Travel stories about what felt different, unfamiliar or unexpectedly familiar.
Welcome
I’ve been writing about my travels since 2009 — first in emails to a few friends, now here. More than 50 countries later, I’m still drawn to places shaped by other cultures: their temples and ruins, their food and rituals, the people I meet along the way.
These are the stories and photographs that stayed with me.
Selected Stories
A few journeys that stayed with me
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Bhutan, 2023.
Part of my Bhutan travel stories, this journey unfolded through mountain paths, prayer flags, and a daily rhythm guided as much by spirituality as by landscape. Some Journeys Begin with a Coincidence In one of my favorite moments, I was there — staring at a map, my eyes fixed on Asia.Where can I go now?…
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Shooting the Holi Festival – India, 2020.
This Holi festival travel story unfolds in clouds of color, ritual and unfiltered human energy, where celebration and chaos briefly blur into the same experience. Through McCurry’s Lens: My First Glimpse of Holi Decades ago, I was immersed in a Steve McCurry photo book when I came across a very unusual image: a group of…
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Varanasi, 2020.
These Varanasi travel stories unfold along the ghats of the Ganges, where life, death and devotion exist side by side. The Strange Room in Varanasi My flight would land in Delhi on a Sunday morning. The photo tour? Not until Monday night. That free time made me restless. Staying quietly in Delhi — a city…
Series
India – Beyond the Expected
Experiences that don’t fade
Silk Road Trilogy
A journey through Central Asia —
from nomadic landscapes to monumental cities.
Latest Journeys
✦ Footnotes from Elsewhere
In Varanasi, a ghat is a flight of stone steps leading down to the Ganges — a place to bathe, wash clothes, pray, or say a final goodbye. Notes like this one appear throughout my stories: small pieces of context behind what I saw.
→ Read the Varanasi story
Where it all started
Greece, 2009
Not my best travel story —
but the one that started everything.
Long before Notes from Elsewhere existed,
I was already writing about my travels.
Just emails, sent to a few friends.
This is one of them.
About me
Hi, I’m Catia.
I live in Rio de Janeiro.
Traveling was my first passion. Photographing and writing about it came later – and made the whole experience even more rewarding.
Steve McCurry’s photographs sparked my love for portraits and my curiosity about parts of the world I had never seen. Anthony Bourdain’s shows made me hungry for the flavors of those places. There was no turning back.
I’m the kind of traveler who seeks out what people have created, from ancient sites to the most modern cities. And I always save time for the local wine.
Coming soon : The Baltics II – Latvia, 2026.
Currently in: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.