The Okavango Delta was the 1000st WHS on the List, it “… has long been considered one of the biggest gaps on the World Heritage list” and was deliberately planned to gain this milestone marker at the 2014 WHC. Almost the same amount of coordination was done by me in my 2019 travel planning to let this magnificent and truly unique site be my 700th visited WHS. I stayed there for 4 nights: 2 in a lodge near Chief’s Island and 2 nights camping in Moremi Game Reserve.

My first acquaintance however with the Delta was on the way back per helicopter from the Tsodilo hills. We flew south-eastward along the water channels. This central area of the Okavango turned out to be pretty dry as well. What you see from the air is a patchwork of coloured ‘islands’ among dried up land and trails made by animals. Animal sightings included pools full of hippo’s, slowly moving elephant trains and crocodiles sunbathing on beaches.

On the next day I was transported by one of these lovely bush planes to Oddballs’ Enclave on Chief’s Island. Oddball’s Enclave is a more recent (and even more expensive) offspring …

Tsodilo currently ranks 953rd out of 1092 on our list of most visited WHS . That low position has at least 2 reasons: it isn’t a well-known site among the general travel audience and it lies somewhat out of the way from Botswana’s main tourist zone between Maun and Kasane. Those difficult logistics almost beat me as well: the only logical route is when you’re coming from Namibia (the Caprivi Strip) with a rental car like Svein & Randi did last month - then you’ll pass it. However, I had no car and was staying in Maun. The company that I booked my safari with proposed to fly me north and put me in a “fishing lodge” for 2 nights – I could take a day tour from there. But I found a tantalizing alternative: a half-day tour by helicopter from Maun to Tsodilo!!

So on a Saturday morning I reported at Maun airport at 6.30 am for my flight up there. They fly with small helicopters, there’s only room for the pilot and 3 guests. It takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to the Tsodilo Hills. The pilot had to yell …

I love travelling, I like reading about travel, I have been actively contributing to travel websites in both the Dutch and English language for over 20 years. But I sincerely hate 95% of all travelblogs! And I do so even more when their owners try to influence this website.

The birth of a new genre among websites could have been so beneficial to travellers, to learn from each other’s experiences on the road. And you need no technical knowledge to create a perfectly acceptable blog. But this trend has quickly turned into something dominated by vanity, commercialism and copycat behaviour.

In explaining what it is that exactly annoys me so much, I will try to debunk 3 rationalizations often given by those travel bloggers for their behaviour:

“Even though I may receive compensation for posts or advertisements, I will always give my honest opinions”

At the moment you start writing about something that was offered to you for free by a commercial company, you’re done. Sometimes it’s just obnoxious – in the case of a simple link …

Sarnath is an important Buddhist pilgrimage site just outside Varanasi, 1 of the 4 most spiritually rewarding sites pointed out by Gautama Buddha himself. Or as I have seen it described less poetically: “the location where Buddha gave his first sermons in a deer park”. There are some indications that Sarnath might be India’s nomination for 2021. Maybe surprising, as it has been lingering on the Tentative List since 1998 without noticeable action. The recent reports in the news state that “a 600 page nomination dossier is being prepared” – which may even take a few years beyond 2021!

I visited Sarnath on a North India trip in 1993. I did consider Varanasi the highlight of that trip, but I have no notes about nearby Sarnath left. The photo album contains 4 photos labelled ‘Sarnath’, which is quite a lot from pre-digital times:

• The first one is of a Golden Temple. Online research shows this is the Kashi Vishwanath temple – not in Sarnath at all but a Hindu temple in Varanasi!
• On to the second one: displaying an archaeological site, with a stupa in the far distance. It resembles Ayutthaya. These …

We all know about the bumpy road the Naumburg Cathedral had to take to get placed on the List. I decided not to look back on that episode, not to even prepare my visit and just take it at face value. I visited it on ‘Holy Saturday’, the day before Easter. I drove all the way there, 620km from my home, just for my 698th tick!

Naumburg an der Saale lies in the former GDR . This may be the main reason why this cathedral wasn’t proposed earlier – the GDR did have a Tentative List , but came late to the scene in nominating anything. It wasn’t until after the reunification in 1990 that Potsdam as the first former East German site was placed on the List. Naumburg itself still isn’t really on the beaten tourist track, although on the sunny Saturday when I was there both the town and the cathedral were well-visited by Germans.

The cathedral lies a bit outside of the historic town center. With its 4 towers and irregular shape it is already an attractive sight. Admission costs 6.50 EUR plus another 2 EUR to be allowed to take photos. …

With the visitor numbers of sites all over the world rising and the recent selfie-craze leading to irresponsible acts, the number of fatal accidents at WHS increases as well. Just in the last few weeks “ A man fell off the edge of the Grand Canyon, the third visitor death in eight days ” and another “ Tourist died of hypothermia after falling into Lake McDonald, Glacier Park ”.

