Notes from the Field: Track Giant Pandas in China's Sichuan Province
In April and October of next year, U.S.-and Beijing-based tour operator WildChina is offering two new weeklong itineraries to showcase the key panda-conservation area in southwestern China's mountainous Sichuan province. Starting out from the provincial capital of Chengdu, the group tours will delve into the bamboo and rhododendron thickets of Sichuan's Wanglang Nature Reserve, home to over two dozen Giant pandas. With a diverse array of habitat rising from between 7,500 and 15,000 feet in elevation, Wanglang is also home to numerous other wildlife species including Golden Snub-nosed monkeys, leopard cats, and some 165 kinds of birds.
Tour participants will follow "panda patrol" paths through the reserve in the company of local wildlife experts, learning how to spot panda tracks and helping to locate infrared cameras for recording panda behavior. Wanglang is home to a small but growing population of the world's estimated 1,600 wild pandas, all of which inhabit about 20 enclaves of isolated mountain forest in China's Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces. WildChina's 2010 itinerary will also take in the alpine landscapes of Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve, a UNESCO World heritage site. Not only notable for its acclaim in high-end publications like Travel+Leisure and National Geographic Traveler, WildChina is a partner with the World Wildlife Fund to implement sustainable, environmentally-friendly tourism practices on the ground. Land-based costs for this trip start at $2,600 per person, with additional costs for domestic air transfers and optional trip extensions.
Photo credit: courtesy, WildChina
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October 28, 2009
Getting Out There With Afar Magazine
Traveling home from a conference in Québec last week, I picked up a copy of the premier edition of Afar, the newest travel magazine to grace an already crowded category on airport newsstands. An hour later after a thoroughly absorbing in-flight read, I can report that I was impressed. The magazine is "for readers who are curious about everything the planet and its people have to offer," according to founder and editorial director Greg Sullivan. In this day and age, when magazines seek to impress with the most luxurious travel experiences imaginable or cater to a budget-minded, close-to-home crowd, Afar bites off the essence of experiential travel with an honest, open, and upbeat appraisal of the world we explore. A bimonthly publication to start, each issue of Afar will be organized under the typical See, Connect, and Go sections; its first edition profiled everything from Japan's costume-play fetish to a local's guide to East London to the world's best treetop lodging. As someone who reads a pile of travel magazines each month for work, I'm happy to say that this is one travel magazine that will open your eyes, mind, and heart—not just your wallet!
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October 07, 2009
"K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain" by Ed Viesturs On Sale Next Week
K2, originally uploaded by toufeeque (Flickr.com)
Mount Everest may be the mountain of all mountains, but Pakistan’s 28,250-foot K2, the world’s second-tallest peak, is considered by many professional climbers to be the world’s ultimate mountaineering challenge. It’s also the world’s most dangerous summit, claiming the lives of 77 climbers since 1954, including 11 who died in a 36-hour period in August 2008. Ed Viesturs, America’s most prolific high-altitude climber, chronicles this and five other of the most dramatic campaigns on K2 in his new book, K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain, on sale October 13. Set in northern Pakistan’s Karakoram Range, K2 tops a snow-capped forest of black-rock peaks that includes five more of the world’s 17 highest mountains. As Viesturs notes in his new book, “K2 still has not developed anything like the guided-client scene on Everest. The world’s second-highest mountain is simply too difficult for beginners.”
Want to know more about Ed Viesturs? Then read GORP.com’s 2003 Expeditionary Forces profile, which unpacks Viesturs' most celebrated climbs, the gear that goes into his backpack, and what keeps this high-altitude dynamo going when the chips are down.
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October 06, 2009
World Monuments Fund Announces Its 2010 Watch List
Cordilleras rice terraces in the Philippines (Photodisc/Getty)
David Farley—author, New York Times blogger, and friend of the Away.com Travel Blog—writes today on the NYTimes.com "In Transit" blog about the World Monument Fund's biannual release of its list of the world’s most endangered cultural sites. Ninety-three sites in 47 countries are listed as being under threat from neglect, overdevelopment, or mass tourism, among them Peru's Machu Picchu, the rice terraces in the Cordilleras region of the Philippines, and Taos Pueblo in New Mexico.
