Recently a friend mentioned that he's thinking of trying to do a D&D game that's more in the style of a lot of brick-thick fantasy novels. Which is to say, a large proportion of the pagecount will be devoted to travelling around. Specifically, he doesn't just want to do the kind of nominal journeys that often feature, which are mostly encounters interspersed with occasionally making camp or fording a stream. He wants the journey itself to be prominent. As so often, our discussion led to me saying I'd go away and maybe write a blogpost.
My instinct is that if you want travel to feel real (something you can get your teeth into in a game), you're going to have to pay attention to some things that games tend to (reasonably) gloss over for the sake of adventure, as well as digging out the D&D wilderness rules. Specifically, I think you need to make logistics important. Thinking back on the travel stories I've read - which includes a lot of autobiography, not just fantasy - a lot of the interest and drama and tension comes from the mundane details.
My idea, therefore, is that you probably want to de-emphasise the classic problems of "we are constantly attacked by monsters" and start worrying about things like food supplies, shelter, fatigue, rust and corrupt law enforcement.
