Travel magazine
Six running series and hundreds of articles, written by the people who plan the trips.
When to go
Seasons, month by month, region by region
What it costs
Real budgets in dollars, with tables
Routes that work
Tested itineraries and combinations
Eating across Asia
What to order and where
On foot
Treks and long walks, described honestly
Before you book
Visas, permits, timing, practicalities
What to eat in Azerbaijan, and how the tea works
Azerbaijani cooking sits between Turkish, Persian and Central Asian food and takes something from all three, which makes it familiar in outline…
What to eat and drink in Australia, and where
Australian food has no single dish you must try and that is the point of it. What Australia has instead is a…
What to eat in Armenia, and the Areni revival
Armenian food sits between the Caucasus and the Middle East and belongs fully to neither. There is grilled meat and there is…
Walking in northern Vietnam: Pu Luong, the Muong Hoa valley and Ha Giang
Trekking in northern Vietnam is a phrase that oversells what the walking actually is, and undersells how good it is. There are…
Walking in Armenia: Dilijan, Aragats and the southern trails
Armenia is not a trekking destination in the way Nepal or Kyrgyzstan are, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.…
Vietnam with children: what works, what does not, and what we change
Vietnam is one of the easiest countries in Asia to travel with children, and family trips here go wrong for one reason…
What does a trip to Vietnam cost?
The honest answer to what a Vietnam trip costs is that food and transport are cheaper than almost anyone expects and accommodation…
Vietnam for the first time: what actually surprises people
A first trip to Vietnam goes wrong in predictable ways: too many stops, the wrong month for the wrong region, a single-entry…
Uzbekistan with children
Uzbekistan is a better family destination than almost anyone expects, and it fails in exactly one predictable way.
The Afrosiyob high-speed train, and how to get a seat on it
The Afrosiyob is the single most important piece of infrastructure in Uzbek tourism. It is the reason a ten-day route through four…
Uzbekistan month by month
The best time to visit Uzbekistan is a narrower answer than most countries, because the constraint is not rain or crowds. It…
Uzbekistan for the first time
Almost everybody arrives in Uzbekistan with the same two expectations, and almost everybody is wrong about both.
What does a trip to Uzbekistan cost?
The short answer is that Uzbekistan is one of the least expensive countries we send people to, and that the difference between…
Uzbek food: bread, plov and the hour that matters
Uzbek cooking has a reputation for being heavy, repetitive and beige. One of those is true.
Trekking in Asia compared: Nepal, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Bhutan
People ask us to compare these five countries as if they were five versions of the same holiday. They are not. The…
Tokyo in four days, by neighbourhood rather than by sight
The mistake most first-time visitors make in Tokyo is treating it as a city with a list of attractions. It is not.…
The climb to Tiger’s Nest, honestly described
Paro Taktsang, the monastery on the cliff, is the photograph that sells Bhutan. It is also the hardest physical thing on a…
Which tiger park, and what your odds actually are
Start with the sentence that decides everything else: nobody can promise you a tiger. Anyone who does is selling you something, and…
What to eat in Tibet, and what we will not pretend about it
Let us start with the honest position, because it is the one that makes the rest of the article useful. Tibetan food…
Tibet with older children
Altitude is the whole answer to this question, and it answers it before anything about sightseeing, food or interest gets a vote.
Tibet month by month
The best time to visit Tibet is a shorter list than most destinations offer, and it is decided by three things rather…
Tibet for the first time, and how the permits actually work
The Tibet Travel Permit is the first thing to understand about a Tibet trip, because it decides everything that comes after it:…
What a trip to Tibet costs, and why it cannot be cheap
The cost of a trip to Tibet works differently from every other destination in this library, and the reason is structural rather…
The Gobi in detail: what is actually out there
The first thing to say about the Gobi is that it is not sand. For the great majority of its area it…
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