that travel is about otherness. And when we are ‘Other,’ I feel like we almost see things that people who live in a country don’t see. Like when I go to America and I walk into a grocery store, I’m just ‘how are there 10 fridges full of different sodas?’ It’s a tiny thing, but I notice that and an American would not notice that.

And so when we are commenting on other places as we travel, I also worry in this time when we need more diverse voices, can you and I as white English women write about Malawi? And how does that compare to a Malawian author writing about Malawi?

Emily Thomas
If I were to read two books, one written by a white English woman and one written by a Malawian author that I would 100% be looking to the Malawi author as the authoritative tome, but I don’t think that means that we shouldn’t do it.

You can only ever write from your perspective. All writing is written from a perspective, and that’s the same whether it’s me writing about Malawi, or someone from Blantyre going to the UK and writing about England.

There is no view from nowhere. The trick is to write from your perspective, being conscious that you are writing from a perspective.

So if I were to go to the US and write about how staggered I am by the sheer number of soda fridges, I should be overt about that, of course, be honest, I find this astonishing, because I’m from the UK, if I was from somewhere else, maybe I wouldn’t.

Jo Frances Penn
It’s funny, isn’t it? And I mean, I feel the same way. I think we have to write from whatever perspective we have.

Let’s talk about maps, because I love that you start actually start the book with chapters on that.

I love maps, I’ve got a map of the world here in front of me on my wall. It is something that I find really important, and I’ve even written a fantasy trilogy about walking through maps.

Detail of the Mappa Mundi Hereford cathedral Photo by JFPenn

You question in the book, “Are maps things or processes?” What do you mean by that?

Emily Thomas
In philosophy, we draw a distinction between things that are static, so chairs, teacups, trees, versus things that are dynamic and continually changing processes, like thunderstorms, or running rivers.

And what I find fascinating about maps, or one of the many things I find fascinating about them, is that I always assumed that a map was a static thing. You know, it’s something that you hold in your hand and you look at it much like a teapot, and that’s the end of it.

But there are some philosophers who’ve argued that actually maps are much closer to processes. And in defense of this view, they asked us to consider things like Google Maps. So Google Maps are being continually updated, as are all these online mapping software. And then the question is, does that mean that there’s a new map that’s coming into existence? Like once every second or so? Or is it rather, it’s the same map that’s continually changing?

And when you begin to think of maps, like that, I can then begin to think of other maps, perhaps written on paper, but also continually being updated. So famously during the Second World War in London, there are some maps in the British Museum that were updated as buildings were bombed. So as buildings were removed, people would change the map to reflect the new reality.

Jo Frances Penn
I was just looking at the wall on my wall. It’s an older Mercator projection. And Malawi’s still labeled as Nyasaland, which was its previous name. And of course, that’s what’s so weird, isn’t it? You can look at a map, even like Europe’s changed a lot. I mean, Europe’s changing right? Now we have a war on, who knows where that will end up — but it’s like these countries appear and disappear, and borders move. I’ve got this map on my wall. It looks static, and yet borders move all the time.

You say in the book, “maps are objects of power.” So what do we need to keep in mind in terms of who drew the map, and in terms of power shifts over time?

Emily Thomas
So maps are always trying to tell us things. And they can tell us things in quite subtle ways. So, for example, whatever is placed at the center of the map is given a feeling of geopolitical force.

In historical maps, perhaps that was Jerusalem, or Athens, and today, if you look at world maps produced in Europe, Europe is usually at the center of the map. If you look at world maps produced by China, or the US, those countries will be at the center of the map. And that’s telling you a lot about how the map maker sees the world. And what maps do and don’t represent, and also tells you a lot about the social power that the map maker is outlining. So whether they are including castles or churches or huts belonging to peasants or not, that tells you about what they’re trying to do.

