I am a travel writer. Karma convinced me of that when a shrieking hyena used my side of a safari vehicle as cover from a lion attack, when a broken stall lock forced me to crawl on the floor of a Mexican seaside bathroom, and when an over full water bottle caused me to drench a Thai monk’s robes while he was trying to teach me to meditate. I suffer from ‘fernwheh,’ a Zulu word for an ache for a constant need to travel.
Travel Writing Teaching
I had the great privilege of teaching a travel writing class for senior citizens. Women in their 70s, 80s, and 90s taught me about traveling the world with grace and purpose, about how to escape land slides in New Guinea, ride camels in Tunisia, and do yoga with monkeys in India. The real lessons of the class were how to use sensory details for establishing place, metaphors for identity, digression as a form of voice, stylistic devices to support theme, and humor as a mode to create authentic dialogue.
Travel Writing Class Lessons:
Travel Blogging
My blog, Travels with Paul, began in 2016 when we went to South Africa. It was a trip come true for my husband, Paul, and me. He wanted to see a lion, and I wanted to live the life of a writer. I set up a wordpress blog site and lured family and friends into subscribing. What I thought would last only one trip has become a vocation for me; blogging is a nice landing place between writing a letter home and publishing an article in a newspaper. I bought a small pink notebook and whipped it out for note taking or even using it as handy toilet paper in a couple of adventures. I take notes and generate ideas in the most unusual of places–peeing behind a termite hill, fighting off obese, habituated squirrels in downtown Cape Town, kneeling in a cemetery in Normandy with morning light pouring over my shoulder….the events keep coming and I keep writing. The original pink notebook was destroyed in Thailand when it got into a tussle with a bottle of mosquito repellant in our back pack, (seriously, that stuff ATE the pages and the leather cover), so I have a new small bound book that is begging to be broken in.
The travel blogs I have written over the years are located in a menu on the Home page, and on this page are a few slide shows from our travels. Paul and I are best friends in addition to being spouses. So, if you find yourself wondering ‘did that really happen?’ I assure you it did. However, our lips are sealed about that cabaret show in Paris where we drank three bottles of wine and…well, that is a pretty good story. I might work on that one.
Mexico
France
Thailand
South Africa
Other Adventures
Lesley Klenk, Author 