Travel Writers, what do they write about?

"Paul Bowles observed that an important difference between a tourist and a traveler “is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.” 

This difference also separates writers about travels from “travel writers.” Is the voyaging writer telling us canny stories from a romping trip or using his peregrinations to relocate his place in the world? 

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell. D. H. Lawrence knocked off travel essays about places in which he had arrived only a few hours before, but he was writing about himself and his intuitions. Bowles, for his part, lived for years in Morocco but traveled through the desert with a suitcase filled with his favorite neckties. Do we read either man for profound and meticulously earned insights about Sardinia or the Sahara, or for their ability to convey something about themselves as they pass through those places? 

Most writers are “passing through,” and we expect no more of them. It’s part of their charm, if they have any. And part of the sometimes dubious premise of travel writing itself."

That was written by Lawrence Osborne in The New York Times Book Review when talking about "Carsick" by John Waters (which I've gotta read).

I think he has it pretty close to right, but one thing Osborne misses is that often travel writers write about neither themselves nor the place, but the people. I find the most fascinating travel writers offer insights about different peoples as they travel through or in places. 

It's the people that interest me.