A suggestion: travel is usually glossed over because there is very little a player character can do to influence it, and usually, the actual means of travel matters little. Think about the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring (and I mean a movie) where the decision was made to go to Mines of Moria: in that case, the way the fellowship travelled mattered.
If travel breaks down into a series of Random Encounters, players are only going to enjoy it as much as they enjoy the encounter, and likely, they would have probably enjoyed the encounter more if it had a more direct bearing on the adventure than "it happened on the way."
For example, let us say that your playing in the Forgotten Realms, and you have from Uthmere, a small port town in the Great Dale, to Silverymoon. Make sure that you emphasize that there are different routes. The quickest might be to sail around the Vast and Impiltur up to the Moonsea, and then try and negotiate with the Bedine to cross the desert, and then proceed through the wilds of the north. This is among the most direct routes, but also travels through pirate waters, has the most difficult terrain, and almost all the people you might deal with are harsh towards outsiders, if not outright hostile. Perhaps you could have a captain heading for Hlondeth, on the southern shores of the Sea of Fallen Stars, who knows that you can book river passage down to the Lake of Steam, and from there, travel by water all the way to Waterdeep and join a caravan. Stress that this is a well-traveled trade route, but also could take months, perhaps the better part of a year. Or another ship sails for Cormyr, which would normally be a good compromise, but the recent battle with the Shades has resulted in lawlessness about the eastern border, and there are numerous humanoids growing bolder. But all this travel time can be avoided with magic, and one of the party members knows a Witch of Rasheman who might help, but the Great Dale is threatened by the blighted horde of the Rotting Man, and the only way to that land is straight through the contested area. And if the witch decides not to help, that's a week's travel in the completely wrong direction...
The trick is to give choices which have consequences, and those consequences are rooted in the campaign world. The real point of travel in an rpg is to set the tone and feel of the game, and you need to have history and a sense of reality to do that.
