We scored 87 travel and adventure blogs across seven performance metrics to find the 25 best travel blogs in 2026. No subjective picks, no sponsored placements, no "top 100" lists padded with dead sites. Every blog on this list earned its rank through data — publishing consistency, site performance, domain authority, and trust signals. Of those 87 blogs, 75 scored above our 40-point minimum to qualify for the directory.
Best Travel Blogs in 2026 (Quick List)
- Salt in our Hair — 77/100
- Adventurous Kate — 76/100
- SectionHiker — 75/100
- Will Fly for Food — 73/100
- Y Travel Blog — 73/100
- Against the Compass — 73/100
- Wandering Carol — 72/100
- Very Hungry Nomads — 71/100
- Big World Small Pockets — 71/100
- Johnny Jet — 71/100
- Finding the Universe — 71/100
- To Europe and Beyond — 70/100
- Dan Flying Solo — 70/100
- Legal Nomads — 69/100
- Global Grasshopper — 69/100
- Wild Junket — 69/100
- Two Monkeys Travel Group — 69/100
- Inside the Travel Lab — 68/100
- Goats on the Road — 68/100
- The Travel Bite — 67/100
- BucketListly Blog — 67/100
- Too Many Adapters — 67/100
- A Brother Abroad — 66/100
- Uncornered Market — 66/100
- TraveLynn Family — 65/100
Read on for full write-ups, sub-category picks, and data insights — or jump to solo travel, food travel, adventure, budget, family, or photography.
How We Score
Each blog receives an Awesome Score out of 100, calculated from domain authority (25 pts), content freshness (20 pts), site speed (10 pts), mobile readiness (10 pts), content volume (15 pts), SSL security (5 pts), and trust signals (15 pts). Scores refresh weekly to reflect changes in publishing activity and site performance. You can read the full breakdown on our methodology page.
What the Data Shows
Before the rankings, a few patterns that jumped out from the 87 travel blogs we evaluated:
- Freshness dominates the top. 17 of the top 25 travel blogs earn a perfect 20/20 freshness score, meaning they published within the last week. The blogs that slip below weekly publishing lose ground fast — freshness is the single biggest differentiator at the top of the rankings.
- Speed is the silent killer. The spread here is massive. Adventurous Kate and SectionHiker both hit 10/10 on speed, while Two Monkeys Travel Group scores 0/10. That 10-point gap on a single metric is enough to shift a blog several positions. Image-heavy travel sites need to get this right.
- Post count varies wildly. Johnny Jet has 8,146 published posts. Global Grasshopper has 69. Both made the top 25. Volume matters, but only up to the 15-point cap — once you have a deep enough archive, other metrics decide where you land.
- Domain authority is low across the board. The top 25 average just 7.6 out of 25 on DA. SectionHiker leads the top 10 at 11/25, and only a handful of blogs in the entire category crack double digits. Travel bloggers compete primarily on freshness, volume, and trust — not backlink profiles.
Top 10 Travel Blogs Compared
| Rank | Blog | Score | Best For | Posts | Speed | Freshness |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salt in our Hair | 77 | Couple itineraries | 1,591 | 7/10 | 20/20 |
| 2 | Adventurous Kate | 76 | Solo female travel | 1,182 | 10/10 | 20/20 |
| 3 | SectionHiker | 75 | Hiking & gear reviews | 3,074 | 10/10 | 20/20 |
| 4 | Will Fly for Food | 73 | Food-focused travel | 655 | 7/10 | 20/20 |
| 5 | Y Travel Blog | 73 | Family & Australia | 601 | 4/10 | 20/20 |
| 6 | Against the Compass | 73 | Off-the-beaten-path | 272 | 4/10 | 20/20 |
| 7 | Wandering Carol | 72 | Luxury & culture | 489 | 7/10 | 15/20 |
| 8 | Very Hungry Nomads | 71 | Gastronomic travel | 246 | 4/10 | 20/20 |
| 9 | Big World Small Pockets | 71 | Budget solo travel | 1,203 | 7/10 | 20/20 |
| 10 | Johnny Jet | 71 | Deals & points | 8,146 | 7/10 | 20/20 |
The Top 10 Travel & Adventure Blogs
1. Salt in our Hair — Awesome Score: 77
Best for: couple travel itineraries with photography guides
Hannah and Nick, a Dutch couple, started Salt in our Hair after a four-month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia in 2016. What began as a personal project now pulls 600,000 monthly visitors across 1,591 destination guides covering 60+ countries. Their strength is actionable itineraries — not vague "10 things to do in Bali" posts, but day-by-day route plans with accommodation picks, transport logistics, and photo spot coordinates. They won Best Social Video at the Dutch Travel Blog Awards and have been featured by CNN Travel and Business Insider. A perfect freshness score and strong trust signals earn them the top position.
