Sponsored by Travel Lemming, a human-first online travel guide. Plan your next trip with Travel Lemming’s library of detailed guides, written by its team of local and expert humans.
Update. Thank you for your entries! The competition is now closed, but our standard travel writing submissions remain open year-round. Winners will be announced in January.
Dear writer;
AI can plan a trip, summarize information about a journey, and help you find a flight. But it can’t experience. It can’t connect. As other publications turn towards AI to drive efficiency and reduce cost, Intrepid Times and our travel writing competition sponsor Travel Lemming are taking the road less traveled. We are here, as we have always been, to support skillful writing informed by genuine travel experiences. And this is what we will celebrate in our latest competition.
Write a true travel story about a moment of human connection. Focus on a specific incident, a meeting with a person from another culture, perhaps, or a time when you broke free of the tourist trail and gained genuine appreciation for the heart of a strange land.
Write 1500 – 1800 words, and win up to $300 USD. One winner and up to four runners-up will be published right here on Intrepid Times. We highly recommend writers take a moment to read some of our recent stories and past competition winners to get a sense of what we publish at Intrepid Times.
Entry is free and open now. Please enter your name and email below to join our newsletter and proceed to our submission page where you will find instructions for sending in your entry.
Entries close December 10, 2025. Winners announced January 2026. We accept only original, unpublished, human-written work.
