This is the third of three reviews of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s masterful travelogue of his journey in 1853 to Mecca and Medina, disguised as a faithful pilgrim. Discover why Burton is an iconoclast in Misfit I. Read one of Burton’s masterful sentences in Misfit II In a A Secret Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, Sir Richard Francis Burton says the pilgrimage is a personal journey. A pilgrimage brings the traveler peace of mind, in the acts of getting there, and of worshiping. […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: travel

This is the second of three reviews of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s masterful travelogue of his journey in 1853 to Mecca and Medina, disguised as a faithful pilgrim. Discover why Burton is an iconoclast in Misfit I Burton brings the pilgrimage to life in Misfit III Sir Richard Francis Burton’s A Secret Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina was published in 1856. Photography had yet to begin its rife presence in travel literature. In its stead, authors “word – painted.” Burton’s brush strokes […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: travel

The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape is Peter Bishop’s study of two centuries of travel writing on Tibet. “Wisdom, guidance, order and archaic continuity” are the qualities about Tibet that held out hope for Westerners,” he says. Arthur Conan Doyle thought so too. He sent Holmes to Tibet for rehab, after apparently plunging to his death in the Reichenbach Falls at the hands of arch-criminal Professor Moriarity. Mr. Bishop’s comment: “Holmes historical […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: travel