2. Adventurous Kate — Awesome Score: 76
Best for: solo female travel across 83+ countries
Kate McCulley quit her marketing job at 26 in 2010 to backpack Southeast Asia for six months. That six months turned into 15 years and 91 countries across all seven continents. Perfect scores on speed (10/10) and mobile (10/10) make this one of the fastest travel blogs we tested — a notable achievement for a site with 1,182 posts and heavy photography. Forbes named her a Top 10 travel influencer, she won TravMedia's Blogger of the Year in 2024, and she has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, and CNN. If you are a woman planning a trip alone, this is probably where you start.
3. SectionHiker — Awesome Score: 75
Best for: hiking gear reviews and backpacking trip reports
Philip Werner quit his corporate job in 2010 to hike full-time, having already launched SectionHiker in 2008 as one of the internet's first dedicated backpacking blogs. Over 9,000 trail miles later, the 3,074-post archive is one of the deepest resources for serious hikers anywhere online. Gear reviews are thorough and field-tested — not affiliate-driven listicles, but multi-season reports on boots, packs, and shelters used on actual trails. In 2025 he published his first book, "Hiking Over 60." Perfect 10/10 on both speed and mobile is rare for a content-heavy outdoor blog, and the highest DA in our top 10 at 11/25 reflects years of earned authority.
4. Will Fly for Food — Score: 73
Best for: eating like a local in Southeast Asia and beyond
JB — a Georgetown-educated web designer who once worked on Oprah's oxygen.com — and Renee, a former Beverly Hills travel agent, met in the Philippines in 2002 and built Will Fly for Food around a simple premise: choose destinations based on what you want to eat, not what you want to see. Their 655 guides skip the tourist restaurants and focus on street food stalls, local markets, and regional specialties that most travel blogs ignore. A hawker stall in Penang gets the same attention as a UNESCO site. A perfect trust score of 12/15 reflects the kind of first-hand reporting that readers rely on.
5. Y Travel Blog — Awesome Score: 73
Best for: Australian family travel and road trips
Craig Makepeace has been traveling and living abroad since 2002. He and Caz started Y Travel Blog in 2010 and grew it into one of the biggest travel blogs in the world while homeschooling their two daughters on the road. Their road trip itineraries for Queensland, New South Wales, and the Australian Outback are detailed enough to plan an entire family holiday from. At 601 posts, the archive is smaller than some competitors, but the per-post depth and the strong 12/15 trust score reflect quality over quantity. Speed is the weak spot at 4/10 — fixing that alone could push them higher.
6. Against the Compass — Awesome Score: 73
Best for: off-the-beaten-path destinations most blogs ignore
Joan Torres, a Barcelona-based traveler, launched Against the Compass in 2016 to fill a gap: reliable information for destinations most bloggers avoid — Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somaliland, Pakistan. His 272 guides cover places where English-language travel information barely exists, which makes this blog genuinely irreplaceable. Since 2021, he also runs Against the Compass Expeditions, leading group tours to these destinations with travelers from 60+ countries. He contributes to Lonely Planet and his DA of 10/25 is among the strongest in the top 10. Speed drags the overall score down, but the content is unlike anything else on this list.
7. Wandering Carol — Awesome Score: 72
Best for: luxury travel without the pretension
Carol Perehudoff holds an English degree, a Master's in Visual Art, and an MBA earned in Korea — and that unusual background shows in her writing. Her 489 posts cover luxury hotels, spas, and cultural travel with a depth of historical context that sets her apart from the typical "look at my suite" luxury blog. European thermal baths, Japanese ryokans, and wine regions all get the same thoughtful treatment. She has won more than 30 travel writing awards, including from the Society of American Travel Writers. The 12/15 trust score is among the highest in the category.
8. Very Hungry Nomads — Awesome Score: 71
Best for: gastronomic travel across every country on Earth
Rachel Davey, an Australian chef, and Martina Sebova, a Slovakian tour guide, met in Europe in 2008 while working as road crew for a youth travel company. They became the first Australian and first Slovakian women to visit all 195 countries — completing the feat in Samoa in November 2022 after 1,685 days of travel. Their archive of 246 gastronomic guides documents what they ate in each one, with Rachel's professional culinary training adding real depth to the food coverage. Speed at 4/10 is the main weakness, but a perfect 12/15 trust score and flawless freshness make up for it.
