ALONG DUSTY ROADS

We're Andrew & Emily.

Our story began late one night and early one morning around a kitchen table in our rented flat in East London, after too many gins and too long putting too many dreams on hold.  

The plan? To have an adventure. 

Twelve months later, after saving as much as we possibly could, we quit our jobs in the UK and arrived in Mexico with overstuffed backpacks, a couple of cameras, and the hope that our best days lay ahead of us. 

On the road. By the sea. Atop a mountain peak. In the serendipitous moments in between.

We travelled Latin America together for two years in total (crazy right?). Our budget was strict and our itinerary loose; and that frugality shaped our journey, helping us to spend a long time going slowly to new places. 

And it allowed us to start this blog.

Travel is the thing that makes the two of us feel the most alive. It sets our senses on fire. It is responsible for changing our lives for the better. 

Without adventures or a curiosity to venture toward somewhere new and different to home, we would be rootless and lost. 

Travel is what makes us happy. 

We created Along Dusty Roads because we wanted to help people travel more + travel better. 
 
We felt that sharing our experiences, our perspectives, our mistakes, and our advice would contribute a little bit to making the travel experience better for some people, and better in the long run for some of the people and places we all visit along the way.

We wanted travellers like you to use what we write and what we photograph as a handbook to craft your own memories + adventures out on the road.

To write your own stories.

Since hitting publish at five minutes past midnight in a sweatbox room with no windows in Guatemala back in 2014, our travel blog is now read and trusted by hundreds of thousands of travellers. People with different backgrounds, different budgets, different dreams, and different priorities, travelling to different parts of the world. The modern day explorers who want to see the world, and want to hold a little part of in their heart. The blog has also won a few awards and been featured in proper magazines and newspapers.

It all still surprises us too to be honest!

So, what makes Along Dusty Roads a little bit different? And why should you stick around?

Well, everything we write and curate here is done by the two of us and based on our own trips and experiences.  We aren't a travel website that tries to write about everywhere for everyone - after all, it's just us - but that means you can really trust what we write and recommend in our destination guides and advice articles. 

All the photos you'll see on the blog are taken by us as well (after travel, photography is our biggest passion but the two sort of go together like lime, cilantro, and a good hot sauce). 

Second, we don't want everyone to quit their jobs to travel - and we're not going to sell you a course about how to do it. Instead, we just want everyone to be able to make the most of their own travel experiences - whether it's a year backpacking South America, a spontaneous city break in Europe, or a staycation closer to home - and to have the right sort of advice to create your own authentic travel memories. 

We try to live, breathe and fall in love with every country we step foot in, rather than just get a passing glimpse of its best bits. Or just for Instagram points.

Responsible, slow, and sustainable travel are also hugely important to us. In the last six years, we have been fortunate to make a lot of mistakes, learn a lot of lessons, and change our way of thinking about what it means to be a 'good traveller'. Across our blog posts, we do our best to raise awareness of simple practices and habit changes which we believe all travellers should follow wherever they go.

Because, for us, being a considerate, responsible traveller always results in better travel experiences. And it's a responsibility that's shared between us all. 

We are both conscious of how fortunate we are to be able to travel anywhere in the first place - and never take for granted that people trust and respect what we write or recommend here. Many journeys and many years may have passed since we started this travel blog, but our founding principle of helping people travel more + travel better still underpins every single thing we do here on Along Dusty Roads. 

And it always will. 

So, thank you for joining us and being a member of our little community of travellers. We both really appreciate it - and we hope you'll find something here to be a catalyst for finding your own dusty road. 

p.s. Andrew is from Scotland and Emily is from England. We're both absolute tea-addicts and veggies. We like crime TV shows, British comedy, and podcasts. We are lovers of the outdoors, anything that's got four legs and fur, and overuse of the Oxford comma. We are also Wanderers for G Adventures.

If sending biscuits, chocolate hob-nobs are our weapon of choice.

YOUR NEXT STOP

If it's your first time here, then the chances are that you may be planning a trip somewhere. In that case, we'd recommend you go to our dedicated country pages for all our country + destination guides.

However, if you're looking for some advice on how to travel better or prepare for your next adventure - whether it's packing lighter, saving cash on the road, being more sustainable, or understanding insurance -  then the travel resources page is the place to find our hard-earned travel tips & advice. 

Or, if you're simply on a break at the office or spending a lazy weekend scrolling the internet, then just click around to your heart's content until you find something you like - probably best to start on the homepage.

And if you can't find what you need here to plan your trip - or you just want to say hello or send us some biscuits - then drop us a line via the contact form below. 

If you're a company who would like to work with us on a partnership or speaking opportunity, then you can find further information on our work with us page - please note however that we only work with companies that we respect and which align with our values, our travel style, and our readers (no spam or sponsored post requests either please). 

We donate to the following charities, which do incredibly important work related to travel, conservation, and protecting those whose voices are most forgotten or neglected. 

World Animal Protection | Fighting to end animal suffering and exploitation globally, particularly in tourism and the wildlife trade.

Survival International | The global movement for tribal and indigenous people's rights, to amplify their voices, and change the world in their favour.

Friends of Inti Wara Yassi | Supports two sanctuaries in Bolivia dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and care of wildlife that has fallen victim to illegal trafficking and other harm, as well as fighting the wildlife trade and environmental destruction. We visited them in 2015 - read more here. 

If you can support, or would like to find out more, please click the charity names highlighted above in yellow.