A travel writer, in my romantic notion, never makes a public appearance. He is always inaccessible to his readers and is busy collecting material in a faraway, godforsaken land which you might never visit in your lifetime except through his books. He is not the one you would like to be face-to-face with: if you see him in real, you could end up looking for flaws in his personality that might take away from the flawlessness of his prose. Gods are best unseen.
