Oia at sunset over the Aegean — caldera in golden hour

Travel. Live. Belong.

A lifestyle travel publication of first-person stories — honest, photographed, and lived.

Photo · Yaron · Oia, Greece
First-person · Original · Honest

First-person. Original photographs. Honest.

Below — three pieces, three travellers, three honest verdicts.

Your
Voices.

A growing archive of honest first-person travel writing. Each piece written and photographed by the person who actually went.

Oia Santorini at sunset over the Aegean
Greece · Comparison
Athens vs Santorini — which one should have your week.
By Yaron · Founder of PONTUS
Read the verdict
A green-and-turquoise cove at Paleokastritsa, Corfu
Greece · Honest Account
Is Corfu worth it? The Greek island that doesn't feel Greek.
By Yaron · Founder of PONTUS
Read the verdict
Nishan at Khor Virap with Mount Ararat, Armenia
Armenia · Voice
I'm Armenian. I just visited for the first time.
By Nishan K. · PONTUS Voices
Read the piece
Explore all voices

Read on — who's behind all this, and why it exists.

What is
Pontus?

A small editorial publication for travellers who refuse the listicle and the upsell.

Yaron Askal · Founder

The name Pontus is something I came up with one day when I was waiting tables at a restaurant job. The day was slow and I had time to think. I wanted to start a brand — didn't know exactly what for then. But I thought of the name Pontus. It sounded good. Sounded serious.

Then I researched if the name was already being used somewhere, but instead found out that Pontus is the name of a primordial Greek god of the sea. So, even better, I guess.

I started PONTUS to publish travel writing the way I wished I'd read it. First-person. Original photographs. Real places, written by people who actually went. No SEO-optimised listicles. No filtered Instagram aesthetic. No travel-agency upsell at the end of every paragraph.

— Yaron, founder of pontus.life

Next — the three commitments every piece has to keep.

What every PONTUS piece
has to be.
Three commitments. Every article. No exceptions, no compromises, no shortcuts.
— First —
First-person, always.
No third-person travel-magazine voice. No "we recommend." Every piece is written by someone who actually went, in their own words, with their own opinion. If you can't tell who's narrating, we didn't publish it.
— Second —
Original photography, EXIF preserved.
No stock images. No Unsplash placeholders. Every photograph in every article is taken by the writer, on the trip, with the metadata intact as evidence. The image and the words come from the same person at the same moment.
— Third —
Honest, opinionated, unafraid.
We name what's overrated. We say which town is the postcard and which is the real one. We tell you when not to go somewhere. Hedging is the opposite of useful.

And one more thing — a 31-day field manual, free.

The Blueprint.
From nothing, in 31 days.

A day-by-day field manual for building a lifestyle travel brand from zero. Day 1 has no website, no audience, nothing. Day 31 is the foundations of a real publication — and a one-year horizon written in present tense. Free, no upsell, no catch.

Get the Blueprint
31
Days, in order
5
Movements, day by day
1
Year horizon, present tense
$0
Cost · No upsell

And finally — read the next story before everyone else.

Read the next story
before everyone else.

A new piece roughly every week — original photography, first-person, sent the moment it goes live.

Free · Unsubscribe any time