I don’t know what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me. A great book allows me to leap over that wall,” said David Foster Wallace, arguably one of the best American novelists of modern times.

What a great book allows you to do is know of its author’s thoughts, emotions and feelings. It gives you a sense of empathy, mutuality and inwardness. In other words, interiority is an integral part of a great piece of literature. What Urdu travelogues written in the latter half of the 20th century did was strike a balance between interiority and exteriority, making the travelogues sound creative and convivial rather than a drab and dry narration of facts, figures, geographical features and demography.

This trend began with Nazar Nama (1958), one of the earliest Pakistani Urdu travelogues. Written by Mahmood Nizami, it successfully displayed how interaction between the interior and exterior worlds can bring a travel account to life. On the contrary, Urdu travelogues of the 19th and early 20th centuries — beginning with Yousuf Kambalposh’s Tareekh-i-Yousufi, also known as Ajaaibaat-i-Farang, first published in 1847 — were mostly based on descriptions of the outer world that the travellers saw, rarely letting the reader know what the writer was actually thinking. Among Nizami’s predecessors, Marxist writer and journalist Khwaja Ahmed Abbas was perhaps the only writer of Urdu whose Musafir ki Diary (1940) can be cited as an example of interaction between the inner and outer worlds, though he, too, at times resorts to plain reporting, even listing his observations with bullets and serial numbers.

Part seven of the series exploring Pakistani Urdu writing over the past 70 years

A traveller has to be free of excess baggage, and that includes an itinerary, tight schedules and the desire to tick off places in tourist guidebooks, enabling oneself to say boastfully, “been there, seen that.” But the early travel writers of Urdu were so bogged down with the ‘purposefulness’ of their journeys that a free spirit could not take over and inner feelings could simply not make it to their writings. So before Nizami, all Urdu travelogues — excepting Musafir ki Diary — whether written by the semi-romantic Shibli Nomani or the realist Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, were firmly grounded in reality, exteriorising what the writer witnessed and felt.

But the huge popularity that Urdu travelogues have been enjoying in Pakistan since the late 1950s and early 1960s owes much to the informal style emanating from travel writers’ carefree approach and their letting the reader have a peep through the wall, if not leap over it. It is not a coincidence that interiority emerged in Urdu travel accounts just when modernism was on the rise in the subcontinent and progressivism was on the wane, say, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Progressives had a disdain for what they dubbed “morbid” romanticism and put too much emphasis on realism. But stolid realism makes a travel account dull. Blending interiority with exteriority did the trick for travel writers. In fact, Pakistani Urdu travel writings of the 1960s ushered in a new era of travelogues in the history of Urdu literature, influencing even Urdu travelogues written in India.

Benefitting from Nizami’s successful experimentation of blending the outer world with inner feelings, Begum Akhter Riazuddin integrated thought and descriptive writing in her Saat Samandar Paar (1963) and Dhanak par Qadam (1969) and was much appreciated by senior critics and scholars such as Salahuddin Ahmed as well as readers. Globetrotting Ibne Insha, through his extempore and chuckle-evoking travelogues such as Chalte ho to Cheen ko Chaliye (1967), Aawara Gard ki Diary (1971), Dunya Gol Hai (1972) and Ibn Batuta ke Ta’aqub Mein (1974), first serialised in Urdu newspapers, played a vital role in popularising travelogues. His Nagri Nagri Phira Musafir appeared posthumously. Ibne Insha’s inner feelings are perhaps more pronounced in his pensive poetry and his travelogues sometimes talk in undertones when it comes to the inner world. But it is Jamiluddin Aali who muses on myriad issues while sharing with readers what he sees. His travel accounts are light-hearted, but at times overshadowed by his philosophical analysis and introspection. Nevertheless, Aali’s travelogues Dunya Mere Aage (1975) and Tamasha Mere Aage (1975) are landmarks in Urdu travelogue writing as he is not afraid to let the reader leap over the wall.

