One of the aspects that make Counting WHS more difficult than Counting Countries or Counting Regions is that the List is infinite and it will require you to backtrack to specific areas, whereas for the other lists, one visit suffices. Surely, many WH Travellers will need to retrace their steps for Umm Al-Jimal : only 28 of us made it to this recent WHS, while nearby Jerash has been seen by 121 and Quseir Amra by 174. On my 2012 Jordan trip, I covered those two as well and even Azrak Castle TWHS, but I did not make it to Umm Al-Jimal: it seemed too nondescript for a detour, as are Pella and Gadara , which also lie in the same region north of Amman.

Despite its relative obscurity, Umm Al-Jimāl has been praised as “an archaeologist’s dream”. It’s not hard to take pictures here that would make it look like a Roman-Byzantine site, and the even earlier Nabataeans passed here too, but 90% of the site consists of vernacular architecture based on locally available and finely cut basalt stones. The site museum glorifies the “indigenous people [ probably Arab nomads who settled down ].. who continued …

Sometimes, while working on the website or prepping for an upcoming trip, I stumble upon an old Connection that hasn’t seen a lot of updates. Often, it’s so old that I hardly remember what it is about. Only Jurre may still know about its existence! While reading up on Göbekli Tepe , I wondered why we don’t have a connection for (bas-)reliefs since they are fairly common occurrences all across the world. It turned out that we are hiding them in a connection called " Rock Cut Art ".

Definition issues

I found an e-mail from Solivagant dating back to 2009, where he highlighted that a clear differentiation was needed between the various cultural connections related to the use of “Rock”. We have:

• Monumental Monoliths : heavy pieces of rock, cut and detached from the living rock (including the obelisks of Aksum and Stonehenge ).
• Cave Temples/Churches : built into natural caves with possible outside features and carving (such as those in Cappadocia ).
• Rock Cut Architecture : structures carved in situ into “living rock”, not primarily based on natural caves ( Petra , Ajanta , Ellora , etc).
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I have been thinking lately about “Windows of Opportunity”, and whether they truly exist in a travel planning context. Windows of Opportunity are circumstances that suddenly present themselves and that may not happen again – so you need to react promptly to take advantage. This could be because an armed conflict ends or travel bans get lifted. For example: after the recent regime change in Syria, the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria have become accessible for the first time in about 14 years (trips to Serjella and Al-Bara are advertised). And a first international group visited North Korea in February 2025 after 5 years of Covid-closure.

I wonder however what these opportunities across a lifetime of WH Travel really mean. Should you go to Syria now in 2025 and put yourself on the waitlist for North Korea?

Windows of countries and sites

With the recent reopening of North Korea, every country is theoretically visitable again (though getting a tourist visa to Sudan or Niger may be tough). (Un)fortunately, as WH Travellers we need to get much deeper into a country than a border or a capital, so certainly not every WHS is visitable at the …

The 2025 WHC will probably bring us the inscription of number 31 on our Missing List: Carnac . Two other 2025 nominations, Neuschwanstein Castle and the Minoan Palaces, are even higher on that list, so it might become a good year. Carnac is on the Tentative List as ‘Megalithic Sites of Carnac’, but the nomination has been renamed ‘Carnac and Shores of the Morbihan megaliths’. It has been put forward as a Cultural landscape and comprises four components with thousands of standing stones and tombs. The TWHS has a 100% recommendation after 24 votes from our community.

Carnac is a representative of the European megalithic tradition since the Neolithic, which also includes the Megalithic Temples of Malta and multiple sites in the UK and Ireland, such as Stonehenge and Brú na Bóinne . While at other subjects we’ve now ended up at very niche Tier 3 sites, Carnac undoubtedly is at Tier 1 among its peers. The nominated area covers 19,598 ha, about 4x as large as Stonehenge/Avebury and 6x the sites in Malta. Its oldest parts significantly predate Stonehenge and overlap with the earliest timelines of Newgrange and Ħaġar Qim.

What took France so long …

This is the first review of a visit to the Djerba WHS after its inscription. The site has received horrible reviews and an exceptionally low rating from our community, but I thought maybe it would all make more sense with the help of an OUV-frame. It’s about a dispersed but homogenous settlement and land-use pattern, characterized for example (but not limited to) self-sufficient rural communities with their own water supply, palm groves and tiny mosques. That’s why it includes 22 rather featureless and abandoned neighbourhood mosques.

