Things on karstenaichholz.com have been a bit quiet the last few weeks. One major reason for this has been my work over at traveloak.com, where I publish my travel writing. The site was due for a technical, design and editorial overhaul. The former two are pretty much done, and looking at what’s online there now, I’m quite happy with the outcome.
On the editorial side, some recent highlights published there include a trip narrative of a journey to Ladakh in India, an in-depth guide to traveling in the Indian Himalayas (with the usual level of detail) and a glimpse at (okay, … a guide to) my own living room in Bangkok. Next week, you’ll get to read about my trip to North Korea, so if you haven’t subscribed to new posts on that site, then now is a good time to do so.
It’s these kind of trips for which I originally started traveloak.com. In the past, I covered Burundi’s expat scene, hiking with Kalashnikovs and the Tijuana-equivalent for Iranians. While I’m certainly not the first person to visit those places, these are a bit off the beaten track, and I thought some of the insights I gained weren’t yet covered ad absurdum elsewhere.
Another reason I started traveloak.com was that my parents complained about me only posting travel updates on Facebook. And since they don’t have Facebook accounts (and my account wasn’t public at the time), I opted to put everything on a blog. Who knows, maybe it would get some traction (spoiler alert: It didn’t).
Checking the stats for the site, I noticed most visitors land on my article about using Airbnb in Georgia and Armenia. Knowing that Airbnb has a referral program, I decided to actually post some referral links there (including a disclosure of the amount received from people signing up).
I’m happy to feature some of the pictures taken by my girlfriend on the site as well. She’s a talented photographer, and it’s nice that we get to combine my blogging with her photography. I’m not a fan of ‘doing business with the family’, but this seems on the right side of alright.
Another reason – last, but probably not least – why I’m blogging more on traveloak.com is my new year’s resolution for 2016: write at least one blog post per week. As it turns out, writing about traveling comes quite easy. Every day holds a new story, and there’s no shortage of stunning images. Plus, with me currently spelunking around Europe and working on my upcoming podcast, I have limited time available to write, so this travel-writing-short-cut comes in quite handy.
If you want to stay up to date with my writing (or talking) regardless of where I publish it, I recommend following me on Twitter or Facebook (same goes for you, mom :)).
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