Hamba Travel Magazine
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From a detour close to home to a long road through East Africa. Pick a part of the world, or read them in order.
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153 stories from our editors. Filter by part of the world, or page back in time.
Europe · Finland · Tampere
Rajaportti, Tampere’s living public sauna
On the steep ridge between lakes Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi, workers built Pispala with timber houses, narrow lanes and necessity. Rajaportti Sauna still operates from the courtyard where Maria Lahtinen began heating a wooden sauna for her household and neighbours before it opened to the public in 1906.
Asia · Sri Lanka · Jaffna
Jaffna, from Palmyra Palm to Curry Pot
At Jaffna’s municipal market, palmyra tubers sit near lagoon crabs, dried chillies and bunches of moringa leaves. These ingredients trace the dry northern peninsula and lead straight into its Tamil kitchens.
South America · Chile · Chiloé
Three Wooden Churches at the Heart of Chiloé
Castro wraps its timber frame in yellow and purple metal. Achao holds an older sanctuary together with wooden pegs. Dalcahue faces the channel behind nine wooden arches. These three churches show how Chiloé’s carpenters adapted Catholic forms to an island world of timber, boats and wet weather.
Ecuador · Panama · Cuenca
Cuenca and the Ecuadorian Hat Called Panama
Cuenca turns pale coastal fibre into shaped, finished hats for shops and export, but its workshops tell only part of an Ecuadorian craft rooted in Manabí. The name “Panama hat” records where overseas buyers encountered the hat, not where Ecuadorian makers produced it.
Asia · India · Pakistan
Indigo, Iron and Water in Ajrakhpur
In Ajrakhpur, iron in a bucket of wash water can mark pale cotton with black spots before its full pattern appears. Khatri printers built this village after an earthquake destroyed their former workshops, but their work still depends on water that leaves indigo blue, madder red and reserved cotton clean.
Europe · Croatia · Grožnjan
Europe’s 10 Most Atmospheric Small Places, Ranked
This is an editorial, deliberately subjective ranking. Rock, water and relief carry most weight, followed by the coherence of the buildings and the ordinary life still visible among them.
South America · Oceania · El Doradillo
Ten responsible places to watch for whales from shore
These ten coasts put people on paths, platforms, dunes and cliff tops while whales follow their own routes offshore. Pick the right season, stay on land and accept the essential uncertainty: even in peak months, the sea may hold no whale in view.
From Hobart to Bruny Island: Farms, Small Towns and the Southern Ocean
A short ferry crossing from Kettering leads to a very different scale of Tasmania: oyster lines in the channel, sheep paddocks on North Bruny, a sand neck between two islands, and dolerite cliffs above the Southern Ocean. The road also follows Nuenonne Country, a coastline shaped by palawa history, European shipping and generations of island work.
Europe · Asia · Pont du Gard
The world’s ten greatest bridges, ranked
These ten bridges are ranked by three things: the force of their design, the history held in their fabric, and the precision with which they meet their river, strait, valley or city. Pont du Gard starts the list; Stari Most finishes it above the Neretva.
South America · Uruguay · Chile
Five South American beaches, ranked beyond the postcard
Red rock, ancestral monuments, city apartments, Caribbean forest and volcanic cliffs define these five very different shores. This ranking weighs landscape, local setting, nature value, the kind of visit each beach suits and a deliberate spread across South America; it makes no absolute claim about the continent’s “best” beaches.
Europe · Venice · Rio de Janeiro
The 10 Cities Best Understood from the Water
A fine skyline is not enough. In these ten cities, a ferry or small boat reveals how trade, terrain, buildings and daily travel grew around a river, canal or bay.
Beyond the Twelve Apostles: west along the Shipwreck Coast
West of the Twelve Apostles, the Great Ocean Road follows limestone coves and scattered sea stacks through Port Campbell and Peterborough, then reaches the wider coast around Warrnambool and the working river harbour at Port Fairy.