On the Road
To travel is a culture in itself. You are detached from the notions of whom you have to be, and the locals and other travellers are as curious about you as you may be about them. Making the most of your time immersed in strange, ever-changing environments is an art. Let go of the assertiveness of your beliefs, share in the customs, learn some of the language, and you’ll emerge transformed.
Road Junky has 116 On the Road articles. Scroll down to view.
Travel Guide Books
The evolution of the travel guide books was always going to be bad news for the planet. They’re responsible for a generation of consumer travelers who talk about ‘doing’ places ...
Around the World Travel Guide - Getting far away for a long time
Working in the real world has got you down? Feel like you’ve been at school forever? With the stresses and strains of modern society it’s easy to feel like we’re ...
How to Carry Money when Travelling
Now that you’ve worked for 6 months cleaning toilets, waiting on snotty customers who don’t tip at restaurants and creating future spinal complaints picking fruit, the last thing you want ...
The Rainbow Gatherings - Hippy Paradise
Those who think that the age of hippies has died have obviously never attended a Rainbow Gathering. Hippies, freaks, musicians, jugglers, and all kinds of weird and wonderful people ...
Travel Scams Guide
Wouldn’t it be great if love really did make the world go round? Alas the path of the righteous traveler is set with scams, cons and hustles to leave him ...
First Time Travel Guide
So you might have been away with your folks before or even been on a weekend trip to Paris but getting on the road for real is something else. To ...
Learn a New Language For Free
What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
Bilingual.
And what do you call someone who speaks only 1 language?
An ...
Couchsurfing Can Also Be A Bit Sad
We wrote an editorial a while back praising the internet miracle of couchsurfing.com, a site that proved the spirit of hospitality and the milk of human kindness weren’t a ...
Travel Writing and the Art of Telling Stories of Diversity
Watching Chimamanda Adichie talk about the danger of the single story reminded me why we founded Road Junky. The age of political correctness serving up paper-thin stories of travel ...
Road Junky On Facebook
Road Junky is run by travelers who would rather write poetry on desert dunes in moonlight or smoke a chillum in the Himalayas than sit in front of a computer ...
Gazing at the Stars with Google On the Road
When I first started traveling the only people who carried cell phones were drug dealers and to be seen talking on one was a bit of a giveaway.
No travelers ...
Bruce Chatwin and Nomads
Bruce Chatwin aspired to write a book about the nomadic instinct but died before he ever managed to put all of his thoughts together. He left behind rambling essays that ...
Some Embarrassing Travel Stories
Naked on a Rooftop
Some years ago I was in Delhi and was pretty sure there was something living in my gut. A book on ayurveda suggested that rubbing some fennel ...
Where Does a Traveler Belong?
Travel has almost always been a solitary affair for me.
Heading out alone seemed the only real way to encounter myself in foreign lands, the contours of my psyche reflected in ...
10 Travel Fashion Tips
On every traveler’s list of priorities, just after avoiding getting mugged, scammed, sick, ending up broke, going insane wondering what to pack or working out where to go when the ...
Make Extensive Travel Plans and Make God Laugh
Young travellers often write to ask advice on the journeys they have planned out it always makes me smile. It takes me back straight away to when I was a ...
The Soul of a Road Junky
When you travel for long enough, you eventually leave your past behind. It becomes another place that you might visit physically or just behind your eyelids on another bus journey ...
Fake Diplomas Get Travelers Jobs Abroad?
Young travelers hitting the road are warned not to roam for too long lest they miss out on a college education and end up without qualifications. Older travelers, too, look ...
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Exists! It's the Kindle!
Thanks to the brilliant xkcd.com we now know that the big deal about Amazon’s updated Kindle is that it has made the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ...
Road Junky Journalism – The Next Generation of Gonzo
Road Junky is a site that provokes. It’s meant to. The articles are meant to challenge conventional wisdom, shatter platitudes, make people laugh, inspire travelers, reveal new worlds, undermine bigotry, ...
Forget Travel Buddies - Hit the Road Alone
One of the great things about the internet is that it’s brought travelers together; in forums and on social networks, backpackers and vagabonds can share experiences and tips, discover new ...
The Road to Kathmandu, Encounter Overland
Then there was the time… Experienced travelers often attempt to one-up each other with their “my trip was more hellish than yours” stories. It’s a fun sort of ...
The Worst Drivers in the World
I’ve travelled a lot around the world – my country counter is now over 30. One thing I’ve noticed throughout my travels is that the quality of driving around ...
Christmas Sucks for Expats
One Christmas, a few years ago, I sat opposite Bobby in a bar in Rio de Janeiro and watched him slurp up his chicken – his teeth had fallen out ...
Carrying Musical Instruments on the Road
Just picture it: 4 travelers meet in the dormitory of a hostel in Turkey and they all simultaneously discover that the local electric supply is incompatible with their Ipods! There ...
We Travel to Lose Ourselves
When I was 18 the world seemed too immense to ever properly explore. What kind of dent could I ever make on so many continents, so many cultures and terrains, ...
10 Tips for the Single Female Traveller
Here are ten tips I’ve learned after years of solo travel.
1. Leave your beauty tools at home (most of them, anyway)
The water quality on the road, plus your cheap little ...
Foreign Currencies. the Falling Dollar and Travel - the Rate of Exchange
Picture it now, armies of faithful jihadis glued to Al-Jazeera, praying fervently for the dollar to drop another few cents against the foreign currencies of the world, bringing America one ...
Saint Patrick's Day - The Drunken Saint of Travelers and Irish
Once upon a time the role of the Irish was fairly well defined; they were good for dying by the dozen while they built the English some castles, they grew ...
There's No Travel Like Time Travel
You know, for all the uproar being made about the inhuman sweat shops that are propelling China towards economic prosperity and maybe World War III, the same dens of ...
Is Travel Dead?
Sometimes I see the ranks of backpackers waiting to go on their white water rafting experience, the tourists clicking away at the monuments and the guide books that create the ...
Airports are a Waking Nightmare
I recently took a whole bunch of flights from South East Asia to Europe and I spent days in planes and airports, falling asleep to surreal dreams and waking to ...
Skype Mobile and the Death of Travel
The Skype mobile is now out and whilst it’s only available in certain countries, it made me want to cry as travel as I know it disappears under the ...
BBC Buys the Lonely Planet But They Sold Out Years Ago
The BBC today bought out the Lonely Planet for an undisclosed sum but we’ve got to be talking hundreds of millions for the travel guide which scores top of ...
Backpacker Morality and Travel Principles, ho, ho
Once upon a time people hit the road to find out who they were and who everyone else in the world was. They left their home countries and ventured out ...
Evil Streets of the World
There are streets in the world’s cities that leave you with the impression that something more is hidden behind one of the doorways. Whether they be forgotten troves of ...
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 ...
10 Murphy’s Laws of Travel
Variously called Murphy’s Law, Sod’s Law or just a typical day on the road, the basis premise familiar to anyone who ever hit the road is this:
Anything that can go ...
Travel in the Age of Terror
Since 9/11 it would seem that travel changed forever. Bombs on buses in London and trains in Madrid confirmed that the war on terror had opened on many fronts. Backpackers ...
Top Ten Backpacker Destinations
1. Thailand and Laos
It’s just so easy to be a backpacker in Thailand. Everything is cheap, everything is available. You want drink beer, you want banana pancake, you want ...
Italy Rainbow Gathering - Hippy Refugee Camp
By the time we arrived in Italy none of us in the van were on speaking terms. Six days on the road from Southern Spain had stretched our nerves to ...
Travel - The Saddest Pleasure
Paul Theroux called travelling the ‘saddest pleasure´. Poetry aside it’s only when you’ve been on the road for some time that you can identify with these kind of ambivalent feelings. ...
World Poverty - Rich and Poor
In the jungle in Mexico recently I met a security guard who was working for a museum of ethnic craft. He was sitting beneath a tree with sprawling ...
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 ...
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 ...
Consumer Travel, Guidebook Hype
Countries crawling out of the mayhem and destruction of civil war are often the preferred tramping ground of the budget traveller. The shattered economy ensures that it will be ...
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 ...
Vegetarian India Travel
I’ve always harboured a secret respect for vegetarians. There’s something inherently distasteful about rearing an animal, nurturing it, then killing it so you can eat its flesh. I’ll freely admit ...
Sailing for Travelers
I still remember the day I got onto my first sailboat. It was a few years ago, making a small passage through the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. We ...
Travel and Languages
I think I must have picked up a survival vocabulary in about 15 languages since I started traveling. The Kurdish, the Arabic and the Korean have disappeared without trace but ...
Theft and the Traveler
There are many dangers faced by the traveler on the road- – violence, illness, losing one’s grip on reality etc. But one of the ever present perils is that ...
Free Hugs for the World
Just in case you think Road Junky is a bit too cynical at times, deep down we’re bright-eyed hippies and support free hugs for everyone…
On the Road Travel News
- On The Road: The kindness and spontaneity of Syrian strangers - Independent
- Lady Mocs On The Road To Kentucky For Sunday Matchup - The Chattanoogan
- Haughton, Benton bid for quarterfinals on the road tonight - Bossier Press-Tribune
- Bulldogs Travel To Little Rock To Face Arkansas - Mississippi State Buldogs
- AAA: Travel to go up for Thanksgiving - Cincinnati Business Courier
