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Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Birgit Englert | On the (Im)possibility of Writing a Travelogue 139 the context of travel writing by people from the Global North on destinations in the Global South. I therefore propose that we read An Ethiopian Travelogue as a methodological reflection on how travelogues might be created, especially in contexts of strong asymmetry resulting from the prevailing ‘regimes of mobility’ (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013) and the power of represen- tation that comes along with this asymmetry. By combining the travelogue genre with research on oral history and methodological reflection, Ramos both provides a novel contribution to travel writing on Africa and raises epistemological questions about knowledge creation while travelling (cf. Krobb and Müller 2016, who refer to the knowledge produced by travel-related mobility as ‘itinerant knowledge’). In this way, his work addresses a question asked by Steven Spalding (2016: 118): ‘What have well-traveled sojourners learned that few or no others have, by dint of their extended experience of mobility?’ Although my approach to An Ethiopian Travelogue is primarily grounded in African Studies and Mobility Studies, it borrows the concept of polygraphy from Travel Writing Stud- ies. My email exchange with Manuel João Ramos, who generously shared some background on the making of his books, helped me to understand many crucial aspects. In what follows, I will first provide a brief description of the author and how he has posi- tioned himself as a sketcher in academia and travel writing. I then discuss his most recent book, An Ethiopian Travelogue, focusing on the relation between text and the visual elements of the book more broadly, before zooming in on the textual components within the sketches. Ramos and his approach to sketching Manuel João Ramos works as an associate professor at the Department of Anthropology of the ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon and is also affiliated with the university’s Centre of Inter- national Studies. He holds a habilitation and a PhD in anthropology, as well as a master’s degree in Comparative Literary Studies, which he completed with a dissertation on travel literature.4 His main field of interest is Ethiopian history, with a special focus on oral history. Alongside his academic career, Ramos has made a name for himself as an illustrator and essayist, with part of his writing being dedicated to the practice of travel.5 Not only does Ramos use sketches in his own publications, but he is also a strong advocate of using sketches in research processes and has published methodological articles on sketching in anthropology (cf. Azevedo and Ramos 2016; Ramos 2004; 2019). He stresses the increased quality of observation that goes along with sketching, arguing that due to the technical lim- itations of the material needed and the time it takes, sketching makes it possible to experience places more deeply (cf. Azevedo and Ramos 2016; cf. Forsdick 2019 and Pettinger 2019 on ver- tical versus horizontal travelling). For one, sketches can work as aide-mémoires. Charles Forsdick (2009: 299), for example, argues that photography can play an important role in ‘transcribing the journey for pragmatic reasons in the field, and producing a range of aide-mémoires on which subsequent textualisation 4 His website at the ISCTE (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa) <https://cei.iscte-iul.pt/en/equipa/manuel-joao-ra- mos-2/> [accessed on: 21.09.2020] offers a full overview of his publications. 5 In addition to the work discussed in this article, he has published Traços de Viagem: Experiências remotas, locais invulgares (2009). He also illustrated the Gondar City Guide, for example, published by the Centre français des études éthiopiennes (CFEE) and Shama Books (cf. Wion, Sahile and Ramos et al. 2014).