There are some really striking examples of maps being used to persuade people about where the lines of power lie in the world. So for example, historically, you can see lots of maps of the same place with borders drawn differently, and that’s because the map maker is trying to convince you that here is where the border is, my country is really at this is an even today, depending on where you are in the world. If you access Google Maps, the borders will shift depending on your local country’s attitude towards disputed territories —

Jo Frances Penn
— which is just crazy. I don’t think I knew that before I read that in your book. I was like, okay, that’s weird. But I mean, why would it be any different because, for example, we travel to New Zealand a lot, because my husband’s a New Zealander, so we have family there. And when we look at prices for flights here in the UK, we get a completely different price than if we’re in New Zealand, even if we’re booking London to Auckland, for example. Loads of things change when your physical location is known to advertisers.

But it’s kind of disturbing, in a way, isn’t it? The way that borders shift? I mean, again, on the map I’m looking at there is absolutely no way it reflects the actual size of the countries. The African continent has often made much smaller, hasn’t it?

Emily Thomas
Absolutely. Which is this famous problem with Mercator projection, that it makes the southern countries smaller in the northern ones, the ones closer to the center of the map, and Europe is subtly pushed towards the center of the map. It makes them bigger. And there are various projections that seek to address these concerns. And when you see the size of Africa represented, as it really is proportionate to Europe, and North America, it’s quite a shock because it is in fact, a gigantic continent. And it’s not this smaller, sort of squeezed thing that you get on the Mercator projection.

Jo Frances Penn
Absolutely. So there’s so many things I want to talk to you about, but I want to come to Doom Tourism. You have a chapter on Doom tourism and which incorporates things like dark tourism to outfits for example, or but also places like the Maldives that might disappear or will disappear with climate change.

Tell us about Doom Tourism? Should we travel at all? Or should we all just stay home?

Emily Thomas
In principle, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing tourism or dark tourism. So the idea of going to see a place before it’s destroyed because it’s doomed in some way. I think why not? That sounds fine to me. You know, you can imagine there’s a rainbow outside your door, someone’s calling to you, come and look at it before it’s gone. That just seems absolutely fine.

Where it gets ethically tricky is when we are traveling to places and the very act of traveling is contributing to the doom of the place in question. That’s a really classic example is glaciers or underwater coral reefs. So when we visit a glacier, in addition to the CO2 that we may spend getting there, trampling all over the glacier can be harmful to it in various ways. If the ice is degrading anyway, then people walking all over it can hasten that.

The same with visiting coral reefs, you know, there are many articles on the internet ’10 places you should visit before they die off due to climate change.’ And lots of coral reefs are on the list. But again, the very act of visiting the reefs can damage them, and then it starts to feel unethical to visit these doomed places.

Union Glacier in Antarctica. Photo Licensed from BigStockPhoto

Jo Frances Penn
Yeah, and that’s why this idea of virtual reality or augmented reality could be great for travel. So I have scuba dived on the Barrier Reef and in Western Australia as well on Ningaloo Reef. And I learned later about how suncream on your skin can contribute to things. And yet, I remember those scuba diving in those places very vividly. They are highlights in my memory.

But I absolutely think that VR scuba diving is what I want to do. I haven’t dived for about a decade, like I’m really not that interested anymore in all the gear and all the boat sickness and all of that. So, to me, a brilliant thing would be virtual reality scuba diving to go see the coral reefs.

But taking that further, what do you think of the future of travel in terms of virtual reality?

Emily Thomas
I think there’s going to be a lot more VR travel, if for exactly these kinds of reasons. Travel can often be difficult and scary and really inconvenient — and expensive. And I think VR offers us a really safe, cheap alternative.

I think lots and lots of people are going to turn to VR for travel, I really do, and I think as VR improves, the more that that will happen. And I find that quite exciting, in part because we can travel to real world places that have been reproduced in VR, but also because we can travel to imaginary worlds that are going to be created for our enjoyment. And I’m looking forward to that as well. I think that will be that will be great.

Honestly, that said, for me, part of the value of travel lies in the difficulty and the fear and the inconvenience. And I don’t see myself wanting to give that up. I think rather I want to do both.

