We live in a time when almost anything we want to know is only a few taps away.
Want to see the courtyard of an ancient mosque? Search for a photograph. Want to know its history? Ask AI. Need directions, a translation, a restaurant recommendation, or an itinerary for your next trip? There is an app for that.
With so much information at our fingertips, I sometimes wonder:
Do we still need travel stories?
I think we do.
Because knowing about a place isn't the same as experiencing it.
A photograph can show you the arches of a mosque, but it can't tell you what it feels like to step inside after walking through a noisy, crowded street. A map can show you where a city is, but it can't tell you about the person you met there who changed the way you understood it. A search engine can give you a list of historical facts, but a story can make you wonder what it might have been like to stand there hundreds of years ago.
That is what I love about travel stories. They give us a way to imagine ourselves somewhere we have never been.
When I created Aali the Traveler, I wanted his journeys to be about more than seeing famous places. I wanted him to slow down and notice things—the sound of a language, the details carved into an old doorway, the stories people carry with them, and the layers of history that can still be found in a city.
Technology can help us find a place.
But stories help us connect with it.
And perhaps that matters even more now.
AI can tell us what happened. It can organize the facts and answer our questions in seconds. But curiosity begins when we ask a different question:
What did it feel like to be there?
That question has no single answer. It invites us to imagine, to wonder, and sometimes, to travel for ourselves.
I hope The Minaret Letters can do a little of that.
Because the world is full of places worth discovering—and sometimes the best journey begins with a story.