In many aspects Travel Writing is different from Novels. But we discuss here the simpler and obvious one. From a writer point of view there are lot of similarities and common things too. If we talk about from a reader point of view then in novels author writes his/her thoughts and inside beauty (and sometimes dread) but in travel book, author talks (talk is more appropriate word here than write) about the actions he/she performs.
In travel books nobody have concern about what you did or whatever you did. Reader enjoys the situations either author talking about a waterfall or tiger assault. But in novel, reader wants to know about things, these can be romance, revenge or anything.
The Basic Difference
The most basic difference between these two genres of writing is, travel book consists of reality, real people, real events and their occurrence while novel consists of fictional characters and unreal events. There might be some resemblance between a novel and real world. But that is just coincidence.
Another difference is novel circle around a plot, even if novel is a part of series than two different episodes revolves around same plot or story. In other the ending of a novel based upon the starting of it. But all this changes in travel book, even two consecutive paragraphs might tell you different story. So, we can say that a travel book is much more unpredictable than the novels. A travel book might have no connection between the starting and ending of it, we can say the same about even for two chapters of it.
“Travel Novel” is a different term, which is the mixture of these two diverse genres. A travel novel consists of a story (might be fictional or non-fictional) which circle around an adventure. It focuses around the real or imaginary places. It might consist of romance or revenge. So we can say that this genre allows author to write with more freedom and less accuracy.
A travel book can be published in form of blogs but a novel lacks this abilities. If you do so, novel will lose its tempo and attention.