Maya Ellison

Maya left a magazine job in London in 2018 and never really unpacked. Eight years and forty-odd countries later, she has slept in the dorm beds, sat alone in the hostel common room at the wrong hour, and figured out — slowly, and mostly by getting it wrong — how a stranger in a new city becomes someone you travel on with.

She founded the Nomax Journal to write the guides she wishes she had on her own first nights: honest about the awkward parts, specific about the places, and always on the side of the traveler who just landed and does not know a soul yet.