Welcome to Borderlines.
Join my quest to explore the world through its borders and boundaries.
Borderline: a boundary, a border, a demarcation between two things.
Borders have shaped the world around us. Migration will be the defining topic of 21st-century politics. Join me, as I try to understand the world through its borders and borders.
Welcome to Borderlines! Or a re-welcome, to the many older Travel Tramp subscribers who’ve followed my last decade of travels since I first founded my blog in 2015.
In that time I’ve brought you stories, blog posts, inspiration and practical travel advice from the world’s most unusual destinations. I’ve interviewed former guerilla-fighters-turned-tour-guides in the mountains of El Salvador, explored breakaway territories in frozen conflict zones like Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karbakh, and delved into emerging travel destinations like Iraq and Lebanon where the shadow of conflict hangs like a dark cloud above them.
Now I’m launching a new project. Borderlines.
What is Borderlines?
At the end of January 2025, I sent the first draft of my first travel book to my editor at Penguin Randomhouse. ‘Borderlands: A Journey Along the United Kingdom’s Borders and Boundaries’ tells the history of my home country through its borders and boundaries, and the people that live there, and is set to be published in Spring 2026.
It’s taken me several years of research and pitching, not to mention travelling through hundreds of miles of borderlands from Cornwall to Shetland. The journey showed me how the United Kingdom has not only been defined by its different borders but continues to be defined by them today. Writing the book reignited my interest in the world’s wider borders, which has inspired my new project, Borderlines.
As Donald Trump builds a wall of steel and razor wire across the southern United States, and claims Greenland and Gaza for the US, it’s clear that borders, migration and sovereignty will be the defining political questions of the 21st century. Through Borderlines, I hope to answer the deeper questions we’re confronted with when we travel; questions of identity, geopolitics and history.
I now plan to visit, and document, as many of the world’s cartographic curiosities, geopolitical oddities and national borders as possible, to show how boundaries shape the world around us.
Join my quest
And you can join my quest to discover the world through its borders and boundaries by following Borderlines. Every week, I’ll be bringing you updates on my past and present travels to borderlines through Substack. I’ll also build a database of geopolitical oddities (and explain how you can visit) on my website, Travel Tramp. I’m even planning to launch a brand new YouTube Channel where I explore the world’s borders in the very future.
I’ll be digging deep into the history of the borders around us, to show how past and present political decisions shape the crises we see on the news every day. I’ve been to many of these geopolitical hotspots already, including breakaway states like the Soviet time warp that is Transnistria, micronations like the Principality of the Hutt River in Western Australia and exclaves like Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish territories in North Africa claimed by Morocco.
Now, more than ever, we need to understand the world’s borders, because they’ll define the future of this planet to come. Through Borderlines, I’ll bring you insights into geopolitical anomalies, communities divided by national boundaries, enclaves and exclaves that tell tales of lingering colonialism, and the stories of migrant communities forced to cross borders in order to survive.
You can expect commentary on world events, personal ‘boots on the ground’ travel experiences, and tips on how to visit fascinating borders and borderlands yourself.
I hope you’ll join me on the journey.
Who am I?
I’m Richard, a.k.a the Travel Tramp. I’m an award-winning travel journalist and blogger. I set off on an overland journey from the United Kingdom to China in 2015, founding my travel blog (Travel Tramp) and documenting my travels to offbeat destinations along the way.
Since then, my blog has won multiple awards from the British Guild of Travel Writers for its long-form, narrative travel stories. I’ve also built a career as a freelance travel journalist, writing for major publications including BBC Travel, National Geographic, The Times, CNN Travel, iNews, The Telegraph, Saveur, Wanderlust and many more. My first book is due for publication in 2026.
Now I want to harness my journalistic experience to delve deeper into the questions of sovereignty, borders and migration that have always defined my writing. By shedding light on the world’s borders, I know we can better understand the modern world we live in.
The Borderlines Community
My great hope is to turn this into a community of travellers, geopolitical nerds and border fanatics like myself who’re are fascinated by the boundaries that define us. A place where we can debate history, politics and identity. You can start by following my Substack, reading the blog and simply being curious about the world.
Richard Collett, February 2025