Introduction and Background

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Sebastian Modak is a traveller who has visited over 70 countries. Across a variety of social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Muck Rack he identifies himself as a “Travel Writer and Multimedia Journalist”. To describe his background, Modak uses the coined term “third culture kid”. He says that his diverse culture and upbringing had an impact on his decision to choose travel as a specialism, “I think it played a big role in the career I ended up with. My mother is from Colombia and my father is from India and I grew up moving every few years. Travel has played a huge role in my life since I was a kid - my brothers and I were always encouraged to be curious about the rest of the world and be respectful of other cultures. It's also meant that the concept of home has always been pretty abstract to me, so being on the move - looking for stories about other places as a kind of perpetual outsider - was a natural fit for me, professionally.”

 

Modak has lived in six countries – including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Australia, and India – spread over four continents. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English and History and minoring in Music and African Studies. Prior to travel writing, Modak worked as a writer for MIT. In 2012, he was granted the Fulbright-mtvU Fellowship to document the local hip-hop scene in Gaborone, Botswana. After that, he was a producer for “Rebel Music” – an MTV World series.

“After university, I spent a few years doing academic writing, then transitioned into multimedia work (including a project on hip hop in Botswana), and then slowly from there transitioned into travel writing. I think the common thread between all my jobs was an interest in storytelling, with an international focus.”

 

Modak worked for three years at Condé Nast Traveller – first as an editor, then as a staff writer. In 2019, he was chosen by the New York Times to be the 52 Places Traveller. “There wasn't anything specific that started my career in travel writing - I transitioned into it over time. I always knew I wanted to write and tell stories, but not necessarily in the realm of travel specifically.”

 

Critical Analysis

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Modak’s travel writing for both outlets – Condé Nast Traveller (magazine) and The New York Times (newspaper) – differs widely. For articles written for CNTraveller, Modak uses a more anecdotal and nostalgic approach. For example, in his article, ‘A Love Letter to Nasi Goreng, Jakarta’s Street Food Staple’, he writes, “We passed around a pack of cigarettes we didn’t know how to smoke, and, in between vertigo-inducing drags, shovelled in spoonfuls of the stuff. Piping hot, eye-wateringly spicy, packed to the gills with MSG. This is 1 a.m. nasi goreng, or fried rice, on the streets of Jakarta—a staple for most, but for me, a cultural rite of passage.” Morris (1988), says that anecdotes aren’t just mere expressions of the individual experience, rather, they act as allegorical interpretations of the manner in which the world can be said to be running. Moreover, he includes interviews of industry professionals such as travel agents and travel advisory groups for a number of articles. In contrast, for articles written for the NYT, Modak cleanly weaves the personal experience with journalistic facts and adds the required know-hows of the place in a separate box at the centre so that it doesn’t interfere with the flow of the article. Hulme (2002), believes that since the world is always undergoing a state of continuous flux, the combination of personal reporting with analysis of the socio-political scene still holds an eminent position in travel writing. Furthermore, Modak doesn’t include interviews, rather, he incorporates his conversations with the locals in quoted dialogues. Turner and Orange (2013), state that it is necessary for travel journalism to put the most effort in the department of exchanges with the inhabitants of a place. 

 

A conscientious travel writer should aim to write further than the typical clichéd descriptions which are so often repeated in travel journalism (Turner and Orange, 2013). To describe nasi goreng, Modak makes use of simple yet effective words to give the reader a well-defined image of the dish: “Piping hot, eye-wateringly spicy, packed to the gills with MSG.” The graphic imagery as well as the informal description of the levels of monosodium glutamate indicate that the target audience for his work are of the age group 18-30. Another reason for this is that in his work (for both outlets), Modak involves a reasonable amount of humour. For example, in his article, ‘Loneliness and its Antidote on Orcas Island’ he writes: “To fill another afternoon, following one of many tips I received from readers (judging by my Instagram inbox, people really love Orcas), I went looking for some lakes. From the top of Mount Constitution, I hiked down through a series of switchbacks through dense forest. I had no one for company but a chipmunk who stared me down before ditching me for, probably, his friends”. Ritchie (2006), says that the usage of humour as well as irony allows for the establishment of social solidarity and is also responsible for acting as a gate-keeper. However, Cappelli (2008) argues that humour will fail in situations where the readers cannot comprehend the reference to culture. This can be seen in the article ‘The List Said Go to Batumi and Eilat, but I Got Other Ideas’.  Modak writes of Kachapuri – a traditional Georgian dish – as “artery-clogging decadence”. The description, while being both hilarious and accurate, can only be understood if the reader has actually consumed the dish. Additionally, from the casual and laid-back titles of the articles mentioned above, it can also be deduced that the readership of the audience is in the category of youth. 

