Landscape Readings

I am reading Peter Fleming's account of a journey from Peking to Kashmir in the mid 1930s, 'News From Tartary'.  I find old books very attractive; the faded cloth spines, the heavier pages, the sheer weight of a hard back book.  I often find that these 'undiscovered' books have recently been reissued as part of a 'classic travel writing' series.  

I also find that there is a rhythm to travel writing.  I start the book - and so the journey - without understanding the rhythm and wanting to know everything the writer is trying to tell me.  But there comes a point where I realise that the names and the people don't really mean anything to me, especially as I don't minutely follow the journeys on maps.  This is the point where I would give up the book.  Then I let go of the factual element of the journey and try and follow it emotionally, by trying to understand emotions and experiences, not geographical distances.  Good travel writing does not bog the reader down in place-names and people, but rather allows the emotions of a journey to shine through; physical/landscape description is similar to this.  So that a sense of space and journey is what is left, not names and people.