Photographer’s Guide: the Varanasi ‘Ganga Aarti’ Puja Ceremony Whether for Hindu pilgrims on a spiritual journey or international backpackers on a decidedly more voyeuristic trip, the Indian city of Varanasi draws visitors from all over the world and one of the headline attractions in town is the nightly Aarti puja […]
Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia: An 80 Year Anniversary I’ll level with you for a moment. While planning the perfect Turkey trip itinerary, Lonely Planet and every other tourist guide out there would have you believe that the moment you step into the Hagia Sophia, your life will change. Angels will sing […]
The Museum of Innocence: Love and Madness in Istanbul It’s all an elaborate and precisely constructed lie: a museum built to tell the story of a self-referential book created around the contents of the soon-to-finish museum. A tale of love and loss, but mainly madness, which is entirely fictional but […]
Experienced Traveler’s Guide: Skipping Half the Tourist Places in Jaipur There are, quite frankly, far too many tourists sites in the world for me to have either the desire or ambition to see them all. Sometimes I make a half-hearted attempt but in a place like India where my stomach […]
Travel Budget: India A photo posted by Stephen Lioy (@slioy) on Jan 12, 2015 at 9:51pm PST One of the things I’ve gotten away from in the past year has been publishing my travel budgets in an attempt to help other backpackers get a feel for how much they […]
The Year in Photos: 2014 I take a lot of photos. I don’t have a firm count on how many I shot in 2014, but I kept around 5000 shots this year and tend to delete the majority of what I take so 10,000 is a conservative estimate. Even with […]
Hey there! I'm Stephen, this is my travel blog, and that's me in the poofy hat.
I'm a photographer / writer traveling since 2008, and I've been doing my best to visit amazing places.
My current focus is Central Asia, because for a hiking and camping enthusiast it's as good as it gets.