 

According to Pau Rubiés (2002), ethnography for travel writing has incrementally grown irrelevant on the basis that the main focus for ethnography has shifted. Globalisation has led to a blurring of cultural traditions - this makes ethnography in need of redefining as there is a much greater potential for the ethnographic analysis of the diversity of cultural hybridisation. In conformance, Modak says, “I think a big part of good travel writing for me, is admitting your own ignorance. It can be hard to leave your preconceptions - or the things you think you know about a place - back at home, but that’s what makes all the difference. When I travel, I'm in a place to learn and to do that properly I have to throw what I thought I knew out the window. The people you meet are going to know far more about where they're from than you ever could. Sometimes it's important to shut up, listen and not be afraid to ask stupid questions. I also like to think that my writing contains very little judgment about other people or other cultures. Because of my own lack of roots, I find it easy to not filter my observations through an American lens, or a Colombian one or an Indian one. Hopefully, this means that the end product resonates with an even wider group of people.”

 

Youngs (2013) states that critics distinguish between modern travel from its antecedent by this significant feature: ‘the journey into the self’. While travelling, Modak strongly disagrees with the term ‘discovering’ and says, “I don't think ‘discovering’ is really the right word. It carries some neo-colonial connotations that are dangerous and easy to fall into when talking about travel. It implies that the thing, the place, the people weren't really there until you saw them. I'd prefer to describe it as learning. Learning about somewhere else, about someone else, and also about yourself. This is what I try to focus on: what story I can tell about somewhere that might resonate not only with someone who could be planning to go to that place for a vacation but also with someone who might never go to the place.”

 

It can be inferred ipso facto that Modak tries to put into words his experience from its original plane of procurement and achieves to override in his work the perception that that are only very few or absolutely no places at all left to discover in the world.

 

Conclusion

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For the 52 Places, Modak was required to write a weekly column which featured original photos and videos. He also used social media to report the stories of each weekly destination. While working at CNTraveler as an editor, Modak wrote, reported, assigned and edited new stories about travel on a daily basis. While working as a staff writer, he was allowed to write frequent first-person longform pieces and wrote one or two daily stories on a variety of topics such as news, science, and industry trends. Modak’s connections are vast; on LinkedIn itself, he has over 500. He has over 45,700 followers on Instagram and over 9000 followers on Twitter. Moreover, Modak keeps in touch with the all the people he befriended and resided with on his journeys as is observed from his latest article for the New York Times: Missives From My Locked-Down Friends, From Siberia To Samarkand.

 

It can be concluded that Modak’s travel pieces are exemplary as they provide in-depth detail about the places he visits in simple yet gripping words. The manner in which he begins his articles transports the reader into the current setting of the scene. As the article continues, he perfectly folds in his experiences, inconveniences, what he loves most about the trip and what the journey has taught him; he clearly tries to leave a lasting impression with the reader.

 

As Modak himself puts it, “I'm searching for connections with the rest of the world through my journalism; proof that there is a whole lot of wonder out there but that there is actually more that we have in common than what separates us. That is even more important now, during the COVID-19 crisis. It's easy to retreat into our shells and blame the interconnectedness of our world for the spread of the pandemic but it will be important to step back out one day and reconnect with each other - it's our cross-border, cross-cultural connections that are going to get us through this. I hope my travel writing can help prove why these connections are so important.”

 

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Bibliography

 

Articles:

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Modak, S. (2018). A Love Letter to Nasi Goreng, Jakarta’s Street Food Staple, Conde Nast Traveler, 1st October. Available: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/a-love-letter-to-nasi-goreng-jakarta [Accessed: 1st May 2020]

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Modak, S. (2019). The List Said Go to Batumi and Eilat, but I Got Other Ideas, The New York Times, 7th May. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/travel/the-list-said-go-to-batumi-and-eilat-but-i-got-other-ideas.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthe-52-places-traveler [Accessed: 1st May 2020]

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Modak, S. (2019). Loneliness and Its Antidote on Orcas Island, The New York Times, 17th September. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/travel/52-places-orcas-island-washington.html [Accessed: 1st May 2020]

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Modak, S. (2020). Missives From My Locked-Down Friends, From Siberia To Samarkand, The New York Times, 13th April. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/travel/missives-from-my-locked-down-friends-from-siberia-to-samarkand.html [Accessed: 1st May 2020]

 

References:

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Cappelli, G. (2008). Expats’ talk: Humour and irony in an expatriate’s travel blog. Textus, 21(1), pp.9-26.

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Hulme, P. (2002). Travelling to write (1940-2000). In P. Hulme & T. Youngs (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 87-102). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL052178140X.006

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Morris, M. (1988). Banality In Cultural Studies. Discourse, 10(2), 3-29.

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Pau Rubiés, J. (2002). Travel Writing And Ethnography. In P. Hulme & T. Youngs (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 242-260). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL052178140X.015

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Ritchie, D. (2006). “Frame-Shifting in Humor and Irony”, Metaphor and Symbol, 20, pp.275-294.

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Turner, B., & Orange, R. (Eds.). (2013). Specialist journalism. Routledge.

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Youngs, T. (2013). The Cambridge Introduction To Travel Writing. Cambridge University Press.