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During the past week Azerbaijan has replaced its TWHS “Hyrcanian State Reserve”, dating from 1998, with “Hirkan Forests”. This revision follows the change in the national park structure that happened in 2004 and a further enlargement of the protected area in 2008. Though it may seem like a minor administrative adjustment, a change like this usually indicates an upcoming official nomination of the site. In this case it would be an extension to the Iranian Hyrcanian Forests WHS from 2019. The new Azeri TWHS is known for its ancient, deciduous mixed broad-leaved forests - in normal language that means: trees that shed their flat, usually veined, leaves. It comprises 3 locations.

A similar, but smaller site was nominated for inclusion in the WH List already in 2006 as “Hirkan Forests of Azerbaijan”. It was Deferred at the time with the option to renominate it as part of a transnational serial property with other Hirkanian forest areas in Iran.

When I re-read that IUCN evaluation now, I see no strong argument to either include or reject it. The forests are said to be of equal importance to sites known for vascular plant diversity already on the List, such as the Great Smoky Mountains. The Azeri site’s size is small, but there might be OUV if linked to Hirkanian forest sites in Iran. (I do not really understand this point as all components of a serial site should show OUV individually, so this alone should not have been a reason …

We organized a day trip from Siem Reap with a private car and a driver, a three hour drive. The temple site sits on the top of a 700 m high “mountain”. The ticket booth is down on the plain and you need to buy special transport to get up the steep hill. It’s $5 pp on a motorbike or $25 for a truck with 6 seats. Entrance is $10pp.

On site there are several bunkers from the dispute between Cambodia and Thailand. Prior to the inscription you could walk up the ancient holy path from the Thai side, but now that entrance is closed.

The site is a fairly large complex, stretching out on the ancient path. There are two very nice Naga snakes at the start of the temple area, then a few pavilions with some nice reliefs before entering the main temple.

The view is great from the cliff. We both liked the place. It was nice and quiet, few tourists, and some great stonework in a beautiful setting.

On the way back we with visited both Koh Ker (T) and Beng Mealea(T). You will need to start early in the morning to do a proper visit to all of the sites

### Randi & Svein Elias

October 2020 - despite the pandemic and german travel warnings for parts of Portugal, we decided to stick with our original plans from beginning of the year and flew to Lisbon, rented a camper and made a wonderful roadtrip with our 22 months old daughter.

Beginning south of Lisbon at the North west tip of the Costa Vicentina, we continued our trip to the spanish border. Shortly before arriving Evora we visited Beja (I guess it will be part of the Camino Portugues nomination) with its medival torre and churches. Driving further north we could shortly after marvel at the silhoutte of Evora. 

From the big parking lot south of the city wall, one can enter the core zone immediately. The whole town was a bit abandoned and the few open souvenir shops seemed to have no customers at all on that day. We strolled around the town a bit, had some Pasteis next to the roman ruins, marveled at the university, the palaces, took some fotos at the Praca de Giraldo and continued our trip towards east. Evora is a historic town, has a nicely maintained historic city centre, but it did not tear me from the stool.

Looking for an easy way to travel from Cusco to Puno, I settled on a tourist bus that would make several stops along the way. Itineraries for all companies seem to be quite similar (Andahuaylillas, Inka ruin Raqchi, lunch, mountain pass La Raya). Only stop that I was initially interested in was Raqchi as it's part of the Qhapaq Nan sites.

When we rode into Andahuaylillas (the town) we found a rather sleepy rural town, scenically located below a mountain range. The church is in the city center and from the outside there is little to set itself apart from other churches. However, when we entered the church I was awed. All parts of the interior is richly decorated. The style is named Barroco Andino. It is not a poor reproduction of European ideals, but a unique blend of European ideas with Latin American culture, symbols and heritage. Calling it "Sistine Chapel of the Andes", though, is overstating the case. It's a lovely rural church for and by the local population.

OUV

I am always happy, if my "should be inscribed" post in the forum later materializes with the state party making a proposal. For Peru, I posted in 2017 that Barroco Andino had clear potential:

I have only seen the splendid church of Andahuaylillas and supposedly there are more sites like this. Stellar and unique with the local influences. Again, I would heavily favor inscription of these churches. The artistic level is …

With the countless Miao villages around the country I must have visited a dozen already. Miao minority has become one of the most popular tourist ones due to their festive dances and especially the dress and silver jewelry headdresses. The nomination only specifies a certain portion of villages in the southeast of Guizhou, where according to the 2000 census 48% of the Miao clans live. Currently the site doesn't specify which exact village (it says 21 villages) but rather a range of where these villages are. I went to two of these for sure: Datang and the biggest one - Xijiang aka Xijiang Qianhu. I will focus on the latter because I feel that is more likely to be inscribed even with the very commercial nature that has befallen it.