Jo Frances Penn
I agree with you. And I almost split it into two. For example, I went to the Egyptian pyramids back in the early 2000s. And when I see pictures now, it seems a hell of a lot more touristy. And if you go and see the pyramids, it’s the sound and light show, there’s 1000s of people and coaches, and it’s not like the movies, you know. But with a VR tour, I could see the pyramids up close, I could potentially go inside the pyramids, which you cannot do in real life. And that to me is a very touristy experience that would be better off in VR. But walking around the souk in Cairo, for example, or Alexandria, that is not the same. So there’s the experiential thing versus the famous monument thing.

Emily Thomas
Oh, I like that. I think you’re absolutely right. I think the two can complement each other in that way. I also think there will be a lot of people who would opt for the VR Cairo souk. In addition, it partly because it’s hot, it’s expensive and people are bumping into you. And I think COVID is going to have a big impact on how a lot of people continue to travel. Moving forward, it’s all just going to feel safer.

I have also been to the pyramids a little bit later than you, before the light show but post the tourism era. And what I was astonished by was the way that if you stood in precisely the right spot, you could take a photograph just with the pyramids against the background of sand. But if you turned in any other direction, the tourist carnival, the shops. It’s a strange experience.

Jo Frances Penn
Petra is another place or Angkor Wat, there are so many places where we want to see, not because they’re on ‘lists,’ but because they really are special places. And yet, sometimes you get there and they’re not special, like Venice, a lot of Venice would be better in VR. If you’re listening in Venice, sorry about that! But I mean, it’s so full of tourists.

But then we come back to truth with a little t as in, if I make a VR experience of the Cairo souk, for example, I could walk through and record it with a special camera. And that is my experience.

But again, we’ve just captured it at one moment in time, or we could then edit it to make it seem more romantic or to fit some stereotype. Will VR again recreate this incorrect version of reality?

Emily Thomas
Or at the very least it will be a bastion of reality told from someone else’s perspective. I think that that’s absolutely right. Because even if it it’s based on real camera footage, it’s what the camera person chooses to focus on. Are they looking at the vegetables or the jewelry? What they’re panning over? Are they focusing more on the older people or the younger people? All of this is going to be told from a person’s perspective? And if you visited yourself, you would absolutely have a different one.

So yeah, it will always be indirect in that sense that there are some VR experiences you can have now where I understand you literally pay a guide to wear a VR helmet or transmit things back to you. And then by telephone, you tell them, could you turn left here, I want to look more at this. So that seems like more that you’d have more control over what you’re seeing, at least in that way.

Jo Frances Penn
So many interesting things and lots we could talk about, but we’re almost out of time.

What are a few books that you recommend either just travel books or philosophy?

Emily Thomas
My favorite travel book is quite old now, but if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s Eric Newby’s 1958, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. He’s wandering around the mountains of Afghanistan, getting himself into various scrapes. It’s really, really funny. And it’s also very thoughtful. I think that’s great.

From a philosophy and travel perspective, my book is in fact, the only book on the philosophy of travel. But if you want to take a related but different angle, that Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. He explores the way that various artists and novelists have thought about travel. And that’s also a great read,

Jo Frances Penn
While there are similarities with De Botton, I definitely like yours better. We’ve talked about the themes, I guess, that you bring out in the book. I’m definitely someone who is romantic about travel, and clearly you are too. Travel means a lot to us, and so we naturally come at this with a positive and romantic view of everything. But it’s funny, I’ve also just come back from that walking the Camino de Santiago, the Portuguese route. I’ve been reading Camino books for over two decades — and I’m just writing my own, obviously — but I feel this responsibility to say some things that I don’t feel enough people say about how like busy the route is, and all of this kind of thing. So I’m pretty obsessed with the ‘truth’ of travel writing at the moment, so I think your book really helped.

Emily Thomas
Thank you. I’m glad.

Jo Frances Penn
Brilliant. Where can people find you and your book online?

Emily Thomas
Thank you. So I am on Twitter @emilytwrites. If you want to check out some of my other popular writings, you can look at my website, which is www.EmilyThomasWrites.co.uk.

Jo Frances Penn
Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time, Emily, that was great.

Emily Thomas
This has been brilliant. Thank you very much.

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