9. Big World Small Pockets — Awesome Score: 71
Best for: budget solo travel across 84 countries
Stephanie Parker built Big World Small Pockets from scratch in 2015 to prove that meaningful travel is possible on a sensible budget. She has visited 87+ countries solo, and the 1,203-post archive is packed with practical cost breakdowns — not "Asia is cheap" platitudes, but actual hostel comparisons, rail pass analyses, and daily budget estimates by country. She won Best British Travel Blog at the 2019 British Travel Awards and has contributed to HuffPost. Strong speed (7/10) and mobile (10/10) scores reflect a technically well-maintained site.
10. Johnny Jet — Awesome Score: 71
Best for: travel deals, points, and airline industry news
John DiScala had a crippling fear of flying at 17 that kept him nearly housebound for three years. At 21, he conquered the phobia — and has since traveled to nearly 100 countries, publishing 8,146 posts along the way. That is the highest count in our entire travel directory by a wide margin. His newsletter dates back to 1995, predating most travel blogs by a decade, and the site has been featured thousands of times in USA Today, Time, The New York Times, and across major TV networks. Mobile is the weak link at 7/10, but that massive archive and 20/20 freshness keep the score competitive after 25+ years online.
Best Solo Female Travel Blogs
Solo female travel has its own set of concerns — safety, accommodation choices, cultural navigation — and these blogs address them head-on with first-person experience across dozens of countries.
Adventurous Kate — Awesome Score: 76
The top-ranked solo female travel blog in our directory and number two overall. Kate McCulley's 83-country archive is the gold standard for women traveling alone.
Big World Small Pockets — Awesome Score: 71
Also in our top 10. Stephanie Parker combines solo travel with serious budget discipline across 87+ countries — her per-country cost breakdowns are some of the most detailed in the travel blogging space.
Wild Junket — Awesome Score: 69
Nellie Huang is a Lonely Planet author and adventure traveler who has been publishing Wild Junket since 2010. Her 507 posts span everything from trekking in Kyrgyzstan to worldschooling with her daughter, and the adventure angle gives this blog a different flavor than most solo female travel content. She is one of the few bloggers on this list who writes equally well about rappelling down waterfalls and navigating visa bureaucracy.
The Blonde Abroad — Awesome Score: 63
Kiersten Rich left her career in corporate finance in 2011 to travel solo through Australia, Thailand, and Southeast Asia. That trip became The Blonde Abroad — now one of the most recognizable solo female travel brands online, with 1,933 posts and a strong DA score of 10/25. She also founded TBA Escapes, an all-female travel tour company. The overall score is held back by speed and mobile metrics, but the archive depth and brand reach are hard to ignore.
Best Food & Travel Blogs
These bloggers plan their trips around what they will eat — and their guides help readers do the same. If a destination's cuisine matters as much as its sights, start here.
Will Fly for Food — Awesome Score: 73
Featured at number four overall. JB and Renee's local food guides are the best resource for eating well in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Very Hungry Nomads — Awesome Score: 71
Ranked number eight above. Gastronomic travel guides for every country on Earth — a genuinely unique archive in the travel blogging world.
The Travel Bite — Awesome Score: 67
Rachelle Lucas has taken The Travel Bite to 55+ countries, combining food writing with destination guides in a way that gives equal weight to both. Her work has been featured on USA Today's 10Best, and the 729-post archive covers everything from Sicilian street food to Texas barbecue trails. The 12/15 trust score reflects a blog that has built real credibility over years of consistent publishing, though freshness at 10/20 suggests a slower current publishing cadence.
Legal Nomads — Awesome Score: 69
Jodi Ettenberg spent five years as a corporate lawyer at a Manhattan firm before leaving on what was supposed to be a one-year sabbatical in 2008. That year became a permanent career change. Legal Nomads uses food as a lens to understand culture and history — not restaurant reviews, but deep storytelling through meals. She won the Lowell Thomas Award for best travel blog in 2015 and has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, and BBC Travel. The perfect 15/15 trust score is the highest in our entire travel category.
Migrationology — Awesome Score: 56
Mark Wiens runs one of the most popular food travel YouTube channels in the world, and his blog archive of 4,078 posts is enormous. The Awesome Score is lower here because the blog has taken a backseat to video content, but the written guides — especially for Bangkok, Singapore, and Mumbai street food — remain highly useful. Worth bookmarking alongside his YouTube channel.
Best Adventure & Outdoor Blogs
Hiking boots, backcountry trails, and destinations where the journey is the point. These blogs go beyond sightseeing into genuine outdoor adventure.
SectionHiker — Awesome Score: 75
Our number three overall. Philip Werner's 3,074-post hiking archive is unmatched for gear reviews and trail reports, with perfect speed and mobile scores.
