TrodPod: Mongolia

El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and the only one without a Caribbean coast. It makes up for that with a couple of dozen volcanoes, a Pacific shoreline built for surfing, and a national dish so loved it has its own public holiday. For decades it made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Today it’s compact, easy to get around and quietly thrilling - join us as we head to this magical country.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Mongolia for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membership Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two nations, one legal system and a long-running argument about rugby. England and Wales share an island, a monarch and a weather forecast that rarely bothers with optimism, yet each guards its own identity with some vigor. Expect Roman baths and Neolithic riddles, castles by the dozen, mountains that feel far bigger than their height, and cities that never quite stop talking. Pack layers, book trains early, and learn to apologize when someone else bumps into you.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Mongolia for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vast, empty and utterly beguiling, Mongolia is the land of Genghis Khan, endless steppe and the coldest capital city on earth. Roughly half the country lives in Ulaanbaatar; the rest is a rolling immensity of grassland, desert and mountain where nomadic herders still live in felt gers and horses seem to outnumber people. It's a country best measured in weeks, not days — big, wild, and unlike anywhere else. Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Mongolia for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The "Spice Island" of the Caribbean punches well above its size. This three-island nation supplies a whopping share of the world's nutmeg, and the scent of it seems to drift through everything — the food, the rum, the very air. Beyond the spice you'll find postcard beaches, rainforest waterfalls, an underwater sculpture park and a laid-back charm that has visitors quietly plotting how to emigrate. Just go easy on the raw nutmeg — more on that later.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Grenada for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Landlocked in the heart of Central Asia and roughly ninety per cent mountains, Kyrgyzstan is a trekker's dream and one of the friendliest of the "Stans." This is a land of turquoise alpine lakes, summer pastures dotted with horses, and a nomadic culture where a night in a yurt with a herding family is very much on the menu. You can walk for days and barely see another soul. It's not quite as off-the-beaten-track as it once was — so go now.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Kyrgyzstan for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lesotho is one of only three countries on earth entirely surrounded by another, and the only one that sits, in its entirety, above 1,400 metres. That altitude explains almost everything: the snow, the blankets worn as national dress, the horses, the water it sells to its enormous neighbor. Come expecting sub-Saharan heat and you will spend your first afternoon shivering in a jeep. Come prepared, and you get one of Africa's most quietly extraordinary landscapes.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Lesotho for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tucked into West Africa's Atlantic coast, Guinea-Bissau is one of the continent's smallest nations and among its least-visited — which is precisely the point. Here you'll find a labyrinth of mangrove channels, a scatter of eighty-eight islands where saltwater hippos wallow, and a faded Portuguese capital that runs, memorably, on power from a Turkish ship. It's a fiddle to reach and gloriously unpolished. For travellers who like their paradise without the crowds, this is about as good as it gets.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Guinea-Bissau for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Canada is the world's second-largest country and, quite possibly, its most agreeable. A vast sweep of boreal forest, glacial lakes, and Arctic tundra stitched together by very long roads and improbably polite people, it stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and up into the ice. Come for the Rockies and the wildlife; stay for the Tim Hortons, the multicultural cities, and a national temperament that currently reads as the last bastion of common sense.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Canada for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Dominican Republic is the Caribbean with the volume turned up — and a surprising amount of substance behind the sunshine. Yes, there are the postcard beaches of Punta Cana, all white sand and turquoise water, but this is also the site of the first European city in the Americas, the highest mountain in the Caribbean, and a merengue-and-bachata soundtrack that seems to follow you everywhere. Fertile, mountainous, and endlessly lively, it rewards anyone who ventures beyond the resort.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to the Dominican Republic for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ukraine is Europe's second-largest country and, right now, a byword for resilience. Beneath the headlines of war lies a nation of golden-domed monasteries, grand boulevards, and some of the richest farmland on Earth — the fabled "breadbasket of Europe." From ancient Kyiv to Habsburg-flavoured Lviv and cosmopolitan, Mediterranean-tinged Odesa, this is a place of deep history, fierce culture, and extraordinary courage. Travel is currently heavily restricted and comes with serious caveats — but Ukraine's spirit is unmistakable.Love the pod? Get the guide! Out with each new podcast, we publish a guide to the country. Buy the TrodPod guide to Ukraine for just $3: https://www.patreon.com/c/trodpod/shop. Better yet, become a TrodPod member for just $5 a month and access TrodPod guides to every country in the world, released weekly with each new podcast episode! Sign up now: https://www.patreon.com/trodpod/membershipThanks for all your support!TrodPod is Murray Garrard and Elle Keymer. Sound editing by Leo Audio Productions. Design and marketing by GPS: Garrard Powell Solutions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.