We’ve talked a fair bit on this blog about how bad the majority of travel writing is. So it’s a relief and a delight to find a writer whose work is strong, insightful, and fresh, as Steve did in his recent post on Travel Intelligence.

Yesterday, while slogging through my usual pile of magazines, I found one for myself. This month’s The Walrus features one of the most striking, beautiful, and well-written travel essays I’ve come across in a very long time. Deborah Kirshner is a writer and concert violinist who traveled to the Rwandan capital Kigali on the heels of a British Columbian music professor for her essay “A Pianist in Rwanda.”

She’s the kind of writer whose work grabs you by the throat and says, “Stop. Wait. Read. Pay attention.” And I did, right from the first paragraphs, where lines like these immediately clench your imagination: “Scores of dwellings pop out like blisters from the belly of the wide central valley and creep onto the sides of the hill. … From the safety of some of the ridges that sweep across the city, you can stand and watch the exhausted, pornographic industry of poverty.” But the beauty and sharpness of Kirshner’s language only serve as a fitting home for her subject: Rwanda, its recovery, its people and particularly its artists, and the impact it has had on one musician’s feeling of purpose in her own profession.

Some of the glossy mags’ more interesting stories (and some of the less interesting):

The Atlantic Monthly (May): Clive Crook has a piece about the inhospitable but eerily beautiful Skeleton Coast of Namibia. It’s unfortunate that the essay itself feels a little passive and bland, speckled with words like “breathtaking” and “awe-inspiring,” but when Crook sticks to the details, the geography of the sand dunes themselves succeed in making me want to see it for myself.

Conde Nast Traveler (May, US Edition): This month’s issues has depressing, “see-it-before-it’s-gone” coverage of 20 of the world’s most alluring places at risk due to over-development, deforestation, oil drilling, and other issues — including Baku, Borneo, and the Everglades. To balance it out is a report on the impact for good that some hotels around the world are making on social issues — a long overdue look at the not-so-small impact of tourism on communities and the planet.

Lawrence Osborne travels The Decan Odyssey, one of India’s old-world glamour trains, from Mumbai to Boa. And there’s a pretty bizarre fashion photo spread shot on location in the pristine, undeveloped parts of Brazil 100 miles (160km) southwest of Rio.

Budget Travel (May): The best section in this advertisement-heavy issue is a very funky photo essay by Sara Hart on the bridges that the wild and innovative edges of architecture has brought us this century. It’s worth looking at just for the photos.

Tiffany Sharples’s Rocky Mountain cycling trip unfortunately fails to get beyond her admitted New Englander’s “romanticized view of the Rockies,” but the tour itself is a nice itinerary. And Erik Torkells is surprised to find that Bermuda’s beaches are actually pretty nice, once he gave them a fair chance.

Town & Country Travel (Summer): Dorothy Kalins seeks out the best of Basque’s revolution in local cuisine. A piece about Sydney’s Byron Bay (how overwritten that place is!) escapes cliche only because the author admits in the first line, “I’m not the first person to wax poetical about Byron Bay.”

Kate Sekules has a very good piece about the effect of “a new generation homesick for a mythical former life” is having on her beloved Norfolk. And there’s a compilation section that creates a sweet, nostalgic look at San Francisco. I wish I could say it gives the insider’s view the article promised, but the piece’s strength is unfortunately in the nostalgia and memoir aspects rather than the — hem — perceptive travel.

I have always hated the British tendency towards the celebrity travel writer. Some dim-witted soap ‘star’ or footballer who needs a ghost writer to churn out their autobiography for them, and who thinks that now they can afford to turn left when they get on a plane they are in some way a travel expert.

One exception is the UK motoring writer and presenter Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson is the bête noire of environmentalists and liberals and one of the presenters of BBC’s Top Gear. [Top Gear is shown on BBC World, but there is a clip here showing a race between a car and a boat from London to Oslo]. In the same way that I would much rather sit in a pub having a political discussion with a right-wing conservative (they at least have arguments – liberals think that “because it’s so wrong” is reasoned debate) I enjoy reading Clarkson’s brand of humorous and opinionated writing. Think of a British PJ O’Rourke in corduroy jeans.

Clarkson often touches on travel themes, such as this piece on taking a private jet to Hungary, Nice jet, shame about abroad or a rant about Tony Blair’s choice of holiday destination in Let’s all stay with Lord Manilow. His musings on English as a foreign language should be illuminating for all Americans, including of course George W.

Even when not directly writing about travel issues, Clarkson’s ravings are so quintessentially English that they are pertinent for anyone who is considering visiting the British Isles. Think everyone over here loves the humble British pub? Checkout Bullseye! The pub is dying and you will see that Clarkson certainly doesn’t!

Sometimes Clarkson goes the whole hog, and trots out a fully fledged travel piece. In Clarkson’s Incredible Journey he writes about a visit to Botswana where he went Quad biking on the Magkadigkadi Salt Pan with the enigmatic Ralph.

Ralph owns Jack’s Camp and runs a travel company called Uncharted Africa. I was lucky enough to stay at Jacks and cross the pan to Kubu Island, when I was shooting a book on Unforgettable Islands for the BBC. Kubu is an ancient granite island in the Magkadigkadi Pan. On my journey I was accompanied by a couple of Bushman trackers. The Bushmen hold Kubu as sacred, and certainly it is a hauntingly beautiful place – one of the most spiritual and remote I have ever been to. For all of his cynicism, Clarkson realises this and has a moment of ephipany, saying that he “loved it more than any journey I’ve ever made”. He even says it is better than driving an Enzo Ferrari – praise indeed from an environment-hating petrolhead!

Words & images ©stevedavey.com 2007