The long way is the point.
Elif Kaya, travel writer, Istanbul. Fourteen countries by night train and ferry, no short-haul flights since 2021, and a notebook for every route.
About
A short interview with myself
The questions readers send most often, answered on the ferry home.
Why trains and ferries, and never planes?
Because the journey is the story. A night train from Istanbul to Sofia gives you a border at three in the morning, a conductor who brings tea, and a morning you have earned. An airport gives you an airport.
What is in the notebook?
Timetables, platform numbers, the price of a coffee, what the woman opposite said about her sister in Plovdiv. I fill one per route and number them. This year I am on no. 24.
Where is home?
Kadıköy, on the Asian side of Istanbul, four minutes from the ferry pier. Most of my routes start on the 08:15 to Eminönü with a simit and the seagulls.
How do you pay for it?
Writing. Commissioned features for travel magazines, a paid newsletter with a few thousand readers, and a handful of partnerships with rail operators and small hotels I would stay in anyway.
What will you not do?
Fly where six hours of train will do, pretend a place was empty when it was not, or write about a hotel I did not pay for without saying so.
Favourite places
Six stops I keep going back to
In route order from home. Coordinates for the map people, the leg for the timetable people.
Istanbul Türkiye
Home. The 08:15 Kadıköy to Eminönü ferry, twenty minutes
Every route starts on the water. Tea in a tulip glass, half a simit for the seagulls, and the whole city arranged along the strait like a timetable.
Read the story
Sofia Bulgaria
Night train from Istanbul, 11 h
The first border I crossed by rail, at three in the morning with a stamp and a shrug. I go back for the yellow cobbles and the mountain at the end of every street.
Read the story
Kotor Montenegro
Belgrade to Bar by train, 11 h, then the coast bus
A bay that behaves like a fjord and a walled town you can learn by heart in an afternoon. I stayed an extra two days for the swifts.
Read the story
Ostuni Puglia, Italy
Overnight ferry from Bar to Bari, then a regional train
The white town. I wrote most of notebook no. 21 on a wall above the olive groves, waiting for the 17:02 back to Bari and not minding when it was late.
Read the story
Cefalù Sicily, Italy
Ferry from Naples to Palermo, then the coast line, 1 h
A cathedral, a rock, a beach the length of the town, and the slowest train on the island running along the sea in between them.
Read the story
Lisbon Portugal
Madrid to Lisbon, the last night train on the route
Where the line ends. I arrive at Santa Apolónia at dawn, walk up to the Pantheon and start the last page of whatever notebook I am on.
Read the story
Stories
Recent routes, written up
Every story starts with a timetable and ends with a notebook number. The newest six, and the rest on the stories page.
Small numbers
The journal, counted
Nothing corporate. Just what the notebooks add up to.
notebooks filled since 2019
One per route, numbered on the spine. The first was a school exercise book on the Istanbul to Ankara sleeper; the current one is a red hardback that has been to Lisbon and back.
Work with me
What I do for editors and partners
Four things I say yes to. Everything else gets a polite no from the ferry.
Commissioned features
Print and onlineLong-form travel writing for magazines and supplements, researched on the ground and filed with my own photographs. 1,500 to 4,000 words.
How it worksSponsored routes
Rail and ferryA route travelled end to end with a rail or ferry operator, written up as an honest, day-by-day story for my readers. Paid trips are always labelled.
How it worksPhotography
LicensingEditorial images from every route, licensed to publications, tourism boards and small hotels that want the place to look the way it looks.
How it worksTalks and workshops
In personSlow-travel talks for festivals, bookshops and conferences, and a half-day workshop on keeping a travel notebook you will actually reread.
How it worksNow
What I am up to this month
Updated whenever the train has signal.
The Belgrade to Bar line in daylight, for the third time
Notebook no. 24
A walking memoir set on the same route, a little ashamed
Paperback, ferry-stained
A feature on the Bosphorus ferries for Meridian
Due in September
Dining-car recordings for the next podcast episode
Mostly cutlery
Updated 27 August 2026, from a bench outside Belgrade station
CV
Seven years on the route
For editors who need the short version, and a PDF for the ones who need it on paper.
Elif Kaya
Travel writer · slow travel by train and ferry
- [email protected]
- Kadıköy, Istanbul
- example.com
Istanbul-based travel writer with seven years of commissioned features, a paid weekly newsletter and a rule about planes. I travel overland and by sea, keep a numbered notebook for every route and photograph my own stories.
Kind words
From editors, partners and one reader
Three messages I kept.
Elif filed the Belgrade to Bar piece with photographs we would have sent a second person for. She also came back with timetable corrections, which nobody asked for and everybody used.
We sponsored one route. She told her readers exactly what we paid for and they booked anyway, because the story was honest. That is worth more than any advert we have run.
I took the night train to Sofia because of her newsletter. I now own three notebooks and have not flown in a year. Please stop, Elif.
Questions
Things people ask before they write
The honest answers, so the email can be short.
Do you ever fly?
Do you accept sponsored trips?
Can I use your photographs?
How far ahead do you plan?
Will you write about my town?
Elsewhere
Follow along
The newsletter is the main thing. The rest is the route in pictures, films and sound.
Contact
Say hello
The quickest way is an email. Tell me the route, the season and who it is for, and I will answer from wherever the train has stopped.
or write here instead
Got it - thanks for writing. I reply within two days, usually from a train.