In August/September, I spent 3 weeks travelling around Zimbabwe. I saw all 5 WHS plus one high-potential TWHS - you can find my itinerary here . It was a relaxed trip, I hardly needed a day of rest when I returned home (by comparison: Madagascar took me 1.5 weeks and Chad even 2 to get back to normal!). Also, I didn't meet a single unfriendly Zimbabwean. Herewith are some tips for travelling to Zimbabwe as a WH Traveller.

1. It’s a little different

The countries in Southern Africa have a lot in common (the selection of wildlife, the British-colonial past), so many things in Zimbabwe will be familiar if you’ve been to the region before (the elephants, lions, and English breakfast). I don’t think the safari experience is better than in the neighbouring countries, but neither is it worse: both Hwange and Mana Pools are classy parks, and there are other ones too such as Gonarezhou for the more intrepid wildlife fanatic. We had long and good quality sightings of the behaviour of several iconic mammals, without having to share these with other tourists. Where Zimbabwe definitely does stand out is for its three cultural …

The combined 2022/2023 WHC Session happened in a more orderly fashion than we got used to in the past years, thanks to innovations like the ‘Celebration Room’ and what seemed like some pre-meeting diplomacy regarding Russia and Israel. What seems to never change is giving a WHS to the host country ( 'Uruq Bani Ma'arid , see first photo, thanks to Jarek) - and this year this 'courtesy' was even extended to the host that couldn't be one in 2022, Kazan .

42 new sites were selected – a mixed bunch. Find below some aspects that warrant a closer look.

1. Missing WHS

From our Missing List , we saw the inscription of Jericho and Klondike , and of Westhoek - which became part of the 139 locations of the Funerary and memory sites of the First World War .

2. Almost the first one 'Built in the 21st century'

Rwanda's Kigali Genocide Memorial was built in 1999. This makes it the youngest WHS to date, we're on the tipping point to including sites from the 21st century. The three following 'youngest' WHS now are Sydney Opera …

Mana Pools National Park was the main goal of my 2023 Zimbabwe trip – rarely visited by our community, lacking a full review, but ranked among the best parks in Africa by safari nuts due to its large gatherings of wildlife in a ‘wild’ setting. Lately, Mana Pools is considered to have become ‘busy’ due to the ever-increasing number of camps and the accompanying vehicular traffic and what the IUCN Outlook 2020 describes as "crowding of iconic elephants and predator kills". The connoisseurs now prefer the even wilder Gonarezhou in the east of the country. As far as I have seen, the park shows no indication whatsoever of being a World Heritage Site (no plaque, no logos).

I spent 6 nights camping in the park as part of a 13-day safari tour: 3 nights at Chitake Springs and 3 nights at Mana Riverside. I will remember it mostly for its scenic landscapes. The rough area around Chitake Springs is covered with picturesque baobabs and even has its own ‘Baobab Avenue’. It also best shows the eroded 'sand-bank' environment – created by a large seasonal river - that is part of the site’s OUV. There are …

Yellowstone is a WHS that I haven’t visited yet – it requires a proper amount of time and I am even considering ‘saving’ it for my milestone 1,000th visited WHS. It has been inscribed on all 4 natural criteria, meets the 10 WHS Visitor Commandments and currently ranks #4 out of 1157 with an average visitor rating of 4.85 out of 5. Last year a new book was publicized about its history: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America by Megan Kate Nelson.

What is it about

The book tells the story of how Yellowstone National Park came into being. Based on extensive archive research, it focuses on the period 1870-1872 and foremostly on the scientific expedition led by Ferdinand Hayden in 1871. His group was mostly fascinated by the geothermal nature of Yellowstone, with features that they did not fully understand how they originated. Their excited reports to the media fitted well within patriotic views too, as they underlined what was perceived as the singularity of the land the Americans inhabited.

The expansion of the railway system further west was a main driver for exploration, and many saw the …

Whatever the circumstances in Zimbabwe are, Great Zimbabwe National Monument is the country's main cultural attraction. The site saw 120,000 visitors in 1996, then the number dropped to 15,000 in 2008 and then it went back up again to 78,000 in 2018. I visited on a Saturday and encountered mostly Zimbabwean day trippers and even a busload of school children. The site is so big though that I mostly found myself wandering around the ruins alone. The refreshment area at the center was closed and a small troop of monkeys had taken over the picnic benches, probably wondering why no food-spilling people stopped there anymore.

I started my visit at the museum, having learned from Khami Ruins that although it may not look much, there still may be something worthwhile in it. This is true here: in the first room, explanation panels highlight the chronological development of the Zimbabwe tradition, their architecture and religion. The second room, at the back, houses 7 of the 8 original Zimbabwe Birds - divine soapstone sculptures that were found within the ruins and stood on top of monoliths. They are magnificent. The bird figures were cut off their pedestals and …

Travel Planning is a subject close to my heart and I’ve written about WH Trip planning before .

