Most travel advice is meant to be one-size-fits-all. But what if your mind doesn't quite work the way everyone else's seems to?

Rebecca Hallett's life suddenly made a lot more sense when, as an adult, she was diagnosed with ADHD. A prolific traveller and travel writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Times and Wanderlust, she had long thought that traits such as restlessness, struggles with deadlines and time blindness were simply character flaws. She didn't realise they were symptoms.

In this week's episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Rebecca talks about her new Rough Guides book, Travelling with ADHD, and how neurodiversity influences the experience of travel at every stage of the journey. We talk about her work as a Japan travel specialist, writing guides for major travel publishers such as DK and Rough Guides, and making a freelance writing life work.

Listeners can use the code AUTHOR0026 for 30% off the standard price of books in the Rough Guides bookshop, including Travelling with ADHD and the new Rough Guide to Japan, to which Rebecca once again contributed.

https://shop.roughguides.com/book/rough-guides-travel-edit-travelling-with-adhd/9781835295243

https://shop.roughguides.com/book/rough-guide-japan/9781835295328

A traveller on the Hippy Trail in the 1970s, Alex McKay became bewitched by mysterious tales of Tibet’s holiest mountain, Mount Kailash. What began as a backpacker’s fixation eventually became an academic vocation. After studying Tibetan history and culture at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Alex earned a PhD in South Asian History and went on to publish four academic monographs and around forty scholarly articles, peeling back the layers of history and mythology surrounding a mountain revered by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and followers of Bön.

But there were things academic writing couldn’t capture. As Alex writes in his latest book, In Search of Mount Kailash:

“An academic monograph can cite a century-old Tibetan letter but cannot show its author warming ink over a candle in a Himalayan winter; nor convey the historian unfolding it and watching Tibetan dust fall onto a polished library table.”

For that, Alex turned to travel writing. In Search of Mount Kailash retraces both his journeys through Tibet and the Himalayas and the decades-long intellectual journey that followed, exploring how the legends surrounding Kailash developed and what happens when scholarship collides with lived experience. The book won the 2025 Kekoo Naoroji Book Award for Himalayan Literature.

On today’s episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Alex discusses what travel writing can reveal that scholarship cannot, the reaction to some of his more controversial discoveries about Kailash, the writers who inspired his own travels, and a lifetime of adventures in the Himalayas — including what it’s like to take LSD on a holy mountain.

When spinal degeneration left Debbie North using a wheelchair, cut off from the British outdoors she loved, she channelled her rage and frustration into writing. A 2011 blog post gained attention and showed Debbie that travel writing could become a force for change.

In 2015, she and her husband Andy traversed England from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay, creating their own accessible version of legendary guidebook author Alan Wainwright’s Coast to Coast route, with Debbie travelling in a TerrainHopper all-terrain wheelchair. The journey resulted in her first book, In the Spirit of Wainwright, published by Sigma Press. Since then, Debbie has co-written Walks Without Stiles, written North Yorkshire Accessible Walks for All and, most recently, Access Adventure for Bloomsbury. She has written regularly for BBC Countryfile Magazine and reported on accessible travel much further afield, including wheelchair adventures in Berlin, Norway and Sri Lanka.

On today's episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Debbie shares the realities of travel as a wheelchair user, the power of travel writing to effect change, and gives an honest read on where the world is at right now on its journey to make travel accessible.

Learn more about Debbie at https://www.debbienorth.org, and her charity Access the Dales at https://access-the-dales.com

The economics of being a full-time travel writer are tough. Even the biggest publications seldom pay their writers enough to cover all the expenses of a thoroughly researched trip. To make ends meet, therefore, many professional travel writers rely on press trips (sometimes called hosted trips) that partially or completely cover the cost of their travels. This brings a whole host of complications, of course; how do you write authentically and originally when you rely on someone with a PR agenda?

Sucheta Rawal is a highly experienced and prolific travel writer with bylines in the likes of Travel + Leisure, National Geographic, TIME, Condé Nast Traveler, AFAR, CNN, Fodor’s and Food & Wine. Across a 20+ year career, she has visited or reported from well over 100 countries. In today's episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, she takes us behind the scenes of the life of a full-time travel writer.

Learn more about Sucheta at her website, https://suchetarawal.com. Discover her children's book series, Beato Goes To, at https://beatogoesto.com/

In 2021, a budding travel writer called Anna Richards submitted a couple of stories to Intrepid Times; she wrote about penguins in Chile, and as well as a frightening mugging. This was around the time Anna had moved to Lyon, France, fulfilling a generational family dream. Building her travel writing career from the ground up, one clipping at a time, she eventually landed the role as the Telegraph's official Corsica travel expert; a coveted job that lets her travel France in pursuit of stories ranging from French beach towns to undiscovered fine dining.