For my visit, I tried to make a representative pick from the locations without having to rent a car. In the morning, I visited 4 components in and north of the capital city Houmt Souk. The medina of Houmt Souk is not a rural settlement, of course, but the trade town where everything ended up. Included is just a small zone (the old funduqs, the covered market, the Mosque of the Turks and St. Joseph Church; but not Borj El Ghazi Mustapha). It feels like a smaller version of the Medina of Tunis, and even in the early morning, it is all geared up to receive the French and German beach …

While adding the plaque photos, I came across this pretty marker sent to me by Sebasfhb and found at the Wieliczka Salt Mine . It shows the first 12 sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, so it is essentially a plaque for all WHS of 1978 . It prompted me to look closely at how these 12 came to be the first.

The nomination process in 1978

The World Heritage Committee (WHC) responsible for confirming the first list gathered in Washington DC, from 5-8 September 1978. The text of the World Heritage Convention itself was drafted in 1972. In 1977 there had already been a first WHC meeting, where they decided on subjects like amendments to the draft text of the WH convention and a printed form to be filled in for a nomination, and where the wish was expressed that “the World Heritage List should be exclusive and ..drawn up with extreme care”.

As was common in the first years, a Bureau Meeting preceded the WHC in June 1978. Here, a select group of 6 Members (Chair, Rapporteur, Vice-Chairs - together known as the "Bureau") reviewed the nominations received and the evaluations IUCN, …

Last October, we started the inventory of WHS Plaques, with many community members posting their info at the dedicated forum topic since. I'd like to give a big thanks to all who have contributed. Especially to Clyde , who is the go-to guy to answer the question “Where’s the plaque?” since he has been fascinated with them for a long time. About 70% of the WHS now have at least one plaque registered.

Findings from the first stage

A total of 1179 plaque locations have been put forward, spanning 851 sites. Over 1100 pictures of plaques were shared.

• We found out that some plaques that had been photographed previously are no longer present on site. So there is a Plaque History as well. I’ve added those older ones to the repository as well (with a remark) since they may have had interesting designs.
• When No Plaque has been found on a site, this is also logged.
• Some sites have dozens of small plaques, one for each monument. Here, I tried to follow the logic of making separate entries only when they are at official separate components.
• As always, when you’re taking …

When I wrote about the TWHS Masters three weeks ago, I was surprised to find that people who visited all or almost all countries were missing out on also having visited (T)WHS in those countries. A drop of 30-40 is not uncommon. I decided to have a closer look at which countries are the hardest to visit a WHS in, and why the WHS in those countries may have stayed unvisited.

None of the WHS visited

At the moment, 168 states have at least one WHS. The best scorer (Shihe Huang) among the community members has visited WHS in 154 countries. So he misses 14, and the others at the top of the rankings even lack up to 35 countries.

So which countries do they miss? Looking at the Top 16 members displayed in the rankings, together they have 94 different countries where they are missing a visit. The 10 Most Difficult are:

A few other countries just outside the Top 10 are notable as well, as they have more than 3 WHS to choose from but are rarely covered: Burkina Faso (4), Cote d’Ivoire (5), DRC (5), and Tajikistan (4). You can find …

Cidade Velha is an easy, short excursion from Santiago’s (and Cabo Verde’s) capital Praia. A bay, a few cobbled streets, remains of Portuguese fortifications and churches – you know what it looks like even before you have seen it. I tried a different approach for my visit and went for a guided hike through the Ribeira Grande Valley. This way I also ticked one of the other activity boxes I had for Cabo Verde: “Do a hike in the countryside” (as the archipelago is known as a hiker's paradise).

When you look at the official map of Cidade Velha WHS, you’ll notice that not only the seaside town is included but also a much larger area inland. The boundaries of the core zone follow the canyon that was carved out by the river Ribeira Grande. This area is linked to a specific part of the site’s OUV: the “acclimatisation and dissemination of numerous plant species between the temperate and tropical zones”. The Portuguese colonists experimented with various crops here in the 16th and 17th centuries, starting unsuccessfully with cereals but later finding out that plants from Africa’s mainland (coconut) and Latin America (maize) did well.

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My recent trip to all 10 WHS of Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia was a mix of 3 styles: a Group Tour for Mauritania, independent travel in North Senegal and a Private Tour for Gambia and East Senegal. I do not regret these choices. The downsides of organized travel were mitigated by not having to endure them for a long time. Let’s look at what Tours to WHS can bring you.

Pros and cons of tours

1. Convenience versus lack of first-hand experience

Although I always first try to cover places individually, sometimes the infrastructure just isn’t there (or very complicated/expensive) to do it on your own. Desert trips like Mauritania and Chad require 4WD driving skills and travelling in a convoy. Manu NP requires a boat and camping in the jungle. Without a tour, you would not even get there.

The downside is that when I don’t organize it all myself, I feel less prepared and the memories don’t stay with me as long.

2. Local perspective versus cost of adding a guide

A good guide can be your key to unlocking the country, adding local perspective without …