Another writer popularising Urdu travelogues with his guard down, just like Aali, is Mustansar Hussain Tarar. Appearing on the literary scene with a bang with his Nikle Teri Talash Mein (1969), Tarar offered a new and fresh perspective: some of the chapters had characters and the imaginative air of short stories. The outer world attracts him as much as the strange characters he runs into in all the unlikely places and whose stories — as well as characters — he depicts with a generous sprinkling of his own delicate, romantic tint. Tarar’s Andalus Mein Ajnabi (1976) makes for an absorbing read, just like many more of his travelogues that followed. Some critics, however, feel that Tarar’s travelogues sometimes sound too romanticised, even too fictionalised to be true, not to mention the bevy of beautiful, young girls in foreign lands who fall in love with him at first sight

Ashfaq Ahmed’s Safar Dar Safar (1981) is the other extreme when compared to Urdu’s earliest travelogues that were but detailed accounts of the outer world: it describes travel that is more mental than physical, immersing readers into the author’s inner thoughts, his fantasies and fancies. It narrates travels within travels, as the title suggests. But Ashfaq Ahmed’s art of storytelling is at its peak in the book that describes a visit to the legendary Lake Saiful Muluk near Naran in the Kaghan Valley, blending it with memoirs, stories and imaginative musings. The writer’s fellow travellers, Mumtaz Mufti being one of them, had their own stories and thoughts to tell, which made the book all the more interesting and inwardly directed rather than concentrating on the world around.

Colonel Muhammad Khan’s Basalamat Ravi (1975), with its beautifully embellished prose, was a good addition to Urdu’s humorous travel accounts. Ataul Haq Qasmi’s Shauq-i-Aawargi, first serialised in Funoon between 1973 and 1977, is also one of the most successful travelogues because of its humour and cultural commentary. Muhammad Hamza Farooqi is another travelogue writer whose books show how a traveller can enjoy and draw happiness from even unpleasant or untoward incidents that take place during the course of a travel. His travelogues Aaj Bhi Us Des Mein, Zamaan-o-Makaan Aur Bhi Hain, Safar Ashob and Qaid-i-Maqaam se Guzar are written in a light-hearted manner, but are not without food for thought. Qamar Ali Abbasi, a prolific writer, penned many travelogues peppered with humour.

A large number of Pakistani Urdu travelogues describe the travel to Saudi Arabia and the performing of Hajj. All of them record inner feelings and emotions with a deep attachment to religious beliefs. Some Hajj travelogues are Shab Jaae ke Man Boodam (Shorish Kashmiri), Karavan-i-Hijaz (Mahirul Qadri), Hadees-i-Dil (Waheeda Naseem — and yes, it has the same title as Abdullah Malik’s), Baaoli Bhikaran (Bushra Rahman), and Vatan se Vatan Tak (Abul Khair Kashfi). Others include Mumtaz Mufti’s Labbaik, Abdullah Malik’s Hadees-i-Dil and Tarar’s Munh Val Kaaba Shareef.

Considering the large number of Urdu travelogues written in Pakistan, it is a herculean task to name them all, so only a handful are mentioned here: Des Bades (G. Allana), Jawaar Bhata (Zulfiqar Ahmed Tabish), Dekh Liya Iran (Afzal Alvi), Himala Ke Us Paar (Meerza Adeeb), Nai Dunya Purani Dunya (Sheen Farrukh), Germany Mein Aik Baras (Muhammad Kazim), Sheher Dar Sheher (Amjad Islam Amjad), and Sair-o-Safar (Shafi Aqeel). Other books include Do Musafir Do Mulk (Masood Ahmed Barkati), Do Safar (Muhammad Khalid Akhtar), Jernaily Sarak (Raza Ali Abidi), Aye Aab-i-Rood-i-Ganga (Rafeeq Dogar), Safar Hai Shart (Razia Fasih Ahmad), Safar Naseeb (Mukhtar Masood), Hind Yatra (Mumtaz Mufti), Posheeda Teri Khaak Mein (Rafiuddin Hashmi), and many more.

Pakistani Urdu travelogues have their peculiar features. Most travelogue writers cannot forget their homeland, and are either homesick or comparing some foreign land with their country — albeit in a satirical way. They yearn for home and are delighted when they come across a Pakistani or a Pakistani restaurant. Anwar Sadeed wrote that Pakistani writers trying to match the imaginative style and strange characters of fiction in travelogues damaged the genre. Well, maybe, but it is the very same writers who lifted the genre up from the boring monotony of old-fashioned, drab description. Humorous travelogues are a speciality of Pakistani Urdu literature that influenced Indian writers and experienced Indian humorists, such as Mujtaba Hussain, too, tried their hand at it.

All in all, the Pakistani Urdu travelogue is one of the most popular genres and offers some delightful reads.

The writer is a former chief editor of the
Urdu Dictionary Board and now teaches
Urdu at the University of Karachi

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 30th, 2017