On this week's episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Anna talks about how she established herself as a travel writer, the pros and cons of being a 'domestic' travel writer i.e one who is based permanently in the place they write about, her recent highly praised piece for The Guardian on how resident's in an unusual building have endured Europe's heatwave, and much more beside.

Learn more about Anna at her website: https://www.annahrichards.com/

And follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annahrichards_/?hl=en

Writer's block is the demon writers point to as the reason they can't get words on a page. But what if writer's block doesn't actually exist? What if the reason you're not writing isn't the fear, the doubt, the mess, but simply the way you relate to these emotions? Dr Vincent Fogliati is a psychologist with a speciality in ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy). Alongside veteran writer Roger Joyce, they have put together a new book Your Writer's Block is Bullsh*t which may finally be the answer that gets you back to the desk, and allows that blank page to finally fill up with the words you have always been meaning to write. Today, they share the truth about writer's block, and practical strategies you can use today to stop fighting it, and start writing it.

Your Writer's Block is Bullsh*t is published by Exisle Publishing in September 2026. I worked closely on this book with my publisher's hat on, and am so excited to see it finally enter the world. 

Pre-order your copy and unlock access to a private online workshop with the authors:  https://exislepublishing.com/your-writers-block-is-bullsht-pre-order-campaign/

Every day when submissions are open, dozens of travel stories or pitches land in the Intrepid Times inbox. While the quality of course varies, most of these submissions are from sincere, legitimate writers who have a story to get across. However, an increasing number are entirely or partially AI-generated.

Early on, it was quite easy to tell what was AI and what wasn't. Now, as AI tools become more sophisticated and people become increasingly dependent on them, it gets harder and harder to parse the human from the artificial. We are determined at Intrepid Times that not one sentence of AI-confabulated prose will ever be published on this platform, but holding the line has never been harder.

Today, Thom Brown, associate editor at Intrepid Times and an award-winning travel writer, takes listeners behind the scenes on our war against AI in travel writing.

Learn more about Thom Brown: https://www.thombrown.co.uk/

And read his articles at Intrepid Times: https://intrepidtimes.com/author/thombrown/

Read Intrepid Times's AI travel writing policy: https://intrepidtimes.com/ai/

Paul Theroux called Thomas Swick 'the ideal travel writer,' but he's the first to admit he hasn't always been the ideal traveler. He moved to Poland in the late 1970s as a young aspiring travel writer in love with a local woman, whom he would eventually marry. As he learned the (formidably challenging - I should know!) Polish language and gained his first published clippings, he also spent much of his travels in a state of high, anxious alert.

Shouldn't a travel writer be cooler and less fazed by the ordeals of a journey? As Thomas would come to realize, no, one shouldn't. In fact, it's this very hyper-alertness that causes the travel writer to notice and be sensitive to things more relaxed travelers may miss.

Thomas Swick joined the travel writing podcast to talk about his extraordinary career, sharing his top tips for travel writers, and discussing his immensely readable and instructive memoir, Falling Into Place - A story of love, Poland, and the making of a travel writer, which features a foreword by Pico Iyer.

Dubai is associated variously with dizzying luxury, superficial excess, and, recently, geopolitical disruption. According to Paris Norriss, who has lived in the city for a decade and stars in the TV show "Guy in Dubai," none of these stereotypes capture the full truth of a deeply layered and complex city.

Paris Norriss is a self-made media figure who created a name for himself through hard work and charisma. He is summoned to stages internationally to speak on the subject of grit, a concept larger than perseverance or hard work, and one which all writers, travel or otherwise, can benefit from on long journeys and through the grind of getting published and building a name as creators and communicators.

Paris joined the Travel Writing Podcast to talk about his career, what the labels miss about Dubai, and how he forged his own name as an independent travel creator.

Learn more about Paris Norriss:

https://www.parisnorriss.com

https://www.instagram.com/parisnorriss

https://www.instagram.com/guyindubai/?hl=en

Some view travel as a competitive sport, tallying up countries like points on a board. James Merriman began his travel life like this, relentlessly collecting passport stamps for years. He had fantastic adventures from Afghanistan to Venezuela, and almost everywhere in between. At the same time, he gradually came to realize that his approach may not have been giving him the best of what travel has to offer.

As James pivoted to learning travel writing, graduating from the Intrepid Times Craft of Travel Writing Certificate and beginning his forays into publication, his attitude to travel started to evolve. He continues to visit difficult-to-reach places, but his focus is more on the people there than on the stamp in his passport.

Learn more about James at his website: https://www.jamesmerriman.co.uk/