Travel not necessarily broadening the mind

Book Review: The Travels of Ibn Battutah, edited by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
I was curious to read this after seeing Hespèrion XXI's concert inspired by the travels of Ibn Battutah last year. As Mackintosh-Smith emphasises in his introduction, the reader is being transported in culture as well as time and space. It presents some baffling practicalities - Battutah seems to be showered in money and gifts from sultans in most places he visits, but there's no explanation why. Imagine being a backpacker without a globally accessible bank account: something of this sort would be necessary, but what's the deal to make your own way? The one task he is assigned, to be part of a delegation to China, seems to fail almost at the first hurdle due to piracy attacks in the Indian Ocean (although somehow the journey continues). Battutah's religion seems to offer him a way to divide the world into us and them, and he is quite judgemental on many aspects of places he visits and notes with disapproval where alcohol or drugs are consumed; but he's happy to have a series of wives on his travels and plenty of slaves.