Weekly travel reads: Yerevan in Armenia is ready to welcome more visitors

[The Travel Wire #94] Notes on Lopburi, on trusting strangers in Egypt, the reality of living on a permanent cruise, and more travel reads.

Travel reads

• Soviet markets, sunshine and beer steins: This beautiful former USSR city is opening up to tourists [Independent]
“Nearby Tbilisi is still enjoying its moment and now – thanks to new flights from London – Yerevan in Armenia is ready to welcome more visitors, finds Rich Booth.”

• Notes on Lopburi – The new train station, and where are the monkeys and overlanders? [Nomadic Notes]

• One of us [Coco’s Newsletter]
“On trusting strangers in Egypt.”

• Chisinau [The Unplugged Traveler]
“On getting traction, even in slippery places.”

• Air travel—and other everyday miracles [A Sense of Wander]
“What a fifteen-year-old taught me about the necessity of wonder.”

• Madrid: the growing pains of a superstar city (archive) [Financial Times]
“The Spanish capital is changing before its residents’ eyes. Restaurants are even imposing a two-hour limit on diners.”

• A year at sea: The reality of living on a permanent cruise [CNN Travel]

• This hiker is mapping India’s ‘invisible’ trails—the ancient routes not found in any guidebook [Adventure]
“Speed hiker and trail mapper Manvendra Singh Shekhawat is on a mission to make India’s outdoors more accessible. And he’s doing so by digitally mapping the country’s ‘invisible’ trails—the routes used for centuries that aren’t in any guidebook.”

• Where cockpits meet cocktails: plane spotting from a Sint Maarten beach bar – [Intrepid Times]

• Cycling Scotland’s lost highways and byways: a two-wheel odyssey in the wilds of Sutherland [The Guardian]