I’m not quite sure how to define a travelogue, but my favourite journey book is The Odyssey. It’s one of the first ever books in the world. I first read it as a teenager, because we were being made to read it at school, and write essays on it. That’s a good way of turning anyone off a book, and I didn’t like it then. But about ten years ago, I came across a translation of it by the American poet Robert Fagles. There’s something about the way Homer’s Greek is translated by Fagles that conveys a sense of journey in a way that I think is miraculous. He moves around the Meditteranean so much in the poem in a way that almost seems impossible to achieve. Not only does he tells the story beautifully, but his poetry gives you a real sense of movement, and of travel.

Sam Miller is an author and a journalist whose latest book is A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes

(As told to Shreya Ila Anasuya)