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October 05, 2009
Photo of the Day: World's Highest Via Ferrata, Mount Kinabalu
Mountain Torq's via ferrata on the upper slopes of Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia (courtesy, Tourism Malaysia)
Malaysia's 13,435-foot Mount Kinabalu is a hulking granite massif located on the north end of the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo. The main summit, Low's Peak, is a popular route for even non-climbers in good physical condition, many of whom get up in the early-morning hours to catch sunrise at the top. Those interested in taking a less-trammeled route to the top should consider Mountain Torq's via ferrata, which opened in December 2007 and is certified by Guinness World Records as the world's highest via ferrata. "Via ferrata" is an Italian phrase meaning "iron road" and offers a fixed climbing route up steep cliffsides and mountain faces, which are otherwise off-limits to those without technical climbing and mountaineering skills. The original via ferratas were deployed in the Italian Dolomites during World War I to aid the movement of mountain infantry. Today, these popular routes offer access to recreational mountaineering in the European Alps, Québec's Laurentian Mountains, and countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. Mount Kinabalu is located in UNESCO World Heritage-listed Kinabalu National Park, home to four distinct climate zones and a rich array of flora and fauna. Other popular attractions on the Malaysian-administered side of the Borneo landmass include the bustling town of Kuching and the longhouses, rainforest, and indigenous tribespeople in the state of Sarawak.
Browse more cool photos, plus contribute your own favorites, at Away.com's Photostream on Flickr.com!
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September 21, 2009
Nagasaki Insider's Guide: The Perfect Bowl of Noodles
A bowl of champon noodles, a Nagasaki specialty (courtesy, Wikimedia Commons)
The city of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan is one of the country's most, well, un-Japanese cities. Given its proximity to the facing shores of both China and the Korean peninsula, many elements of its history, architecture, cuisine, and culture can be traced back to regional trade connections with the Asian mainland. More recently, relatively speaking, the arrival of Portuguese missionaries and Dutch traders during the 16th and 17th centuries exposed this corner of Japan to western-influenced religion, fads, and goods while the rest of the country was essentially in a 200-year cultural lockdown under the Tokugawa shogunate's strict policy of isolation.
When I lived in Japan, I would ride a ferry and bus for over two hours just to get a taste of one of Nagasaki's distinctly cosmopolitan flavorings, champon, a ramen-noodle broth that originated in China and which is made by frying pork, seafood, and vegetables with lard. In the local dialect, champon literally means "hodgepodge," so the dish can take many forms. You can order a bowl of this delicious local staple at any number of izakayas (bars) and noodle stands. Other must-do ideas for Nagasaki include a visit to the quirky Dutch trading enclave of Dejima, tours of Glover Garden (home of the European trader behind Kirin lager!), and the Nagasaki heiwa koen ("peace park"), epicenter of the devastating August 1945 atomic bomb blast that brought World War II to its tragic end.
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September 18, 2009
Phu Quoc: Vietnam's Best Beaches
Sunset in Phu Quoc (Mike Sieburg)
Introduction
For a country with a mainland that stretches for nearly 4,000 kilometers along the South China Sea, I find Vietnam’s most beautiful beaches to actually be on the island of Phu Quoc. Set in the Gulf of Thailand just west of the Mekong Delta and less than 20 kilometers south of Cambodia, Phu Quoc is home to vast, lovely stretches of sandy unspoiled beaches, and dotted with towering palm trees overlooking turquoise waters. Dense forests and pepper plants line the slopes of the island’s mountainous interior, while a rugged dirt road hugs the coast. With most of Vietnam’s coast facing east, the island of Phu Quoc is one of the country’s few beaches that offers views of the sunset.
Activities
The seas surrounding Phu Quoc offer excellent diving and snorkeling, especially in the quieter waters of the dry season. Most hotels arrange boat trips out to popular snorkeling and dive sites. The interior of the island has trails, allowing for jungle hikes through dense foliage to waterfalls and mountaintops with views that stretch to the Cambodian mainland on clear days. For those wanting to explore the outer reaches of the island, it is possible to rent a motorbike for the day. The island’s main road follows the coast, making for stunning views throughout any drive.
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June 19, 2009
From the Road: Cultural Diversity in Penang, Malaysia
In this series of posts, our roving guest
blogger Dave Zuckerman reports back from the road as he explores
Malaysia. We hope you'll enjoy reading about his experiences as much as
we did.
