Over the past 6 weeks, I have spent 3 to 4 hours a day improving much of the outdated content on this website. Country by country, I touched upon every single WHS site page; all 1154 of them. I replaced old photos, verified links, spell-checked texts, and re-evaluated reviews. I finished last week with Spain and Italy, which took a full day each but brought back good memories of so many short trips. Find below what I learned from it, plus some hints on how you can help to improve these pages even more.

1. Site Intro

Every WHS site page starts with a short introduction to the WHS and one identifying photo. I tackled these photos first, some were over 15 years old. They were tiny, scanned from an analog photo, or unsharp in general. In the process, I replaced 633 old photos with bigger/better/newer/sharper ones. But there are still 85 photos left that are older than 10 years. Can you help refresh them? I've provided a list and the requirements at the Forum.

The intro texts I haven’t yet touched content-wise (that may be a project for next year). But …

Among the farewell gifts from my last (and final?) job was a book called “ God. An anatomy ”. It describes the depiction of body parts of God in early sculptures and paintings as found in the region where Christianity developed. It is chock-full of descriptions of places where such examples can be seen. Of course, I immediately considered whether a new connection could be derived from it. However, depictions of (parts of) God are rare at WHS, or are so small or precious that they have been moved to museums.

But we already have a similar connection, about a subject which the book also touches slightly: Petrosomatoglyphs . These are (supposed) impressions of part of a human or animal body incised in rock. I updated the connection details, deleted a couple, and found some more; the sources used can be found for reference in the weblinks on the connection page.

Divine Footprints

These prints are often used in religious ceremonies, a practice that is present in all main religions.

Christianity

• In the Church of San Sebastiano Fuori le Mura in Rome , the alleged footprints of Jesus can …

Although I have visited almost all West European WHS, two easy sites across the Channel had become virtually inaccessible during the Covid years. One of those is the English Lake District , an annoying miss as the site is visited by millions of tourists yearly and is also comfortably in the top 20% of most visited by our community. The best time to visit the Lake District is when it doesn’t rain and when there are no school holidays. I was rather lucky with 2 sunny weekdays in mid-April, though I did catch the final days of the Easter holidays.

As the size of the Lake District and the lack of clear focus of the WHS is a bit intimidating, I decided to allocate 2 days to it. Fortunately, near-local Solivagant suggested two driving routes. On the first day, I drove South to West, from Ambleside to Sellafield. I actually started a bit north of Ambleside, at Rydal Water . Here you can do the Lake District in a nutshell: the easy 1.5-hour hike around the lake will deliver lake views, dry stone walls, some sheep, and bare hilltops. Rydal Hall, a large country house, features …

While preparing for my upcoming trip to eastern Canada, I discovered that I “have to” visit 3 WHS that derive their OUV from fossils. Western Canada even has 2 more of those, resulting in a particular focus on Canada’s World Heritage List (5 out of 20). I find fossils intriguing: it’s exciting to look for them, and there’s the satisfaction of actually finding a good one (preferrably on your own). However, the visitor experience of these sites is often disappointing. As Zoë wrote in her review of the particularly unloveable Chengjiang Fossil Site : “Fossil sites generally mean museum. I see how there is a difference between the fossils and the Earth has a long history, but they are still boring to me. I also don't find them worthy of their inclusion for specific reasons or superlatives. They should be studied, protected, but they are definitely not a tourist attraction.”

In total, there are now 27 Fossil WHS on the list. Below I will have a closer look at them, and how our reviewers have evaluated their visits.

Types of fossil sites

A fossil is “the shape of a bone, a shell, or …

The implicit aim of the members of this community is to visit as many WHS as possible. Or as many as they’ve set themselves as a goal. But there are also smaller ‘achievements’ to be gained. A satisfying and popular subgoal for example is having a country ‘complete’, especially one of the biggies. And there are other cross-sections to make that show the specific Travel Focus of our WH Travellers. For example: who has bagged the most WHS in Africa? Or who has visited the most WHS on Uninhabited islands?

Countries completed

From the 3 countries that have the most WHS within their borders , China is completed by 5, Italy by 11 and Germany by 20 community members.

Looking at the countries that cover a large geographical area: 3 members have the USA complete ( Don Parrish , Zoë Sheng , Jeanne OGrady ). No one has Canada complete. No one has Russia ( Ivan & Martina have 28/30, missing Uvs Nuur and Wrangel Island). Australia is best covered by Shandos Cleaver (18/20), missing Macquarie and Heard & McDonald Islands.