Xijiang is an hour away from Kaili, the biggest town in the area. You can either take the normal coach from the city center or directly from the high-speed train station. I would actually recommend the latter even though I didn't personally do it. I stayed in town and the traffic there is pretty tight. It will take the bus 20-25 minutes just to reach the city's edge and if you go directly from the railway station you are saving all that hassle. You should stay in the village over night rather than Kaili. Once you reach the tourist center you have to get a ticket (100 yuan), then choose to get an e-bus ticket (it's 20 yuan), or …

Site visited in September, 2020. I am very much in favour of inscription of this area. Landscape is pretty spectacular, while monastic monuments are well maintained and preserved even while they mostly do not serve its initial function.

Travelled from Las Medulas towards Ribeira Sacra I passed through amazing Mirador de Pontenovo (mouth of river Navea into Bibei, close to Central Hidraulica de Pontenovo). Although it is outside the designated area it is the perfect example of what you can expect in Ribeira Sacra – deep canyons, rocky mountains and rivers. From there I passed through mountainous area towards Parada de Sil.

I stayed overnight in Casa Pepe – upper level budget accommodation, there are also a few other hotels as well as restaurants in the village together with some shops and tourist information (main municipality building, maps and hints of the area available). It may be a good starting point to begin exploration of eastern part of Ribeira Sacra.

From Parada de Sil there is a direct asphalted road to Balcon de Madrid (not far from the village). One of the best picturesque places in the whole Ribeira Sacra. Local legend says that its name was taken from women that were watching for their husbands who were travelling to Madrid. Obviously it is just a legend as the main view from Balcon de Madrid is to the north (while Madrid lies to the south) and is located too far to be visible. While in the area …

Having arrived in the middle of the night at Moscow-Domodedowo airport from Germany, I spent the better part of my first day in Russia making my way to Yaroslavl. On arrival, I had stayed near the airport, figuring I could save myself some stress and the cab fare and also get myself some much needed rest. Truth be told, it didn't work out that way, as the hotel wasn't close enough to the airport, so I had to take a cab nonetheless. And the next day I still had to make my way to Moscow and lost another 1-2h just to get to Moscow.

When I had finally made my way to Paveletskaya metro station in Moscow, I took the metro in the wrong direction. To explain, all signs where in Cyrillic letters and I mistook Киевский вокзал (Kiev Station = west) for Курская (Kurskaya = east); both start with a K. Eventually, I managed to get to the train station to Yaroslavl and board the train. My original plan of doing some sightseeing in Moscow that day had fallen flat as I had spent all day in commute. So you may understand, it was with great relief and exhaustiation that I finally dropped my bag off in the hotel in Yaroslavl.

At that point, it felt like one of those travel days lost in transit. But then on my evening walk around town I saw the Volga... I was standing on the hills overlooking the river. The …

This may be China's top tentative site, culturally. The main reason it's taking a backseat it probably because there are still lots of discoveries to be made. There are three sites to this place: Jinsha Museum in the west part of Chengdu, Joint Tombs of Boat-shaped Coffins are in Chengdu as far as I understand but I did not try to visit them, Sanxingdui in the nearby city of Guanghan. I have only been to the museums because they seem worth checking out.

Jinsha, easily reached by metro, nowadays only opens at 9am (I say this because a lot of info online is wrong because I think they used to open at 8am) and costs a whopping 100 entry (again, wrong/outdated info online everything). It's still worth the large ticket price considering you get to see the legendary Golden Sun Bird which now stands for the city icon. Hard to imagine it was only discovered in 2001 and has already made such an impact on the town. The Jinsha museum is right on top of the site and thus you would feel you have really "been" to the place. More no that later. The second highlight is the Golden Mask. Trivia: the metro station symbol uses the golden sun bird.

Whereas I found the museum in town nice, I was more taken by the one in Guanghan, easily reached by high-speed train (~20min) plus a taxi (~15min) or bus (1h!). The museum is in a large park costing …

Spanning a 1.000 years the most famous pan hellenistic games were held at Olympia starting around 700 BCE and ending in 393 CE. Considering that Greece became part of the Roman Empire around 150 BCE, the games were not just a Greek tradition, but also a Roman one. The Roman Emperor Nero participated himself and you can find the ruins of his house at the site. It was also a Roman Emperor who ended the tradition, Theodosius I, the last Emperor of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire and of Theodosian Wall fame. The end came due to the ascendance of Christianity and the banning of pagan traditions.

