"Prejudice is not a European monopoly. My travel writing, for instance, in Pakistan and Afghanistan is really shaped by my childhood memory, common among small-town lower-middle-class Brahmins, of Muslims as threatening to "others" -- and there are moments when I lapse into these inherited fears. I can't write about China without discussing our nation's image...

Lonely Planet guidebooks have inevitably become the kind of extra weight I rarely want to put in my backpack anymore. Why? Because they lead a traveler to the same ol’ tired paths everybody else is going to: a kind of one way ticket for jaded travel entertainment made up of bars, guesthouses and a bunch...

"Just look what gets written about Afghanistan. In an age when journalism is becoming more and more etiolated, when articles are becoming shorter and shorter, usually lacking all historical context, travel writing is one of the few venues to write with some complexity about an alien culture. An Obama speech, a foreign policy paper or...

Lahore, Pakistan Anyone who travels will commit a cultural error from time to time. But generally speaking, if you want to err in such a way that a national uproar will ensue, it helps to be famous. Take the case of Princess Diana’s 1991 visit to Lahore, Pakistan. Lahore, the Pakistani cultural capital, is home...

Besham, Pakistan Early on in Khaled Husseini’s book The Kite Runner , the main character says, “To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.” The reader can’t read this line without conjuring up some mental image of Hassan, and that image will...