Against the Compass — Awesome Score: 73
Number six on our list. Joan Torres covers the most adventurous destinations in travel blogging — the kind of places where getting there is itself the adventure.
Expert Vagabond — Awesome Score: 62
Matthew Karsten is a National Geographic-featured adventure travel photographer whose 271 posts focus on adrenaline-forward travel — cliff jumping in Jamaica, volcano boarding in Nicaragua, cage diving with sharks in South Africa. The archive is smaller than most on this list, but the per-post quality and photography are exceptional. A strong trust score of 12/15 reflects the National Geographic association and years of credible adventure content.
Bearfoot Theory — Awesome Score: 52
Kristen Bor started Bearfoot Theory to document her transition from desk job to outdoor life, and the blog has become a go-to resource for hiking, van life, and outdoor adventure in the American West. Her 462 posts focus heavily on national park guides, hiking trail reviews, and van conversion tips. The lower Awesome Score reflects speed and DA challenges, but the outdoor-specific content fills a niche that few other blogs on this list cover.
Best Budget Travel Blogs
Traveling on a budget is not about deprivation — it is about knowing where the money actually matters. These blogs break down the real costs.
Big World Small Pockets — Awesome Score: 71
In our top 10 above. Stephanie's budget breakdowns by country are some of the most honest and detailed in travel blogging — no vague "Asia is cheap" generalizations.
Goats on the Road — Awesome Score: 68
Nick and Dariece are a Canadian couple who have been digital nomads since 2008. Their 1,833 posts cover budget travel, remote work logistics, and the practical side of long-term travel that most blogs romanticize rather than explain. Guides on teaching English abroad, house-sitting, and travel blogging income reports make this one of the more transparent travel blogs in our directory.
Nomadic Matt — Awesome Score: 65
Matt Kepnes did not leave the United States until age 23. A trip to Thailand convinced him to quit his job, finish his MBA, and backpack the world. He launched Nomadic Matt in 2008 and his New York Times bestselling book "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day" essentially created the category of long-term budget travel content online. His 1,388 posts have been featured in the NYT, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and National Geographic. The score sits outside the top 25 due to speed and freshness metrics, but the archive's influence on budget travel is hard to overstate.
The Broke Backpacker — Awesome Score: 61
Will Hatton started The Broke Backpacker in 2013 as handwritten notes passed around fellow travelers, which evolved into a small email list of 40 people. It now has 4,427 posts — the second-highest count in our travel directory — and over a million monthly visitors. He traveled on $10 a day, hitchhiking and sleeping in train stations. Forbes named him one of their most influential people under 30 in 2017, and he co-founded Tribal Bali, a co-working hostel voted best in the world. Speed and trust metrics hold the score back, but the sheer volume of budget content is unmatched.
Best Family Travel Blogs
Traveling with kids changes every calculation — pace, budget, accommodation, and what counts as a good day. These blogs document the real experience of family travel, not a curated highlight reel.
Y Travel Blog — Awesome Score: 73
Ranked fifth overall. Craig and Caz Makepeace homeschooled their daughters across continents and built one of the most trusted family travel resources in the process.
TraveLynn Family — Awesome Score: 65
Lynn and her family have been publishing UK-focused family travel content since 2016, earning 200,000 monthly page views with 388 posts covering everything from Peak District hikes with toddlers to European city breaks with young kids. The content is practical and honest about the realities of traveling with small children — no glossy "our kids loved every minute" pretense. Strong mobile scores reflect a site built for parents planning on their phones.
Wild Junket — Awesome Score: 69
Also in our solo travel section. Nellie Huang started worldschooling with her daughter, blending adventure travel with family life in a way that few blogs manage credibly.
Best Travel Photography Blogs
For travelers who care as much about the image as the destination. These blogs combine strong visual storytelling with useful travel information.
Finding the Universe — Awesome Score: 71
Laurence Norah grew up partly on a desert island in the Seychelles, left a decade-long IT career in 2009, and launched Finding the Universe in 2010 after a 60,000km road trip around Australia. His 770 posts pair destination guides with photography tutorials — camera settings for northern lights, golden hour spots in Paris, how to shoot waterfalls. He runs a dedicated online photography course, and his work has appeared on the BBC, National Geographic, CNN, and Conde Nast Traveler. A perfect 10/10 speed score is impressive for a photography-heavy site.
Dan Flying Solo — Awesome Score: 70
Daniel James is a UK-based photographer whose 309 posts cover Asia, Europe, and Australia through a visual-first lens. The photography guides go beyond "point your camera at the sunset" into composition technique, editing workflows, and location scouting. A strong 12/15 trust score and solid mobile performance make this a well-rounded travel photography blog, even with a slightly lower freshness score.