What you find nowadays is a large archeological site with a focus on sports. There is the stadium and entering it via the gate has a special feel to it. There are plenty of houses for the athletes. But to me the true highlight is not sports related, it's the ruins of the Zeus Temple of Olympia. The Zeus statue that is housed was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Supposedly, it was lost in Constantinople in a fire in 475 CE. The workshop of the famous sculptor Phidias who created the Zeus status is nearby.

Similar games were held in other Greek cities, most notably Delphi. Interestingly, Olympia also had an oracle, so there is an overlap between these two sites. Still, both sites feel different and are great additions to the list.

Last but …

In 1806 when the Lewis and Clark expedition returned through what is now the state of Montana, one of its members broke off early to continue exploring, and encountered what he described as a hellscape, a place of "fire and brimstone" that is now known as Yellowstone National Park. His descriptions inspired more expeditions to survey this land of geothermal activity, where mud boiled, hot water erupted in geysers, and travertine terraces grew on hillsides. In turn, explorers and early environmentalists campaigned to the US government to purchase the land around Yellowstone, creating a national park for the "benefit and enjoyment of the people". In 1872, Yellowstone became the first national park in the United States, and arguably, the world. Almost a century later, it became one of two US sites in the inaugural World Heritage Site cohort in 1978.

I visited Yellowstone for the first time five years ago, in late summer 2015. Summer is very busy at Yellowstone, and lodging can sometimes be challenging, so a friend of mine and I ended up camping in two of the several campgrounds available throughout the park and eating at the many restaurants found in hotels and villages throughout the park. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota had just finished the week before, and summer vacations were finishing up, so there were a lot of fellow visitors. Still, the park was large enough that it didn't feel too crowded once getting away from premier tourist sites such as Old …

The name "Dong Villages" is misleading because there are probably thousands of these spread around the country. There is a detailed list of nominated villages shared across Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunan. You will see the different styles of buildings, especially the roofs, from the railway station already. Stunning, especially at night. I also respect how the architecture of the Dong people has been retained and spread unto the land to let you think you have entered their territory - not something simply to "please" the minority which would be easy to think looking at the government's checkered past and present. Nevertheless, one of the criterion is the traditional architecture and I have to stay it is marvelous to not only see the old drum towers and roofed bridges but building tourism offices and hotels in the same style. I think this alone merits an inscription.

So my first exposure was the village of Zhaoxing which is not be inscribed. It has surely become too commercial and overgrown with modern influence to be considered. It is still nice and has enough to make you think you get the picture (5 drum towers, many bridges etc) but the best part is you can make it a base to explore the nearby 2 villages that are nominated: Tang'an and Xiage. Tang'an has a regular shuttle bus for just 20 yuan, where as for Xiage, the less impressive one, you have to hire a driver or walk (I don't recommend it if you …

In the twilight days before Covid exploded, I visited Xi'an. It was the third week of January 2020, the week before Chinese New Year, that I came. The city was decorated with red lanterns. The trains were packed with travellers heading to their families. And a fairground was set up on top of the Xi'an city walls around the Southern gate. Imagining a full blown carousel on a city wall should give you an idea of how massive these walls are (12m wide). My picture should provide some insight, too.

The fortification was started in the 15th century with the final form being achieved in the late 18th century. The form is rectangular with a total length of 14km. The style clearly is Chinese and the most notable structures are the main gatehouses. Personally, I liked the Western one best as it had no traffic, unlike the Southern and Northern ones.

At 12m height, you also get great views of the city center and the suburbs with their many concrete buildings. The ever present fog (smog) actually set the mood quite nicely.

OUV

You can find me in the forum arguing that Xi'an as a city is a top missing site and I stand by it. The city is great and should be inscribed as a single site instead of piece-meal with a City Wall here, a Silk Road site there and who knows what in the future.

Now, looking at the City Wall itself, …

Disclaimer: this is a review for a now 20 year old tentative listing which will by all accounts be withdrawn or rewritten and probably best forgotten. The current document does not really explain well what to look out for at these scenic spots and sound a bit like a tourism ad ("best scenes in the country" say what?!). The beaches aren't bad but the water isn't as clean as you might expect if you have been to Thailand or the Caribbean, or maybe it is exactly what you expect from a beach in China?! I visited Haitan Wan (bay) which is the most touristy of them all. Touristy also means the food is generally overpriced although accommodation isn't too bad. With the geology aspect totally irrelevant and the beaches ordinary it's more of a tourist trap than any potential WHS. One would think the place is wonderful but compared to Sanya it lacks calm of the South China Sea. The island points right towards Taiwan (closest point to the Taiwan mainland from the PRC) and the Taiwan strait is windy as heck. If you are into kitesurfing you may want to come here though. That's all I will write for now until this listing is renewed with better info of what unique criteria Haitan is expected to be inscribed for. 

