Some theoretical considerations of travel writing as a genre presented in this article were inspired by Myrna Kostash's Reading the River: A Traveller's Companion to the North Saskatchewan River (2005). Besides a review of generic considerations, this text aims to highlight the postcolonial context and its relevance for travel writing, as well as the concepts of contact-zone and intertextuality, with a final touch on female travel writing, which all figure in Kostash's travelogue.