Articles
Day-by-day itineraries, what to eat, how the city actually works, and the places within a train ride that are worth the day.
A Fortnight in Turkey
Istanbul, Cappadocia, the Aegean coast and the Lycian ruins, in two weeks that work by domestic flight and bus without a single wasted day.
A Month in Japan
Four weeks is enough to get past the Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka corridor into the parts of Japan that most visitors never see, and the rail network makes it straightforward.
A Week in Jordan
Roman cities, the Dead Sea, Petra, a desert to sleep in and the Red Sea, in a country the size of Portugal with one road down the middle.
How to Eat Well Anywhere
The best meal in most places costs about three dollars and has no sign in English. Finding it is a method rather than luck.
The Unglamorous Realities Nobody Posts About
Laundry, illness, bad accommodation, lost documents and the day everything goes wrong at once. What actually happens on a long trip and how to handle it.
Georgia and the Caucasus
Eight-thousand-year-old wine, a mountain range higher than the Alps, an alphabet of its own, and prices that belong to a different decade.
How the Guidebook Was Invented
Two rival publishers in the 1830s worked out that travellers would pay for practical information, and in doing so created the idea that a place could be ranked with stars.
How to Avoid Getting Sick Abroad
Most travel illness is one of four things, and three of them are largely preventable with habits that take no effort once you have them.
How to Book Flights Cheaply Without the Myths
Tuesday afternoon is not cheaper, incognito mode does nothing, and there is no magic booking window. Here is what actually moves the price.
How to Budget a Trip That Survives Contact With Reality
Daily averages are the wrong unit. Budget by region, separate the fixed costs from the daily ones, and put 15 per cent aside for the things you cannot predict.
How to Choose Travel Insurance That Actually Pays
Most policies are refused for reasons written into the policy. The exclusions matter far more than the price, and there are about eight that catch nearly everybody.
How to Choose Where to Go
Most people choose a destination from photographs and then discover the season is wrong, the budget does not stretch and the thing they liked takes four days to reach.
How to Cross a Land Border Without Losing a Day
Overland borders run on their own logic: fixers, unofficial fees, closed lunch hours and a bus that leaves without you. Most of the friction is predictable.
How to Deal with Scams Without Becoming Paranoid
Nearly every travel scam is one of six patterns. Learn the patterns rather than the local variants and you stop needing to be suspicious of everybody.
How to Find Somewhere to Stay
When to book ahead and when not to, the difference between the booking sites and the property's own price, and the local rules that make a listing illegal.
How to Handle Money Abroad Without Losing 8% to Fees
Between bad exchange rates, ATM charges, dynamic currency conversion and airport bureaux, the average traveller loses more to fees than to theft. All of it is avoidable.
How to Pack for a Trip of Any Length
The list is short and the principle is shorter: you can buy almost anything almost anywhere, so pack for the first fortnight and let the trip tell you the rest.
How to Plan a Round-the-World Trip
The decisions that are expensive to change: direction, seasons, visas and how you buy the flights. Get those four right and the rest is improvisation.
How to Plan a Safari Without Overpaying
A safari's price is set by park fees, the vehicle and the bed, in that order. Only one of those three is under your control, and it is not the one the brochures talk about.
How to Take Better Travel Photographs
The equipment matters least. Light, time of day, getting closer and asking permission account for almost all the difference between a holiday snap and a photograph.
How to Travel Alone
Solo travel is mostly a set of small practical habits plus a tolerance for eating dinner by yourself. Both are learnable, and the second one faster than you expect.
Iceland in a Week, Without the Golden Circle Queue
The Ring Road in seven days is a driving marathon. One region done properly, in the right season, is a better week and costs less.
Japan and Korea by Rail
Two countries with the best rail networks on earth and a two-hour flight between them. Three weeks covers both properly without a single internal drive.
Thirty Words Is Enough
You will not become fluent for a two-week trip and you do not need to. A small, specific vocabulary changes how you are treated more than intermediate grammar ever will.
Night Trains and Overnight Buses
A night in transit saves a hotel and a day, or costs you both. The difference is which service you booked and whether you understood what class you were buying.
Portugal Beyond Lisbon and Porto
The two cities are excellent and full. The Alentejo, the Douro, the mountain villages and the wild coast are twenty minutes off the route and nearly empty.
Scotland Beyond Edinburgh
The Highlands, the islands and the North Coast 500, with the weather, the midges and the access rights that make Scotland unlike anywhere else in Europe to walk in.
Why Going Slower Is the Only Advice That Always Works
Every experienced traveller says the same thing and every new one ignores it. Here is the actual arithmetic of why fewer places is more trip.
Ten Days in Morocco
Marrakesh, the High Atlas, the Sahara and the coast, in a loop that works by road and does not involve seeing the same mountain pass twice.
The Awkward Questions About Travelling
Flying, overtourism, animal attractions, photographing people, poverty tourism and where your money actually goes. None of it has a clean answer and all of it has better and worse.
The Invention of the Holiday
Paid leave, the seaside, the railway excursion and the charter flight. Travel for pleasure by ordinary people is about 150 years old and every stage of it was fought over.
Three Months in South America
Colombia to Patagonia overland, arranged so that the seasons work and the altitude is gained gradually. Ninety days, six countries, one long descent south.
Three Weeks in Peru and Bolivia
Lima to the salt flats, overland, with the altitude built into the order rather than fought against. Twenty-one days that do not involve arriving anywhere gasping.
Travelling Long Distances with Children
Children make a trip slower, cheaper in some ways and more expensive in others, and they get you talked to everywhere. The logistics are the manageable part.
Two Weeks in Italy Without the Crowds
Not a Rome–Florence–Venice tour. Fourteen days in the south and the islands, where the food is better, the prices are half, and the queues do not exist.
Two Weeks in Southeast Asia: Four Routes That Work
Fourteen days is one country, or two if they share a border and you are disciplined. Here are four routes that fit, with the connections that make them possible.
Understanding Visas Before They Ruin a Trip
The rules are boring and unforgiving. Passport validity, onward tickets, rolling windows and application-from-home requirements account for nearly every refusal.
Vietnam, North to South
One country, three climates, 1,650km of coast and a season problem that no itinerary fully solves. What each third of Vietnam is actually for.
What Long-Term Travel Is Actually Like
The parts nobody photographs: the admin, the loneliness in month three, the decision fatigue, and the fact that it becomes ordinary life with worse laundry facilities.
Why People Travel, and What They Say It Is For
Pilgrimage, education, health, escape and status. The stated reason for travelling has changed every century and the actual reasons have barely moved.
What Tourism Does to a Place
The economics of visitors arriving in numbers: what it pays for, what it prices out, and why the same pattern repeats from Venice to Bali to Barcelona.
Working While Travelling, Honestly
Remote work makes long travel possible and makes it a different thing. The time zones, the visas and the fact that a laptop turns every city into the same city.