Welcome back to John Rayburn, who was the most prolific entrant in last year's competition with four entries. He was the July winner with Here We Go Again. His other entries were Wanderlust, "Little Venice" of the Cotswolds and "It's Like Being on a Different Planet". Follow the links to read these stories if you haven't read them already. You can find his brand new entry on the John Rayburn page.

Welcome to the final part of this ten part series. In this week's Behind the Scenes insight Fred talks about his mad dash across India to meet up with his girlfriend in Bombay. He also tells about how they first met and the twists and turns that their relationship has taken over the past couple of years.

Many thanks again to Margaret Daly and the Rukia Publishing team for all their support in publishing and promoting this series of ten weekly insights and extracts from Fred's Diary 1981: Travels in Asia.

It is a real honour to feature this latest travel story entry from Jackie Parry. It is an excerpt from her newly released book: This Is It: 2 hemispheres, 2 people, and 1 boat.

You may remember that Jackie entered two stories in last year's competition:
Festina lente - Hurry slowly and A Handsome Rescue. If you haven't read these yet then follow the links and catch up with them before reading her new entry The Path to Nautical Slavery.

Addicted to travel, adventure and writing, Jackie doesn’t sit still for long. Originally from the UK she is now an adopted Australian. She’s sailed around the world one-and-a-half times and trekked in the bush with five rescued horses for months. She has trained as a professional maritime captain and teacher. Currently she is exploring the European canals on a 1920s Dutch barge with her Australian husband, Noel. She’s written about her sailing and horse trekking escapades, and is an encourager, ‘there are far too many critics in the world already!’

​Websites: www.jackieparry.com and www.noelandjackiesjourneys.com

Elizabeth Moore has kindly provided these photographs to provide some background to her recent competition entry Le Petit Train Jaune. 
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Many thanks to Elizabeth Moore for this latest entry in our 2016 Travel Story Competition. 

Go to the Elizabeth Moore page to read her wonderful story.

I have some important news about this year’s competition.

The winner of our travel story competition in 2015 was chosen by a public vote. Although this was exciting, I’ve had feedback that entrants felt this was not the fairest way to choose the winner.

This year we’re changing the rules and I trust that you understand why. To ensure that the three winners this year (£75- £50 - £25) are chosen fairly we are getting together a beta reader’s panel to judge the overall winners.

I will still choose the monthly winners for the next five months (£25 March until July) but the top three will be chosen by the panel in August and they will choose the best stories completely independently. Every published entry, even if not chosen as a monthly winner, will be eligible.

Don’t forget that the only restrictions are that you can’t enter more than one story per month and that your travel story should be between 500 and 1000 words. An author bio, photo and maybe a promotional link would be appreciated as well.

I am really looking forward to reading all your entries, as I am sure our judge’s panel will be too.

Robert (aka Fred)
 
Catch up with the first five of this year’s entries from Frank Kusy, Stewart Brennan, Nancy McBride, Susan Joyce and Kelly Reising.
 

Welcome to the eighth part of this Behind the Scenes series of fresh insights and extracts from Fred's Diary 1981.

This week Fred talks about some of his experiences in Nepal before he heads off on a trek into the Himalayas. The extract from his diary tells about his first night on that trek, staying with a Nepalese family.

 Watch out for the final two episodes of this ten part series as they are published here and on the Rukia Publishing blog over the next two weeks.

Welcome to the seventh edition of this Behind the Scenes series. In today's release there is a fresh insight into Fred's journey north towards Nepal and an extract from Fred's Diary 1981 which covers his arrival in Kathmandu. 

Thanks again to Margaret at Rukia for all her help and hard work getting this weekly series published.  
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You may remember that Kelly Reising was voted last year's competition winner with Dreaming of Spain. You can still read her winning entry by following the link.

It is a great honour to be able to feature her latest entry, Traveling for Two, which you can read on the Kelly Reising page.

Just a reminder that you can read all last year's entries in our published book, Travel Stories and Highlights, getBook.at/TravelStories for only 99p/99c.