I set out on a journey of a thousand leagues, packing no provisions. I leaned on the staff of an ancient who, it is said, entered into nothingness under the midnight moon. It was the first year of Jokyo, autumn, the eighth moon. As I left my ramshackle hut by the river, the sound of the wind was strangely cold.
~ Matsuo Basho, from Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field
reproduced in Basho's Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Basho, translated by David Landis Barnhill. 
Matsuo Basho - Japan's beloved 17th-century haiku master - is best known for his spiritual travelogues. The great theme of these travelogues is the journey: steps taken through the natural and social landscapes of a country, through time, through the internal terrain of mystical reality. The most well-known of his five travel journals is The Narrow Road to the Interior (Oku no homomichi) - a masterful combination of haiku and literary prose (haibun).
Retracing The Footsteps Of Basho
For an inspiring glimpse of the trail followed on Basho's "journey to the deep north," have a look at this National Geographic feature, which tells the story - with some wonderful photos - of the contemporary writer Howard Norman, retracing those mystical meandering steps of Basho.