Michael Novins

I visited Iraqi Kurdistan in October 2018. The ancient Citadel of Erbil has possibly been occupied for 7,000 years, since the fifth millennium BCE, making Erbil one of the oldest …

I have visited the Giza Plateau a few times, most recently in October 2018. I entered the Giza Plateau just as it was opening and headed to the Great Sphinx, …

In September 2018, I took an early morning train for the three-hour trip from Saint Petersburg to Veliky Novgorod, founded in 859 and traditionally considered the cradle of Russian statehood. …

I visited Crimea in September 2018, when I flew from Murmansk to Simferopol, the de facto capital of Crimea, and caught a bus at the airport to Sevastopol, the largest …

In August 2018, I visited Belém, the capital of the Brazilian state of Pará. I stayed in the city center, a short walk to the Ver-o-peso market, where enormous freshwater …

In August 2018, I visited Iguaçu Falls on the border between Brazil and Argentina, the largest cataract system in the world. Iguaçu National Park in Brazil was added to the …

In August 2018, I made a day trip by bus from Belo Horizonte to Ouro Preto, a colonial-era town constructed in Brazil’s gold mining area in the 18th century while …

In August 2018, I spent a couple of days in São Luís, the capital of the Brazilian state of Maranhão. São Luis was settled by France in the early 17th …

In August 2018, I visited Brasília. The city is particularly inhospitable to pedestrians, so I engaged a local guide with a car, Juan Luis Hermida, one of the very …

In July 2018, I spent a few days at the Jungle Inn in Bukit Lawang, the gateway to Gunung Leuser National Park, probably the best place to see Sumatran orangutans, …

On my most recent trip in June 2018, I rented a car and drove to Al Zubarah in northwestern Qatar to visit its fort and archaeological zone, the Persian Gulf …

In June 2018, I rented a car and drove from Porto to the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus, a pilgrimage site in northern Portugal that’s known for its monumental zigzag stairway. …

In June 2008, I made my second visit to Oporto. J.K. Rowling taught English in Oporto for two years in the early 1990s, when she wrote the first few chapters …

Having spent five days in The Gambia in early June 2018, it’s easy to appreciate why the smallest nation on the African continent has been nicknamed The Smiling Coast of …

I spent several days in Dakar in June 2018. On my first morning, I caught an early ferry to Île de Gorée, which, at least according to UNESCO, was the …

In December 2017, I made a day trip from Karachi to Makli necropolis, about 60 miles to its east, which might be the world’s largest funerary site -- the ten …

In December 2017, I set out on the Grand Trunk Road from Lahore to Islamabad, where, after around four hours, we reached the much-improved turn off to the sixteenth-century Rohtas …

I left Islamabad early on a December 2017 morning on the Grand Trunk Road to Taxila, an hour to the northwest, to visit the WHS's ruined second-century Buddhist monastery. From …

In November 2017, I spent a few days in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso's second largest city, but much more appealing for a tourist than Ouagadougou, the enchantingly named capital. The most …

Until the 1960s, before persistent drought and population growth, the West African giraffe ranged widely throughout West Africa. The last self-sustaining herd can be found an hour east of Niamey …