Against the Compass
First-person, practical guides to visiting offbeat, remote and conflict-affected countries.
About Against the Compass
Against the Compass is a travel blog offering hands-on, first-person guides and personal essays about offbeat and often hard-to-reach destinations. The site has more than 215 posts in its sitemap and its archive dates to March 2024, with a steady publishing rhythm of about one new post each month. Content mixes destination how-to guides for places like Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya with memoir-style pieces about expedition life and traveling with the writer's son. The sampled post content is text-forward; recent pages showed minimal images or multimedia embeds.
This is the sort of blog that deliberately turns toward the places other guides avoid. We like the blunt, practical titles - many guides are year-stamped and focused on how to actually get into a country in the current moment - and the way personal essays about five years on the road with a child add texture to the logistics. Reading feels direct and field-tested rather than glossy. The site is active at a measured pace, about one new guide a month, and the archive already runs to more than two hundred posts since early 2024. Sample pages are concise and largely text-driven.
Where They Travel
global
Pros
- Practical, current guides to hard-to-reach countries
- Year-marked how-to posts with operational detail
- Large archive of niche destination reports
Cons
- Text-heavy posts with few photos
- Steady but slow posting pace, about one a month
- Coverage leans toward conflict and remote areas
How Popular Is Against the Compass?
- Majestic Million rank262,004
- Open PageRank4.6 / 10
- Best-of lists2