ROAD JUNKY Travel Writing Contest

If you can’t be comprehensive you might as well be opinionated… Entries due by August 31, 2010.

We were looking at all of our country guides and realised there were some big gaps – how is it we have a guide to Kazakhstan and not France, for instance? Plus a lot of our country guides were written in the early days of Road Junky and we need some fresh blood.

So we decided to have a contest to fill up our list in one big go.

The winning travel writer will get $1000 and the 20 runner ups will get $100 and their guides will be published,

So if you think you know any of the countries listed below like the back of your hand then read the rules REALLY, REALLY, REALLY carefully and submit your guide.

Travel Contest Rules

1. Read some of our country guides first to understand what we’re talking about. Check out some of the better ones like The Philippines, Italy and Hong Kong to get the idea.

2. We said ‘read the country guides first’!

3. Send us the Intro page and the People page first (more on the specific sections ) and we will select 21 entries to go through to the next round and complete the rest of the guide.

DON’T write the whole 6000 word guide and send it in until we’ve approved the first 2 pages!

4. Any entry that uses phrases like ‘land of contrasts’, ‘bustling marketplace’, ‘boasts natural wonders’ will be deleted without a second thought.

5. Photos aren’t necessary but are a plus if they’re entertaining – DON’T send us any files though, just include the links to your flickr page or whatever.

6. If you want to have a chance of winning please understand that we’re looking for ironic, outspoken, original writing that shows us the country in a whole new light. Lonely Planet already did bland and politically correct.

7. Final submission deadline for the first 2 pages is August 31st 2010. Then we will choose 21 writers to complete the full country guide. Once all the guides are finished we’ll probably get everyone to vote on their favourite.

8. If selected as winner or runner up you give us exclusive online rights to the work though you can do anything you want with the piece in print. You can submit as many guides as you want.

9. Include a short bio.

10. Send entries to submissions@roadjunky.com and mark your entry ‘contest country guide’.

Countries available:

Afghanistan
Algeria
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
China
Croatia
Cuba
Czech Republic
Egypt
Estonia
Ethiopia
Finland
France
Greece
Guatemala
Honduras
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Italy
Jamaica
Jordan
Kenya
Laos
Mali
Madagascar
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Nicaragua
Nigeria
Norway
Papau New Guinea
Poland
Portugal
Senegal
Serbia
Singapore
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Turkey
Ukraine
Vietnam
Yemen

and maybe we’d consider other ones if they were particularly biting.

More when you click this.