Tim Chester recounts his experiences travelling through Turkey a month ago – including a brief encounter with tear gas – and explains how the current situation doesn’t reflect the country as a whole. Nothing prepares you for your first faceful of tear gas. It dismantles three of your senses at once, knocking out sight, smell…
A new green initiative has been launched in the Brecon Beacons. The Eco Travel Network was established by local researchers and business owners to offer a pool of electric vehicles to visitors who want to explore the region while keeping their carbon footprint low. These Renault Twizys carry two people and run on batteries that…
Time-lapse photography, where multiple images are captured and played back at an increased speed, can portray the world in unusual and awe-inspiring ways. Here’s a look at ten of the best clips we’ve seen, featuring Yosemite National Park at night, a flight across the USA, and the northern lights. Yosemite Range of Light This clip,…
The Nile is often associated with bad puns and Egypt, but the world’s longest river actually stretches over ten countries and assumes a variety of identities along its 4,130 mile course. Taking in (deep breath) Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and of course Egypt, it’s a magnificent stretch…
They come in many guises and we’ve all been prey – or at least witness – to some of them at some time or another. Cheap tricks and scams surround tourists and travellers like trinket peddlers round an air conditioned coach, and much of your time in many places will be spend trying to dodge…
There’s three things I try and always do on arrival in a city: get on a bike, get on the water, and get high. Cycling combines the pedestrian’s macroscopic view with the speed and convenience of a vehicle and allows you to explore a place in great detail fast. From New York to Amsterdam, most…
Have you had a good look through our Things Not To Miss galleries yet? In case you weren’t aware, in addition to our big curated galleries and collections of photos by destination and theme, we have a special slideshow for every destination on Roughguides.com. Browse through the countries via the Rough Guide To index at…
Travel by camel through the Sahara, hike the Appalachian trail, and grab forty winks on an overnight train from Nairobi as we take a look at the world’s most epic journeys. Crossing the desolate sands, Niger A camel journey across the Sahara is an authentic and intimate experience that gets to the core of the…
Of all the sights, sounds and sensations stamped in my mind from my week in Malawi, one stands out above all others: Everlasting’s laugh. Our brilliantly-named driver was guide, companion and entertainer over several hours and countless bumpy miles around this sliver of sub-Saharan Africa, and his protracted guffaws were a law unto themselves. Oscillating…
Perhaps the most striking thing about American music is not its inventiveness or diversity, but how each and every city or region across the vast country has such a distinct sound. New Orleans seems to breed funk while Seattle fosters grunge and indie rock and most visitors head to Nashville for country. Of course a…
Have you ever been somewhere really hyped up and just found it a bit average? Bundled yourself off somewhere on the recommendations of friends, forum users or travel mags to find it’s just a bit, well, meh? Every regular traveller tends to have one place that didn’t stand up to expectations, and for me it…
The Travel Bucket List 30 unforgettable travel experiences chosen by Rough Guides writers and editors and other travel experts Read the list >> Get lost in Fez el Bali Keith Drew, Co-author of the Rough Guide to Morocco There are few places left in the world where you can get well and truly lost. But…
Don’t go to Japan or Australia if you’re looking after your pennies. A new poll from the Economist Intelligence Unit has placed Tokyo and Osaka as the first and second most expensive cities in the world, followed closely by Sydney, Oslo and Melbourne. Personally, I didn’t find Oslo too bad, but as a Londoner I’m…
If you’re a regular visitor to roughguides.com, you’ve probably noticed a few changes this week. In fact, we’d be surprised if you can recognise the website – we’ve completely rethought, rebuilt and redesigned it from the ground up. Rough Guides celebrated its 30th birthday last year, and the website itself reached the grand old age…
To celebrate the re-launch of the Rough Guides website, we asked some of our writers and editors – plus a few travel personalities from Ben Fogle to Simon Reeve – to nominate their pick for our multimedia travel bucket list. They came back with some inspiring tips, from swimming with manatees to volcano-boarding and sleeping…
The Amazon is a land of true superlatives. The biggest river system in the world, it features eight of its top twenty longest waterways across 80,000 square kilometres of navigable passages, and churns a fifth of the globe’s fresh water through the largest rainforest on the planet. Spanning seven countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador,…
What really makes or breaks a trip? The food? The weather? The landscapes? I’d argue the people. From the immigration officers to the taxi drivers, the shopkeepers, tour guides, hosts, fellow diners and passersby, it’s the locals you encounter that have the most power to influence your love – or hate – for a place.…
From King Kong to Coming to America, New York City has played host to an immense number of films over the years; the city is probably more mapped on celluloid than any other place in America. On this giant Rough Guides map of the city (available as a pull-out in the latest edition of the…
Which books do you turn to for a spot of armchair travelling? Who are the authors that can transport you from sofa to far flung locale within a couple of words? My personal favourites include Pico Iyer’s unforgettable portrayal of love in a tumultuous time in Cuba And The Night and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels…