Travel Writing discussion

After googling this question, I found that my preferred definition was this one: 'A form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator's encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject' (http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/trav...).

I think this falls into two categories:
Writing about a place the writer is experiencing and or,
Writing about the experience the writer has whilst being in a new environment.
Doing only the first closes a door to the reader i feel is important. I feel that travel writing should educate, motivate, inform and inspire the reader ideally in equal measure. As with reviews, the most useful are when the context of the reviewer is known and shared by the person reading the review. As a reader, being open to being educated, motivated, informed and inspired means that I want to share reviews with people who fall into the same bracket. Travel writing has the capacity more than other genres to be a ble to do this.

I see what you mean, Dan, but some travel books can be too much about the author's personal 'journey' (in the reality tv show sense) and I'm not so keen on those. One example is Crossing the Shadow Line
which really irritated me.
I find myself agreeing with the Kirkus Review's comments about the author of this book: "Most irksome is his self-involvement that detracts from the exotic locales he covers" and "If Eames had avoided such off-putting sentiments, his work would have spoken--eloquently--for itself". I'm a great believer in letting things speak for themselves.