Cities
A city only becomes legible somewhere around the fourth day
The opening days of a stay are spent building a mental map, and most of what a short visit concludes about…
Anjali Raghunathan
Editor, The Next Postcard
Anjali has been reporting on cities, slow routes, rail & road since long before it was fashionable and reads the small print so you do not have to.
13 articles
Cities
A transport network is the clearest portrait of how a city grew
Lines, interchanges and fare boundaries record decisions about where a city thought it was going, and the…
Cities
Opening hours are a city timetable and they are not decoration
When shops shut, when lunch happens and when dinner starts are set by law, climate and the shape of the…
Slow Routes
A working ship keeps its own timetable and the passengers fit around it
Travelling on a vessel that exists to move freight means accepting that cargo, tides and port slots outrank…
Travel Craft
Passport rules are counted from the wrong end of the trip
Validity, blank pages and permitted days are all measured against dates and quantities that travellers…
Travel Craft
Travelling alone and travelling together are different jobs
A group has to convert individual preferences into one decision at every junction, and that conversion cost…
Rail & Road
An overnight ferry sells you a night as much as a crossing
Sleeper ferries exist where the sea gap takes long enough to fill the unproductive hours, and the economics…
Travel Craft
Sleeping badly in a new place is mostly light, noise and expectation
The first nights away are unreliable for reasons that are physiological and architectural rather than…
Cities
A town on a border lives off the difference between the two sides
Settlements at a frontier are built on whatever is cheaper, legal or simply available across the line…
Coast
A seabird cliff is fully occupied for a few weeks and then abandoned
Colonial seabirds come ashore only to breed, which compresses the entire spectacle into a short and fairly…
Coast
Fresh water sets the real capacity of a small island
Islands sit on a thin lens of rainwater floating above salt, and how much of it can be drawn without…
Travel Craft
Working while travelling is mostly a problem of time zones and rooms
The obstacles to doing a job from somewhere else are rarely the ones people expect: connectivity is usually…
Travel Craft
The first hours after a theft abroad are an evidence exercise
What determines how badly a loss disrupts a trip is largely the sequence of things done in the first day…