BucketListly Blog — Awesome Score: 67
Pete R. has visited 90+ countries as a solo traveler based in Thailand, and his photography-focused blog documents each destination with a visual storytelling approach. The 543-post archive is complemented by a travel tracking app he built himself — BucketListly — which gives the blog a unique tech-meets-travel angle. Perfect speed (10/10) and mobile (10/10) scores are the best technical performance of any photography blog in the category.
Category Overview
The Travel & Adventure category on AwesomeBloggers currently includes 87 blogs, with 75 scoring above the 40-point minimum for directory listing. The average Awesome Score across qualifying blogs is 59, while the top 25 average 70 — an 11-point gap that comes down almost entirely to publishing consistency and site performance.
What separates the top-ranked travel blogs from the rest is not one standout metric but the absence of weak ones. Salt in our Hair, Adventurous Kate, and SectionHiker all score well across every category with no single metric dragging them down. Mid-tier blogs tend to have one glaring weakness — usually speed or freshness — that caps their overall score. The good news: both of those are fixable.
Several of these blogs are nominated in our Q2 2026 Quarterly Awards — vote for your favorite travel blog.
Submit Your Blog
Run a travel blog? See how you compare to the top 25 — get your free Awesome Score in minutes. The scoring is fully automated and gives you a breakdown across all seven metrics. Every approved blog gets a permanent do-follow backlink and a listing in our Travel & Adventure directory.
If your score is lower than expected, our guide on how to improve your domain authority covers the most impactful changes you can make. Site speed issues, which affect many travel blogs with heavy photography, can often be resolved with image optimization and better hosting — browse our free blogger toolkit for resources on speed, SEO, and content optimization. You might also want to check how your blog compares to other categories like our best food blogs ranking or the best personal finance blogs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best travel blog in 2026?
Based on our data, Salt in our Hair holds the top spot with an Awesome Score of 77 out of 100, followed by Adventurous Kate at 76 and SectionHiker at 75. The best blog for you depends on your travel style — Salt in our Hair excels at couple travel itineraries, Adventurous Kate is the authority on solo female travel, and SectionHiker is unmatched for hiking and backpacking content.
How do you rank travel blogs?
We use the Awesome Score methodology, which evaluates seven independent metrics: domain authority (25 pts), content freshness (20 pts), site speed (10 pts), mobile readiness (10 pts), content volume (15 pts), SSL security (5 pts), and trust signals (15 pts). Scores are calculated automatically and refresh weekly. No blog can pay for a higher ranking. Read the full methodology here.
Are travel blogs still useful in 2026?
Yes. Social media and short-form video are popular for travel inspiration, but travel blogs remain the most reliable source for detailed itineraries, honest accommodation reviews, and practical logistics like visa requirements and transport options. The top blogs in our Travel & Adventure rankings have archives of hundreds to thousands of destination guides — a depth that no Instagram reel or TikTok video can replicate. Blogs are also searchable, bookmarkable, and accessible offline in ways that social platforms are not.
What is a good Awesome Score for a travel blog?
The average score across all 75 qualifying travel blogs in our directory is 59 out of 100. Scores above 65 place a blog in the top tier, and above 70 puts it in the top 10. The highest-scoring travel blog reaches 77. A minimum score of 40 is required to be listed in our directory at all, which filters out inactive, abandoned, or poorly maintained sites.
What is the best solo female travel blog?
Based on our scoring, Adventurous Kate holds the top position for solo female travel with an Awesome Score of 76. Kate McCulley has traveled to 91 countries across all seven continents solo and was named Forbes Top 10 Travel Influencer and TravMedia Blogger of the Year. Other strong options include Big World Small Pockets (71) for budget-focused solo travel and Wild Junket (69) for adventure-oriented solo trips.
How can I get my travel blog listed?
Submit your blog for a free automated evaluation. The scoring takes a few minutes and gives you a breakdown across all seven metrics. If your blog scores 40 or above, it gets listed in the Travel & Adventure directory with a permanent do-follow backlink. If you want to improve your score first, start with our guide on improving domain authority and the free blogger toolkit.
Are travel blogs still profitable in 2026?
Many of the blogs on this list are full-time businesses. Salt in our Hair attracts 600,000 monthly visitors. The Broke Backpacker reaches over a million. Johnny Jet has been running since 2000. Travel blogs monetize through affiliate partnerships, sponsored content, display ads, and products like courses and ebooks. The blogs that score highest in our directory tend to be the ones with the most sustainable business models — consistent publishing and strong technical fundamentals correlate with both audience growth and revenue.