Ever-popular Turkey (8) seems to be relatively easy to complete, and Mexico (2) …

India: UNESCO World Heritage Sites was published in August 2021. This book, covering all Indian WHS up to and including 2019, is a must for every India enthusiast and WH book collector. One can only hope that it inspires other larger countries with a wide geographical spread of WHS to compile similar books; I am especially thinking of Canada or Argentina.

How it looks

When the delivery guy brought the book to my door, I was surprised that it wasn’t especially large or heavy. It probably would have fitted into the mailbox. The hardcover edition has 240 pages and measures 25 by 30 cm. It has been written by Indian scholars and conservationists with insider information (such as a former WHC member) and is endorsed by UNESCO (its logo features on the cover).

The 38 WHS covered are split between cultural, natural, and mixed sites. Each section has an explanatory essay about the subject, eg. “From rock shelter to stupa and temple”. The cultural sites have multiple of those. Each WHS is portrayed in 4 dedicated pages, including glossy photos but also reproductions of 18th-century paintings and photos from around 1900. There is …

When I was in Zacatecas a few weeks ago, I used its Teleferico to cross the city and had a great overview of its urban plan within the narrow valley. As over 35 WHS have one or more cable car systems in their core zones, they warrant a closer look; so I did some additional research and updated the existing connection details with a year of construction, length in meters & minutes, etc. To determine what’s in and what’s out, I used the wiki definition of cable car: “a vehicle suspended in the air from a cable”. There apparently are 3 main types: Aerial tramways, Chairlifts, and Gondola lifts. The gondolas have a rotating bull wheel at the terminal that moves the cable forward, the aerial tramways just go back and forth.

History

The earliest incarnation of a cable car (drawn by horses) is said to be from the 17th century, but in the late 19th century the idea really took off with the use in mining areas. They carried ore from a mine located high on the mountain to an ore mill located at a lower elevation. In the early 20th century, they started …

For my recent 10-week trip to Mexico and Central America, I had decided to travel ultra-light, replacing my regular 30-liter backpack with a 20 liter one. It is a Deuter Speedlite 20L Backpack that has handy elastic additional pockets. Moving to a warm climate helped in this decision, although Mexico-City isn’t that warm in January (needed the sweater and the raincoat a few times). I had already tried this configuration out on shorter trips in Europe a few times. This travel style sparked a discussion about stinky clothes in our WhatsApp group, so I don't want to keep it away from a bigger audience!

Some of the packing rules I applied

• Do not bring anything “Just in case”. If you lose something, replace it locally. This strategy may not work in Chad or the DRC, but will in most places and certainly in Mexico and Central America.
• Only bring clothes that you really like wearing - because you’ll have to wear them over and over again! And verify whether they will dry quickly enough.
• If there is something that you only need to use once during the trip, then rent it or buy one locally …

This site hasn’t been reviewed for 13 years, so I think Quiriguá deserves to be put into the spotlights. With this visit, I also completed the list of 9 WHS connected to Mayan culture . And every time you think: “I’ve seen so many Maya sites already, what can this one possibly add?” But they all have different qualities. Quiriguá has the best-preserved sculptures.

The Quiriguá archaeological park has suffered severe hurricane damage from Eta and Iota in 2020 and has only reopened in June 2021. They had to remove 12 swimming pools full of mud and water, which left certain areas flooded up to 1.8m .

During my visit in February 2022, nothing of that damage was visible anymore and the site looked very well cared for. At the entrance, you get a site-specific ticket and a booklet in English (both rare in Mexico or Central America). Signage is in both Spanish and English. There is a (new?) boardwalk that takes you along the monuments, so you don’t have to walk on the grass. It had been raining for 2 hours before my visit, and the ground had turned soggy again.

The site …

I visited the lovely site of Joya de Ceren in February 2022, not long after its full reopening. El Salvador's one and only WHS had been closed for a full makeover and subsequent Covid measures for most of the time since late 2019. The site from a visitor’s perspective is now in a very good state. Striking is the French support that has gone into the restoration ( they apparently paid 70% of the bill of 1.3 million US dollars). The museum has been modernized, good information panels have been placed (in Spanish, English, and of course in French), the site has been made accessible for the blind and the protective shelters have been made higher/larger so that you have a better view of the ruins.

I covered the 40 kilometers between San Salvador and Joya de Ceren in a genuine chicken bus: bus 108 that leaves from Terminal de Occidente. The ride cost only 0.50 US dollars and took 1.5 hours. The bus stops in front of the entrance of the archaeological site, just after crossing a large orange bridge. On the way back I had a “better” bus, with actual seats instead of benches …