Travel literature

“Of all the things witnessed in Heaven and Hell, Everest's bladder is something I never wish to see on my mother”

~ Winston Churchill on following a strawberry soouffle in the Himalayas

“That's what I said, then he wacked me in the mouth”

~ Oscar Wilde on paraphrasing Churchhill badly, after a Fly-like accident with the time machine

“Oscar Wildes is the finest woman Borat have since Near-Pamela. After Mr.Wilder show me his stick, all I remember is anoos hang loose like Shalome's Dance”

~ Borat Sagdyiev on Death

Travel literature had its prodigal prodigy in the cave paintings of Shackleton, the first known lover of Adam. Since then, authors like Lawrence Durrell have tinkered with the medium, adding much needed colour and removing all sorts of homoerotic biblical subtext in the process. The Moon Cults of Diana also dabbled in travel writing but they were often too exhausted to visit exotic places after all that dancing naked around the full moon.

History

The origins of travel writing are a rather HOT topic among scholars, academics, and people who shop at Hot Topic. Somewhere between the Jack Skellington beanies and the Emily Strange forks, =lies the "riveting" secret of the history of travel literature.

Travel literature is also sometimes known as 'Travelogue'. This comes from the greek (Travellogeros) which means 'Travelling Giant'. Though obscured by the works of Lawrence Durrell, conclusive evidence has shown us that in Corfu there lived an Ogre who liked to travel to Paleocastrizza, where he could reach the very ceiling of Heaven. He one day decided to paint it Mauve, but God was irked. In spite of all the incredibly, gullet-piercingly strong evidence towards this theory, for some reason historians, anthropologists, and Durrell-lemmings (who sprung from the author's eyebrows upon his timely death to a jealous kitchen knife) insist on ignoring the Giant story and fart around the island all day trying to find Odysseus' ship. Which is now a rock. Very excite.

Odysseus

Odysseus left Ithaca with his bandmates. They formed part of the new-age/rap/whale band, 'Not so Hungry Hippos'. They decided to change the name to 'Those dangnab Trojans- They Toook Our Joooobs', when a group of indignant single mothers, including Leda (the ultimate soccer mum), decided to sue the Trojan factory for their detective condoms (which concealed a tiny regiment of elite spermatozoa soldiers). Anyway, as they were heading to Valletta to meet Fausto Maijstral, who had emailed them requesting to be their new Coconut player, they came across the Trojan War. What happened there is that the detective condoms were having an AGM when Grace Borg stood up and ripped them all with her deliciously delectable nails with 'G' encrusted on them. They were very angry, and riots began. Odysseus and his bandmates were irked, since Grace was the 'other daughter' which Leda had decided to hide from the world. Is nice.

Further History of Travel Literature

As should be evident by now, Odysseus' journey made a considerable contribution to the history of travel literature. The exploits of the journey were discovered by a drunken Arabian fishmonger, who cut his toe on one of Grace's nails, which revealed the whole story under a microscope. The drunken fishmonger is nowadays known as David Beckham, who gained immortality after agreeing to satisfy the sexual appetites of mad uber-witch-bitch Circe aka Victoria. She has since robbed him of all powers of literacy and his human dignity, bestowing him with all the attributes of a human retard minus the drooling, which would be unsightly in tabloid magazines and photographs of the academic travel guides which she now ghost-writes for him. The ghost insists on being Hamlet's father during sex-games, and Victoria chuckles as Beckham watches in the corner. In these instances, she lets him drool.

Further Exponents of Travel Literature, and their influence on man-un-kind

As Virginia Woolf famously wrote in her heart-rending travelogue, 'To the Lighthouse', "It took us a while to get to the lighthouse. I was knitting brown socks and there were bills to pay. I thought suddenly of ducks with their bills. Would there be ducks at the lighthouse? I was not sure, yet something in the wind played with my tousled hair as I click-clacked my knitting needles to the rhythm that a talented typist would undertake, if Pcs had as yet been invented. Hah! I've just featured the first ever anachronism in Travel Literature. Go Me! Kawaii!"

		Warning: The following text might contain spoilers. This makes the article more aerodynamic, and thus more maneuverable at high speeds. Take caution and carry a first-aid kit at all times if you don't know that Hellboy opens the door to Hell, they save Private Ryan, but they all get killed, Book dies and then Wash dies after the audience has been lulled into a false sense of security, Deckard is a Replicant, too, Borat marries a hooker from Dallas and returns to Kazakhstan with her, Daisy runs over Myrtle, leading Wilson to kill Gatsby and then himself, R + L really does = J, Neo gets turned into a Smith shortly after causing a reaction that causes all the Smiths to die, thus, he dies, Flint Marko killed Ben Parker by accident, and Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!

The book ends as an artist friend of Virginia's renders her heart in a neo-plasticist painting and yells, "Flavour of the Month!" In the last few paragraphs of the novel, the female artist friend, Shackleton Ulysses Morticia Cook, travels around the globe and back, returning to England with a cleft anus and a badger for a right arm.

Travelogues Today

I'll have first, 'cos I'm da man' is Hunter S. Thompson's insightful book in which he gives a recount of traveling to meet the Amazon women. Upon uttering this phrase, the mighty women tied him up to a broccoli stem and had their nasty ways with him. The Amazon snoot, Michelle, had her pasty way with him. It was indeed disheartening, but he trundled on, after he had freed himself from the "malevolent veg" and reached the Magna Mater, who upon seeing him in his disgruntled state, granted him free access to all the slices of Cheddar Cheese he could possibly long for. In his Cheesy exile, Thompson jotted down his Amazonian exploits, committing them to memory, then to his stomach, before breaking free by means of a suicide. Kurt Cobain, one of the Amazonian women, joined him. The great Amazonian Hermaphrodite, later dramatized in the Hollywood blockbuster 300 (in which he is actuallyu representing the Persian God-King SXerxses) Ville Valo, vocalist of HIM, wrote a song about their tragedy, thus creating the band Nirvana thanks to a 3-minute ditty. It's like a fortune cookie, or one of those Kinder Eggs...were the words of historian Hector Berkowitz, known to his friend and fans as K-Fed, when describing the above in his acclaimed, comprehensive tome: 'You won't get out of this alive unless you wear your grandmother's jumper: A Guide To Rock 'N Roll Music following The Battle of Thermopolye'. A debate rages over whether the book should carry a subtitle which elucidates the book's latter section, which deals with Berkowitz's travels to the Congo to rescue his crazed wife Kurtzney The Speared, who unfortunately lost her hair mid-way through her transformation into a Congo Ape. The academics who survived the debate, which was set to a live, no-holds-barred re-enactment of a Roman gladiatorial contest, have unanimously agreed on the book's revised title: 'Look Ma, she spilt my Sauce!'

Concluding Remarks

Travel literature is, like Western Civilisation, on the whole (and on the hole, like Preparation H), an ingenious idea, vicariously allowing people with Smart Cards to experience the delights of World Travel, without even switching on the Travel Channel on Cable TV and having to see the ridiculous face of that guy who does the cooking shows.