Dispatch 84 · Trabzon to Tbilisi, by bus

Nine countries, no flights, and a laundry problem.

I have been travelling overland since 2021 and writing about it about half as fast as I move. Long pieces, real prices, and the parts that did not work.

Start with dispatch 84

Who is writing

A shipping analyst who got off at the wrong stop

I spent eleven years pricing container routes out of Lisbon, which is a very unromantic way to learn how the world is actually stitched together. In 2021 I took six months off to follow one of those routes at ground level and never went back to the desk. Since then it has been ferries, night buses and one memorable freight train, funded by the letter, a photography licence or two, and occasional work for tourism boards that agree in writing that I keep final say on the text. I travel slowly because it is cheaper, and because a place stops performing for you around day nine.

A writer at a ferry terminal cafe with a notebook

How the money works, since nobody ever says

Roughly sixty per cent of what I earn comes from paid subscribers to the letter, about a quarter from licensing photographs to magazines and one very persistent hotel group, and the rest from commissioned pieces. I have turned down four sponsored trips this year, mostly because the brief included the phrase "hidden gem".

A place stops performing for you around day nine. That is when the writing starts.

What a dispatch costs to make

  1. Reporting, usually eight to twelve days.
  2. A first draft written badly and fast, on the next bus.
  3. Two weeks of rewriting somewhere with reliable wifi, then it goes out.

Recent dispatches

Trabzon to Tbilisi, by bus, in the wrong month
Dispatch 842 June 2026

Trabzon to Tbilisi, by bus, in the wrong month

Four buses, one closed border crossing, and the mathematics of a mountain pass that shuts without announcing it. Costs at the bottom, as always.

The last freight ferry out of Bari
Dispatch 838 May 2026

The last freight ferry out of Bari

Deck class on a working ship is the cheapest bed in the Adriatic and the worst night of sleep in Europe. I have now done it eleven times.

What a fixer actually does
Craft19 April 2026

What a fixer actually does

On the invisible labour behind travel writing, why so few pieces name it, and what I now pay per day in six countries.

Eight weeks in Alfama without writing a word about Alfama
Dispatch 8230 March 2026

Eight weeks in Alfama without writing a word about Alfama

A note on going home, the tourist-flat problem, and why the place you live is the hardest place to see.

The route so far

  1. 2021

    Lisbon to Istanbul

    Six months that were meant to be six months. Trains as far as Sofia, then buses. The letter started here, with forty readers, all of them relatives.

  2. 2022

    Anatolia and the Black Sea coast

    A year mostly in one country. Learned enough Turkish to be rude by accident and to order breakfast correctly.

  3. 2023–24

    The Caucasus

    Georgia, Armenia, and four attempts at a land border that was open on the map and shut in life. First paid commissions.

  4. 2025

    Central Asia by rail

    Aktau to Almaty, largely horizontal. The photographs from this stretch pay the rent on the Lisbon flat.

  5. 2026

    Back west, slowly

    Currently working north through the Balkans. Dispatch 85 will be from a town of nine hundred people with two competing bakeries.

Commissions and licensing

The letter

A dispatch every three or four weeks, whenever one is finished. Free readers get the whole piece; paid readers get the costs breakdown, the outtakes and the route notes, for €6 a month.

Connect a runtime to start collecting subscribers.