Issue 184 · This Week in Faraway Places
The world's extraordinary destinations, curated by travelers who've actually been there.
An independent travel publication, in print and inbox since 2014.
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Photograph: Hiroko Tanaka · Kamakura, Japan
The Publication
Written by people who live there. Read by people going there.
Faraway Places is an independent travel publication. We publish deeply reported destination guides, field-tested itineraries, and honest hotel and restaurant reviews written by a network of 240+ resident correspondents across 92 countries. Our writers are journalists, novelists, sommeliers, and architects who happen to live in the places they cover — they don't write about a city after a long weekend, they write about it because it's their home.
Every recommendation is independently fact-checked against an on-the-ground visit within the last 18 months, and every hotel, tour, and restaurant is paid for out of pocket by the writer. We carry zero sponsored placements in editorial, and 62% of our revenue comes from readers, not advertisers. We were founded in 2014 in Lisbon, and we are profitable, independent, and reader-supported — no parent media group, no VC funding.
Ten years of independent travel journalism
240+
Resident correspondents writing from 92 countries
14,200+
Original destination guides, each fact-checked every 14 months
3.8M
Monthly readers across web and newsletter, with a 71% return rate
2023
Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award — Gold, for coverage of Patagonia
The Reading List
Three destinations our editors are arguing about this week.
Long-form features from the current issue. Expect 6,400 words of original reporting, two rounds of edits, and zero influencer detours.
The Lisbon we stopped writing about, and the Lisbon we should be writing about.
On the neighborhood-by-neighborhood transformation of a capital that refuses to become a postcard, with correspondent Inês Carvalho's annotated map of where to actually eat in 2025.
A week in Hoi An without the tailor shop, the cooking class, or the lantern photo.
Resident correspondent Bảo Nguyễn on the villages within a 40-kilometer radius that tourists never see — and the small guesthouses, family kitchens, and bicycle routes worth a flight on their own.
Northern Patagonia without a 4x4, a guide, or a five-figure lodge bill.
How to plan a two-week trip through the Argentine and Chilean sides using public buses, family-run hosterías, and the gaucho-run estancias our correspondents actually stay in — the reporting behind our 2023 Lowell Thomas Gold.
Photograph: Léa Bonnet · Marrakech
The Correspondent
Meet Salma El Idrissi, our senior writer for the Maghreb.
Salma has been writing for Faraway Places since 2017, after eight years as a food editor in Casablanca and a brief, accidental detour into documentary photography. She is based in Marrakech, files roughly forty pieces a year, and is the reason our Morocco coverage reads like a phone call from a friend who happens to know every grandmother in the medina.
- Based in
- Marrakech, Morocco
- Writing for us since
- 2017
- Countries she covers
- Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania
- The piece she's proudest of
- "The Bread Routes of the Rif" — a 9,000-word essay on the women-run village ovens of northern Morocco, published March 2024.
What others are saying
Endorsements from editors who keep us honest.
"The only travel newsletter where I read every link. The recommendations are useful in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm being sold a timeshare."
"The rare travel publication that treats its readers like adults — there are no numbered listicles here, just patient, deeply reported writing."
"If you can read only one travel website this year, make it this one. The correspondents actually live in the places they cover, and it shows on every page."
"What Faraway Places does better than almost any publication we read is refuse to flatten a place into a checklist. The reporting is the recommendation."
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