That was already 7 years ago and I must say that my approach has changed a bit, mostly because my personal situation has changed. I now am in the position to dedicate all my time to travel. I constantly have at least three larger trips in full preparation for the coming half year and am looking already ahead to the year after. But planning multiple longer trips in parallel has proven to be a skill in itself. Here is how I have managed over the past 2 years.

Setting a yearly budget and managing it

As money is the main limiting factor, I start by setting a travel budget for the whole year. This is fixed, unless I get some bonuses like unexpected tax returns during the year.

Based on that budget, I try to plan ca. 6 longer and 2 or 3 shorter trips. The longer ones are mainly clusters with more than 3 WHS, taken from my ‘ Triplist towards 1100 WHS before 2030 ’. I bring them all together with rough cost estimates:

…

In the recent wrap-up of his visit to Georgia and Upper Svaneti , Nan reminded us of the extremely limited core zone of this WHS. Upper Svaneti is a historic region centered around the town of Mestia, but this site covers only one village some 2 hours drive away! It triggered me to look for other WHS that are ‘Smaller than they seem’, with the purpose of bringing them together in a new connection and alerting future visitors so they can prevent the dreaded 'near miss'.

Possible connected sites

In addition to Upper Svaneti, I found the following:

Vegaøyan – The Vega Archipelago (Norway) does not cover the full archipelago, especially large parts of the main Vega island (where you will arrive) are excluded. Also, the title has a ‘natural’ feel, while it is a cultural landscape focusing on the local lifestyle of fishing and eider down harvesting.

Lower Valley of the Omo (Ethiopia) is a case study in itself as 43 years after its inscription its official boundaries are still unconfirmed. The ‘Omo Valley’ tours that are a staple of Ethiopian tourism and bring you to the tribes probably do …

A few weeks ago the full set of documents for the 2023 WHC session became available online. Among them is ' Revision of the Operational Guidelines ’, which examines whether the measures taken have led to a geographically more balanced list (spoiler: they didn’t). As discussed on the Forum , a root cause analysis is lacking from this document. We can point at the ‘piggybacking’ on serial transnational sites, the increasing cost of nominations, and probably a couple of other hypotheses. But my eye also fell on the high number of nominations that were deemed ‘Incomplete’ during the preparation of this year’s double session: 7 in 2022 and 10 in 2023. Can these incomplete dossiers hold a clue regarding the causes of the imbalance?

The History of Incomplete dossiers

What’s the general trend in incomplete dossiers?

The graphic below shows the number of incomplete dossiers recorded per year. The orange ones later became WHS, and the blue ones stayed on the Tentative Lists. I’d say that the number stayed relatively stable overall, with a few peaks at the start.

How does the number of incomplete dossiers vary by region?

I am generally happy to spend the summer months of July and August at home, but I always plan a mini-break in Europe halfway through just to not get bored. So in April I took my chances and booked a 4D/3N trip for early August to Latvia and Denmark to check out two upcoming nominations: Kuldiga and Trelleborg. It turned out that I had a lucky hand in choosing these two, as they both got positive recommendations from ICOMOS and will almost surely be inscribed in September 2023. As Kuldiga is the lesser-known of the two, I will focus my report on that Latvian town.

Although I’d wanted to go there from Riga by public transport, there are no direct buses and connections seem infrequent. So I rented a car from the airport and drove there easily in 1.5 hours. Kuldiga lies deep in the countryside, and it certainly looks like you’re arriving at something important. One enters town via the large new stone bridge (a one-way street), and there is even a parking lot for tour buses. The streets were also filled with parked cars – this is really a popular destination for Latvian daytrippers.

I generally enjoy ‘Wonders of the World’-kind of coffee table books, especially when a lot of thought has gone into the selection of the cultural or natural sights presented. I recently bought a somewhat older one, published in 2017: Natural Wonders of the World . It was published by DK, also known for its glossy travel guides. Does it bring any value to WH enthusiasts?

What is it about

The hardcover edition of over 400 pages is too heavy to hold in your hands, so it is a ‘table book’ indeed. Ordered by continent, it shows and explains subjects such as geology, rivers and lakes, deserts, etc. The book starts with how the Earth was formed, and then for each continent, it details how that continent was shaped. There are deep dives into specific topics such as plate tectonics and karst landscapes as well. It ends with an extensive glossary of all the terms that will help you to understand an IUCN evaluation better.

The book is meant for browsing instead of reading from A-Z: it reminded me of what an Encylopedia looked like before the emergence of Wikipedia.

‘Missing’ WHS material

…