W.A.
Subscribe

Issue
No. 14
Season
Autumn 2026
Dated
16 September 2026
Printed in
Lisbon, PT
Samarkand✦Lisbon✦Sapporo✦Torres del Paine✦Oaxaca✦Tbilisi✦Tórshavn✦Luang Prabang✦Zanzibar✦Hobart✦Marrakech✦Kochi✦
Slow travelCover story · 14 min

Seven nights on the Silk Road, no plans, one notebook

From Tashkent to Bukhara by slow train, with nothing booked and a pen that ran out somewhere near Samarkand.

Words by Marisol Ferreira · Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Read the story
The Registan in Samarkand: tiled madrasa facades and a minaret against a clear blue sky
Fig. 1 — Sher-Dor madrasa, the RegistanSamarkand, Uzbekistan
Feature

✦ Inside No. 14

In this issue

All 8 stories
A yellow Tram 28 rounding a cobbled bend in Lisbon's Alfama district
02
City 8 min

Riding the 28 until the driver knew my name

Three weeks of morning commutes on a yellow tram that goes nowhere in particular, very slowly, past everything that matters.

Tomás Okafor · Portugal

A bowl of miso ramen with soft-boiled egg and spring onion at a counter in Sapporo
03
Food 9 min

The ramen counter at the end of the snow

In a Sapporo alley barely wider than a bicycle, eleven stools, one pot, and a broth that has been going since before I was born.

Ines Halvorsen · Japan

Snow-capped Cuernos del Paine rising over a turquoise lake in Torres del Paine
04
Wild 12 min

Walking into the wind at the bottom of the world

Five days on the W trek in Torres del Paine, where the weather has four seasons an hour and the granite does not care about your itinerary.

Dev Ramaswamy · Chile

Market stalls piled with fruit and vegetables in Oaxaca, with vendors seated on the ground
05
Food 10 min

Nine moles, one abuela, and a very long Sunday

Marisol Ferreira · Mexico

Old Tbilisi houses climbing the hillside below Narikala fortress, above the Kura river
06
City 7 min

Sulphur, steam, and the slowest afternoon in Tbilisi

Tomás Okafor · Georgia

Red turf-roofed buildings on the Tinganes peninsula in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands
07
Wild 11 min

Eighteen islands, no trees, and weather that changes its mind

Ines Halvorsen · Faroe Islands

Field notes

Three rules we keep breaking and re-learning.

  1. 01

    Pack one fewer shirt

    Whatever you have laid on the bed, remove one thing. You will buy something. You always buy something. Leave room for the ceramic bowl you will carry home in your lap.

  2. 02

    Learn thank you before beer

    Ten words in the local language, learned badly, open more doors than a guidebook. Start with thank you, please, delicious, and the number two, for ordering.

  3. 03

    Say yes to the second cup

    The first cup of tea is hospitality. The second cup is a conversation. The third is a story you will be telling for the rest of your life. Never leave after one.

✦ Six pins, one issue

From the map

Hover or tap a pin for the one-line version. Click through for the full destination.

LisbonSamarkandSapporoOaxacaZanzibarHobart
LisbonSamarkandSapporoOaxacaZanzibarHobart

✦ Four issues a year, on paper

Get the next
issue first

Subscribers get the print edition mailed from Lisbon, plus a monthly letter with the stories that did not fit.

No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you like.