Fictional Guides to Travel: Mma Ramotswe’s Botswana (Book Review) (Aparna Singh)

Sometimes the best writing about a place comes not from focused travel writing, but from fiction that lays no claim to being any sort of guide to travel. These places could be in a time long gone by, like the post-war Britain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, or contemporary, like the desolate Sundarbans of Amitava Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide.
continued..

I think I would have read this anyway as a travel bug- Though you don't say it right away, the name of Madame Ramotswe immediately connected me to McCall-Smith's sharply observed and simply unique characters. This is a good reminder to catch up with his latest book.

Pico Iyer is another unique travel writer setting himself apart in the melee of adventure based travel writing, with the way he connects a state of mind to a place. And I would say Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel is one of the most elegant books on the questions of why we travel, how we travel and what we get out of it.