I’m now on the island of Penang and finding it a great place to get acquainted with Malaysia’s cultural diversity. Penang’s historic Georgetown district, a UNESCO World Heritage site as of 2008, is a microcosm of the nation’s multiethnic heritage. Wandering its streets you find mosques, Hindu temples, Chinese clan temples, and plenty of evidence of the colonial past (the British first arrived here in 1786). You’ll also see a wealth of vernacular architecture in a variety of styles and states of disrepair. The stunning Blue Mansion, a fantastically elaborate home built in 1898 by Cheong Fatt Tze, “the Rockefeller of the East,” is one of Georgetown’s treasures. True feng shui principals permeate every aspect of the Mansion’s design. Builders even oriented the house at a 45-degree angle to the street so it would, according to the dictates of a proverb, face the sea with the mountains (in this case Penang Hill) behind. More pedestrian (but no less interesting) are the abundant shophouses. Residents have restored a number of these traditional mixed-use structures, building them into galleries, cafes, and boutique hotels.
Even experiences that seem to offer only sensory stimulation are, in Penang, steeped in history. The Tropical Spice Garden, a lush, verdant garden devoted to brightly colored wild spice flowers (the blade-like ginger flowers are stunningly beautiful) was once a rubber plantation. At the top of Penang Hill, the Bellevue Hotel offers beautiful views of Georgetown. The hotel dates back to the days of the East India Company, when it was the home of William Halliburton, sheriff of Penang (then known to the Brits as Wales Island). A collection of prints depicts colonial-era Georgetown from the same vantage. Comparing them to the view, you can see how the city has grown.
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June 12, 2009
From the Road: Seeking Culture in Kuching, Malaysia
An exhibit at the Cat Museum in Kuching (Dave Zuckerman)
From the editors: In this series of posts, our roving guest blogger Dave Zuckerman reports back from the road as he explores Malaysia. We hope you'll enjoy reading about his experiences as much as we did.
From Kuala Lumpur, we flew to Kuching. The capital of Sarawak state, which stretches across a strip along the north and east coasts of Borneo, Kuching means "cat" in Malay and the city bills itself “the Cat City.” Kuching’s identity, superficially anyway, is tied up in a cat obsession. There are a number of large cat sculptures in the city center, and there’s even a museum dedicated entirely to the common house cat. It’s about ten minutes out of town on the ground floor of a government building designed to replicate the conical sunhats of local farmers. From the entrance, shaped like the yawning maw of an enormous cat, to the last vitrine, the Cat Museum is the ultimate in kitsch. There are displays dedicated to Garfield, the musical Cats, Hello Kitty, and my personal favorite, a ’70s Dutch band called Cats Aglow. It’s definitely worth a trip (if you can be entertained by that sort of thing).
Kitsch isn’t all you're in for in Kuching (though there is a lot of it). Between the Brooke dynasty (failed trader and adventurer James Brooke and his progeny ruled the state as white Rajahs from the 1840s until 1946), the tribal populations, and the historically recent influx of Chinese immigrants, the state of Sarawak actually has a pretty rich and bizarre history.
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June 04, 2009
From the Road: First Impressions of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
ON THE RISE: Kuala Lumpur's skyline, punctuated by the Petronas Twin Towers (Photodisc)
From the editors: In this series of posts, our roving guest blogger Dave Zuckerman reports back from the road as he explores Malaysia. We hope you'll enjoy reading about his experiences as much as we did.
After a few days in Kuala Lumpur (KL to Malaysians), one of the few things I can say about the place with certainty is that it’s hard to get to know. Buildings, finished and otherwise, make the first impression. On the way in from the airport we passed Putrajaya, a new complex of vaguely modern structures (and a big mosque) that houses the national government, then Cyberjaya, another compound meant for tech and telecom firms—still unfinished more than a decade since the project broke ground.
Later, strolling through the city center (okay, not strolling exactly—KL’s enveloping swelter makes walking any distance more like a slog), I saw the city’s odd abundance of skyscrapers, odd because the city center isn’t dense. It’s sprawling, with wide arterial roads. The tallest buildings are islands of vertical reach, dwarfing everything in their vicinity. They’d be anomalies on the cityscape if only there weren’t so many of them. There are also malls everywhere . The first, called simply The Mall, was built in the 1970s and they’ve been popping up ever since. The newest, the shiny, year-old Pavilion is home to the likes of Burberry and Jimmy Choo, though it doesn’t look like anyone’s buying.
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