Join my quest to understand the world through its borders and boundaries. Sign up for my brand new BORDERLINES Newsletter and follow the journey.
Welcome to Borderlines!
This blog, Travel Tramp, is now almost ten years old. A decade ago, I founded this website as a place to document my overland journey from the United Kingdom to China. Since then, it’s spawned into an award-winning platform introducing readers to the world’s lesser-known destinations. I’ve brought you stories of freedom fighters in El Salvador, I’ve explored Sadaam Hussein’s abandoned palaces and I’ve visited breakaway territories and unrecognised nations like Tranisitria and Abkhazia. I hope I’ve kept readers entertained and provided a little inspiration, and practical advice, to help you travel deeper, and unearth the fascinating stories all around us.
Travel Tramp has helped me launch a successful freelance travel writing career, and I now regularly contribute to international publications in my role as a travel journalist, including CNN Travel, BBC Travel, The Times, Telegraph, Lonely Planet, Wanderlust, and so many more. Last year, I also signed a book deal with Penguin Randomhouse, and my first travel book, Borderlands: A Journey Through the United Kingdom’s Borders and Boundaries is set for publication in spring 2026.
It’s every writer’s dream to score a book deal, and I could never have done it without this blog and the support of the thousands of readers who’ve clicked through to read my work. At the end of January 2025, I handed in the first draft of the book to my editor, after almost three years of research, pitching, travel and writing. It had me wondering, what should my next project be.
That’s where Borderlines comes into play.
What is Borderlines?
We cross borders every day. Be it the threshold of your home, the boundary of a town or the international borders we traverse when travelling from one country to another. Borders surround us. They define us, they’ve shaped human history, and as politicians like Donald Trump threaten to redraw world boundaries, borders will be the enduring political topic of the 21st century.
When I was researching my book, I travelled through hundreds of miles of borderlands, from Cornwall to Shetland, as I attempted to understand my home country, the United Kingdom, through its borders and boundaries. These borders are often ancient, be it Hadrian’s Wall or Offa’s Dyke, but with issues of migration, sovereignty and devolution pervading British politics, they’ve also never been more relevant. The history of a nation is held within its borders, and now I want to turn my attention to the rest of the world.
That’s why I’m launching Borderlines.
My plan is to visit and document my journeys to as many of the world’s cartographic curiosities, geopolitical anomalies and national and internal borders as possible. I want to show how boundaries shape the world around us. Through Borderlines, my goal is to answer the deeper questions we’re confronted with when we travel; questions of identity, geopolitics and migration. The very essence of travel.
Borderlines will be a weekly publication (perhaps more regular, if it proves popular!) highlighting a different border, boundary or geopolitical oddity, and more. You can expect histories of the borders around us, stories of migrant communities and refugees, and commentary on political events around the world. You can also expect first-hand reporting from the ground, and practical travel advice to help you travel the world’s borderlines if you so desire.
Follow my quest to explore the world through its borders
You can follow my quest to explore the world through its borders here on Travel Tramp. My plan is to turn this website into an extensive database of geopolitical oddities and curious borderlines. I’ve been to many already, including places like Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s North African exclaves, or Nagorno-Karabakh, a post-Soviet frozen conflict zone in the Caucasus. And you can expect many more to come.
I’ll also be publishing roundups through Substack, and sending out updates via email to subscribers, so you can have Borderlines delivered directly to your inbox each week. I have a YouTube Channel in the works, too, set for launch in the very near future.
If you’re a border fanatic, a geopolitical nerd, or just love travelling to curious places, then Borderlines is for you. Borders shape the political decisions we see every day on the news, and now, more than ever, we need to understand why they exist, and where they’re going.
Follow the action here, or sign up for Borderlines using the links below:
Who am I?
Here’s a quick reminder of who your author is. I’m Richard (a.k.a The Travel Tramp), a professional travel journalist from the United Kingdom who can’t stop crossing borders. My travel journalism has won multiple awards, and I regularly contribute to international travel publications, magazines and newspapers.
That’s me in photo below.
Richard Collett, February 2025
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