Intrepid Times

Anyone who has traveled enough knows that the best stories come from the journeys that challenge you to your core.

Our 2026 travel writing competition is finally live, and the theme is “When Things Fall Apart.” It comes with our most generous cash prize ever - $500 USD, as well as free entry for writers worldwide.

Learn more and submit your writing at
intrepidtimes.com

With great difficulty, our editorial team has selected five stories - one winner and our finalists - from the several hundred entries we received for our latest writing competition, “A Human Moment.”

A huge thank you to for sponsoring, to those leaders of writing communities who shared this opportunity with your members (always great to see writers supporting writers), and everyone who participated.

Congratulations to our winner, Charles King, on your story, “The Bridge of Sighs.” We cannot wait to share this story with our readers soon. Well done also to our excellent finalists, whose stories took us from the jazz bars of Amsterdam to the floor of a craftswoman in Peru. Selected stories will be published over the coming weeks.

One finalist story, “The Night I Met Emma in an Amsterdam Jazz Cafe“ by Bonnie Rose is live now at Intrepid Times

There's a new instalment of our series where travel writers put AI travel advice to the test. This time, let ChatGPT take the lead on a night out in Tirana, Albania. He was only scammed once. Read now at Intrepid Times.

Hilary Bradt MBE is one of the living legends of the travel writing world. In 1974, she co-founded Bradt Guides which thrives today as one of the best-loved brands in travel writing and independent publishing with over 200 titles in print.

An award-winning writer and an expert on Madagascar, Hilary has been appointed Officier de l’Ordre de Madagascar – the Malagasy equivalent of an OBE, in recognition of four decades’ pioneering promotion of the country’s tourism potential. She has also been appointed Member of the British Empire; an honour she received with characteristic humility (“I wondered what I’d done to upset Gordon Brown” she wrote near the time).

Hilary generously joined the Travel Writing Podcast to share her journey from the early days stapling together the first copies of her first guidebook to how Bradt is adapting to the changing needs of readers in the digital world.

We discussed Hilary’s article in the recent British Guild of Travel Writers’ anthology Around the World in 65 Years, where Hilary takes a thought-provoking perspective on what ethical travel really means. We spoke about Bradt Guides’ new Journey Books imprint, and why she still believes in the enduring power of print.

Listen here at Intrepid Times or find the Travel Writing Podcast on Spotify or iTunes.