We have a connection Fatal accidents or 'disasters' about these unfortunate events. It includes sites:

• where there have been "disasters" causing significant numbers of human deaths from a single incident, or
• where repeated "tourism related" deaths have totalled a significant number

Loosely ordered by overall number of fatalities, here are the main reasons why people die at WHS:

Mining Disasters (1350+)

Perhaps surprisingly, mining is the biggest killer of them all. We already had 2 serious mining disasters in this connection: at Le Bois du Cazier ( Mining Sites of Wallonia ) the last major mining disaster in European history cost 262 lives. 50 years earlier, the Courrières disaster ( Nord-Pas de Calais ) resulted in almost 1,100 deaths.

Potosí ’s …

The Olive Grove Landscapes of Andalusia is a serious candidate for WH nomination by Spain in the coming years. I have it written down for 2022 , but it might have to battle with Talayotic Culture of Minorca first (things go much more slowly now only 1 nomination per country per year is allowed). It was added to the Tentative List only in 2017 and comprises a well-defined set of 15 olive grove locations of the continuing cultural landscape type. Andalusia is the world's leading olive tree grower, producing 30% of the global production of olive oil. Its 'olive history' stretches back "thousands of years": the Phoenicians introduced the cultivated olive tree, while locals already exploited the wild olive trees.

The landscape is impossible to miss when driving from Malaga to Cordoba on the A-45 past Antequera: one sees nothing but olive groves for about 100km on both sides of the road. The tentative site description calls it a "sea of olive trees" - maybe inspiration for a future Epic Subtitle ?

After my visit to nearby Medina Azahara , I went to take a closer look at one of the proposed Olive Grove Landscapes: …

Spain’s Medina Azahara won its WH status as recently as 2018 (after having been on the Tentative List for 3 years). It wasn’t a well-known destination before that, as can be read from the previous reviewers on this website which all visited a few years earlier at most. The site has been excavated from 1910 on and has been a Spanish national monument since 1923, but the real boost in visitor numbers came after the opening of the award-winning on-site museum in 2009. When I visited, on a Saturday in late March 2019, there were literally hundreds of visitors around and the overflow parking lot was in use. A significant part of the daytrippers consisted of Spanish muslims.

Somehow not everything adds up here regarding visitor management: strapped for cash some restorations like the one of the Rich Hall have slowed down, but there still is no entrance fee charged. Other prominent Andalusian landmarks such as the Alhambra and Cordoba’s mosque-cathedral cost 14 and 10 EUR respectively. So why does Medina Azahara not profit financially from the high visitor numbers? The only paid aspect is the bus ride to the archaeological site, but this money seems …

Frontiers of the Roman Empire - Lower German Limes , together with the Dutch Limes TWHS , is scheduled to be nominated in 2021. Together they form the 3rd of 4 clusters of separate stretches of the Roman frontiers up for inclusion, after the already inscribed UK/German one plus the ‘western Danube Limes’ (2019) and before the ‘eastern Danube Limes’ (2022). The Lower German Limes is concentrated along the river Rhine, which acted as a natural border of the Roman province of Germania Inferior.

I had ‘been’ to its Dutch counterpart already in 2011 , which was a very underwhelming experience. Both Lower German parts together are said to comprise 55 locations. Among the locations in Germany, it’s hard to say which stand out so much that they warrant a visit. I choose Xanten, which is home to 4 of the locations ánd has a well-developed archaeological park plus Roman museum within its borders.

Xanten is a mid-sized town just across the Dutch/German border near Nijmegen. In Roman times it was the site of the Roman city of Colonia Ulpia Traiana . The proposed locations include a road, a defensive structure, the late …

The investment in my ‘All Turkey Tour’ of 1991 keeps on giving gifts. With a friend I had joined a 3 week group tour by bus all across Turkey. During that trip I visited 8 sites that are nowadays WHS. Also we touched upon numerous interesting TWHS. One lingering on Turkey’s Tentative List is Harran and Sanliurfa . These two ancient cities (located 40km apart) were among the highlights of the 1991 tour. This was mostly because of their very remote and oriental setting: I had not been outside of Europe at the time and Harran lies only some 25km north of the Syrian border.

Sanliurfa

Sanliurfa is a city of 2 million inhabitants. It is marketed as a Holy City and pilgrimage town. Old Testament prophets such as Jethro, Job, Elijah and Abraham are believed to have lived in this city. In ancient times it was known as Edessa.

Central to the city is The Pool of Sacred Fish, believed in Islamic tradition to have been the place where Abraham was thrown into the fire by Nimrod. This is also the only place that I remember of my visit – it obviously is …