From time immemorial, man has worshiped gods. Throughout the world are shrines and other physical remnants that trace the history of man’s quest to reunite with the divine. This month’s newsletter is about some of the great religious shrines and pilgrimage sites of the world. (Bear in mind that while some of our Tour Hosts visit these sites, the tours they offer are not strictly ...
Tour Host Review
Each month we highlight a company that best serves travelers based on the theme of the newsletter. This month, there is not a particular company that features “spiritual tours.” Instead, in keeping with the idea of the Host Review, I am choosing a company that best serves an area that, from personal experience, I think is a great destination for those travelers who want to explore a cr...
Host of the Month
Over the past 10 years the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert has attracted much attention as its hip, wired congregation of freaks, artists, seekers, post-modernists and folks with a lot of time on their hands have gathered to turn a monochromatic salt flat into a gaudy, co...
Festival Pick
Jordan’s Petra, “a rose-red city, half as old as time,” is the image that comes to most travelers’ minds when you say “rock-hewn structures.” The incredible patience and skill of the Nabateans, a third century B.C. nomadic people, in carving out Petra’s pediments, pillars and interior spaces still amaze.
But there are other red places, even more rem...
World Heritage Site
As the 1,400-year-old antipathy between Christendom and Islam threatens to become inflamed, it’s helpful to remember that not every ancient friction between the two religious worlds has been left to fester or remain unresolved.
Perhaps the best example of that is the Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”), the magnificent domed church erected in Constantinople by the Eastern Roman E...
Museum Pick
In the old days of the Soviet Empire, Mongolia was a vassal state that served as a buffer between Siberia’s barely peopled expanses and the teeming millions of China. Both China and the former USSR were happy with that state of affairs, since the illusion of Mongolian independence served to defuse the tensions between the two giant states.
Now, in the post-Soviet era, Russia and China are h...
National Park Pick
The Seven Churches of Asia Minor
Written By Levent Ekendiz Posted on Religious
The “Seven Churches of Asia Minor” – Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, and Laodicea – are addressed by John in the Book of Revelation. John chose these cities, located in modern western Turkey, probably because, being among the first established, they had sizeable Christian communities.
The spread of Christianity in Asia Minor started from Antioch ad Orontes (modern Antakya) in southern Turkey, where Christians were first given that name. It was from here that the missionaries Paul, Peter, John, Barnabas, and their companions set out for western Turkey in the 1st century A.D. In spite of persecution from the Roman Empire,...
There are many good reasons to visit China, and many interesting sites to see, but none is more extraordinary than the Yungang Caves in Datong.
The temple/monastery comprises 53 grottos with more than 51,000 stone bas reliefs and figures of the Buddha carved out of a living mountain. They range from thumb-size to a 56-foot colossus. The visitor’s eye is dazzled by...
If you squint you can just about make out people on the other bank. They’re busy shoring up the side of the Mekong over in Thailand. Thai jurisdiction ends at the banks. From the waterline on, it all belongs to Laos. This has its problems: the Thai side suffers the inevitable erosion that comes as standard where rivers of this magnitude are concerned. Unfortunately for Thailand,...
Like the elephant in the living room that people politely pretend isn’t
there, the topic of travel safety won’t go away even if people won’t
discuss it. We know that it’s still a major concern in many people’s
minds. Here’s look at the current state of travel safety, and how the
events of 9-11 continue to...
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Jordan’s Petra, “a rose-red city, half as old as time,” is the image that comes to most travelers’ minds when you say “rock-hewn structures.” The incredible patience and skill of the Nabateans, a third century B.C. nomadic people, in carving out Petra’s pediments, pillars and interior spaces still amaze.
But there are other red places, even more rem...
In the old days of the Soviet Empire, Mongolia was a vassal state that served as a buffer between Siberia’s barely peopled expanses and the teeming millions of China. Both China and the former USSR were happy with that state of affairs, since the illusion of Mongolian independence served to defuse the tensions between the two giant states.
Now, in the post-Soviet era, Russia and China are h...
The Seven Churches of Asia Minor.jpg)
There are many good reasons to visit China, and many interesting sites to see, but none is more extraordinary than the Yungang Caves in Datong.
If you squint you can just about make out people on the other bank. They’re busy shoring up the side of the Mekong over in Thailand. Thai jurisdiction ends at the banks. From the waterline on, it all belongs to Laos. This has its problems: the Thai side suffers the inevitable erosion that comes as standard where rivers of this magnitude are concerned. Unfortunately for Thailand,...