Travel Stories from Around the World
What would traveling be worth without the stories to tell? Road Junky brings you only the most entertaining tales - from getting high in the Himalaya to chance encounters in New York City.
Browse our latest, then read and get inspired. You will not be disappointed!
Overland Through the Ex-Soviet Republics in an Old Army Truck?
Neither had we. Then we bumped into the guys at Soviet Truck and they got us thinking about this vast tract of land which for most travelers is an unknown ...
Interview With David Wills, Travel Author and Korea Expert
RJ: From some of your previous articles on South Korea, it’s fair to deduce you’re not exactly crazy about the place – so why did you stay so long?
David: I ...
Hostels and the Traveler
Before you went somewhere you had no opportunity to exhaustively research your destination beyond rereading that same paragraph in the guide book you flipped through in the book store. The ...
Parque Tyrona Colombia Travel Story
Parque Tayrona, a national park, the perfect retreat from Cartagena this is the place where Steve McQueen fell in love with the Guajira Indians after he escaped whilst playing ...
The Golden Days of Goa Trance
I used to think Goa Trance was little more than a bunch of repetitive beats and irritating samples of people saying hey, this must be heaven, man! It was ...
Beijing Underground City, China
Longer than the Great Wall of China. Stretches to five cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Tianjin and Nanjing. Room to house 300,000 people. Contains a cinema, two hospitals, ...
Yin Yang Traffic China Travel Story
We’d flown into Kunming and spent just a night there, but the changes in the anthropological landscape were immediately striking: this was now quite obviously Central Asia. The people were ...
September 11 and the Loss of Airplane Naiveté
When the first plane hit the World Trade Centre in New York, I thought it was just some terrible accident. Airplanes were, after all, strange and improbable things. It took ...
A Narrow Escape in the Belizean Jungle
You never know when these situations will arise. They’re the type that force action, challenge your response and lay hauntingly in the thick of human probability. Allow me to ...
Road to Contemplation
Dwarfed by the wheels of the van, a puppy impresses delicate prints into the moistened sand, surveying an intruder new to his humid universe within the compound of the house. ...
Travel Insanity
I’ve seen a lot of crazy people in my time on the road. People convinced that they were a new incarnation of Jesus Christ, King Arthur or Buddha ...
Work in California Clipping Marijuana
Given the frothing nature of America’s war on drugs- conducted with righteous fervour by every president since Ronald Reagan, it was, all in all, a strange move for California ...
Pamplona, Spain Running with the Bulls
There comes a time in the life of every young man when he feels the need to test his mettle and tempt the hands of Fate. He might sign up ...
World Anthropology at the Crossroads
Go! Go! Damnit!
When anthropologists approach a foreign culture in the hope of gaining some understanding of the values and nature of the people who live there, they generally consider a ...
Beijing Has Come a Long Way: China Travel Story
“Have you been to the Greek War?”
The 19-year-old Chinese waitress in Frank’s Place was trying out her English and that was the question she’d hit me with. I had been ...
Tools of Imperialism: Some Things You Won't Find in Cuba
Keeping a revolution alive for 52 years is no easy matter. In their time as top dogs of Cuba the Brothers Castro have dealt with invasion, missile crisis, economic collapse ...
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness is largely inspired by Conrad’s travels in the Congo, deep in the heart of Africa, then known as the Dark Continent. He saw the colonial machine ...
Cambodia Train Surfing
The train ride from Cambodia’s second city, Battenbang, back to the capital Phnom Penh. Ticket costs $3, the locals pay about $1. I try the old student card again. I ...
Five Rules of Cuban Attraction
Eventually the restless Italian on the bus from Cienfuegos to Havana slumped into the seat across from mine. There he sprawled out and fell asleep, unaware that one pink testicle ...
The Bilbao Museum, Abraham Lincoln and Basque Separatists
Finally. Finally after thirty-three years of missed opportunities, uncomfortable silences and the fear I’d take my thoughts on the subject to the grave, someone asked me what I thought about ...
Monteverde Cloud Forest Costa Rica
I followed my friend, Irmi, through a world of green, trees and plants of every description filling the air with moist, sultry scents, water trickling down leaves and trunks in ...
India - An Overcrowded Continent
If it could be said that I lost my heart in Africa then it must be said that I found my soul in India. Now I know at least one ...
Cambodia's Haunted Hotels
There’s a huge hotel on one of the beaches, The Independence Hotel. It’s deserted and derelict. Marked down for demolition. I ask the Cambodians standing around the entrance selling soft ...
Spain Travel Hippie Village
I trekked up the stony path beside the tumbling river and the almond trees in flower accompanied me to either side. I reached the carpark where there were stationed trucks ...
Busin’ El Salvadorian Style
It’s fair to say that I don’t like rush hour. Back home, I’ll do almost anything to avoid those two hours at the end of the day, when three quarters ...
Cheap Food Travel Guide
So you’re traveling with no money or next to it; you were robbed or just run out of cash – either way you need to stay alive. While you’re waiting ...
Begging Across the World
In India when one chooses to give a few rupees to a beggar by the side of the road it’s good etiquette to salute him at the same time. He, ...
Once Upon a Time in Mexico - Tortillas, Mañana
“Mexico is slow.”
My friend Tanya told me: a big mama type born and raised in Mexico but with features and build inherited from her Cuban mother. The people in ...
The Traveler and World Injustice
I remember as a boy I once sat listening to an old traveler as he told me about the world. Whilst he knocked back beers and chain-smoked cigarettes, I hung ...
Montserrat Yacht Story, Caribbean
It was early May 1990, and I was single-handing from Tortola to Venezuela, island-hopping as I worked my way south. After a few days in the Dutch island of ...
There's Only One Way out of Banja Luka
This week Serbia arrested Goran Hadzic, the last Serbian fugitive on the Hague’s wanted listed. It’s expected that the rounding up of the last of these suspected war criminals will ...
Mistaken Identity in a Tamil Street Cafe
This is a story about television and fame and begins in the unlikely setting of a humble eatery in South India. I was famished and stopped at the first street-side ...
Khao San Road Patpong Thailand Travel Story
Khaosan Road
What infamy a road can bear. A Disney Land for backpackers, the strip for bar goers, a long brothel for whores. Lady-boys cat-call, preachers scream, drug dealers whisper, merchants ...
Hostels Travel Guide
Hostels are both the bane and the salvation of the budget traveller. On one hand they can be an excellent source of information; notice boards advertise what’s going on ...
India Travel Stories: Holy Cows
I remember having a strange conversation with Vijay, the second-hand book merchant on the central drag of the main bazaar in Delhi. We stood next to the piles of books ...