Jusy FYI there is an airport bus from Changle (Fuzhou) airport directly to the island, several buses from Fuzhou and even a bus from Fuqing train station which will …

I hold a long fascination for China, which hit an early peak when I choose to study Sinology at University when I was 18. The course didn’t really work out for me and I quit after 2 years – I did not have the discipline at the time to put in the hours to master the language. But I have always stayed interested, do speak ‘basic Chinese’ and have now visited China 5 times. In 2007 I embarked on a 3 month solo trip across China, one of my best journeys ever. On that trip I managed to visit 20 new WHS; later WHC meetings added another 2 retroactively. 

I started that journey from the Sichuan capital of Chengdu with a day trip to Sanxingdui. This Bronze Age archaeological site is now part of the Archaeological Sites of the Ancient Shu State TWHS, but wasn’t when I visited. It had rained overnight and I changed my program for the day from the WHS of Dujiangyan to the more indoor experience of the archaeological museum in Sanxingdui. There was a daily direct bus from Chengdu’s southern bus station to Sanxingdui. Unfortunately, despite a last minute taxi effort through the dense traffic, I missed that one. On to the northeast bus station then, from where buses left every few minutes to the town of Guanghan. A local bus would take me the final few kilometers to Sanxingdui. When I wanted to disembark after 45 minutes at the bus station in Guanghan, …

When you visit Epidauros or Olympia you can transfer the site quickly to a modern counterpart. Epidauros, the spa town. Olympia, the sports place. With Delphi this is way harder as it's not really clear how/if the Oracle really worked.

One explanation is that the Oracle would give ambivalent advice that would hold true no matter what. The most famous example is the advice "If Croesus goes to war he will destroy a great empire." True either way as you can see. Another explanation is that Delphi was like an intelligence hub. The whole Greek world would pass through. And to obtain advice, you needed to share information first. So the priests at Delphi would have access to a wide range of very sensitive information. Thinking about it, they maybe were what we nowadays call mentalists, and all they did was to use cold and hot reading techniques. Unfortunately, no historic description that would shed some light on the process remains.

The site roughly consists of three parts. The area above the road, the area below the road and the museum. All are stunning and convey how central a role Delphi played in the Greek world for centuries. The museum holds many great pieces with the horse carriage rider the greatest piece.

To me Delphi is on par with Olympia, another great site, just a tiny bit below the Akropolis as it's lacking the iconic image.

Getting There

Athens has several bus stations and I …

You are probably thinking the same as me: another fossil site? Have you been to any WHS for fossils and you will know they are mighty boring. We have one in Canada which isn't half bad due to the tour guide explaining things well and you even get to hold a fossil as cool as you might think that is, and the Swiss - Italian Monte San Giorgio is pretty scenery to make it worth the trip, but similar to the Chinese site in Yunnan - Chengjiang Fossil Site - which gets one of the LOWEST ratings on this site, there is really not much worth seeing here. Disclaimer: The TWHS consists of 4 sites and I visited the Guanling Biota far south of Guiyang but I am very sure the others won't be much different. To get to Guanling you can take a bus or high-speed train but then you will need a taxi to drive you up the mountain and back as the museum is a bit far away from civilization. When I called the museum beforehand they claimed to have a bus running from the coach station in Guanling but there was nothing remotely like that once I arrived and the buses to the countryside are very infrequent. They did have an e-bus parked outside the entrance so perhaps it does shuttle from somewhere but alas I don't recommend it.

The museum seems big, my picture only shows the main exhibition hall, but most of the …

Part of the appeal of the Nasca Lines, is the fact that they seem so out of place. Clearly, the people who created them had knowledge and skill. But why would they settle in the middle of the desert in the first place? From the bus window all I saw was sand. The Nasca Aqueducts help to explain a little how they survived here: They set up an elaborate water management system enabling to conduct agriculture.

As usual with tentative sites it's pretty hard to say what the final scope of the inscription will be. I would assume the Cantalloc Aqueducts in town are part of the site, but who knows?

OUV

As stated year's back in my original review, I feel this should be part of the Nasca WHS itself. As an extension to illuminate the Nasca culture more I would be fully in favour of including some settlements as well as water management sites. As a separate site, though, this would feel redundant.

Getting There

It's a simple walk from the town center to the Cantalloc Aqueduct. However, Lonely Planet claimed the neighbourhood was dangerous. Not sure about that. From the aqueduct you can also reach the lines at Telar and the old settlement at Los Paredones.

Nasca itself is connected by bus to both Lima and Arequipa (more details in my Nasca review). Next major town is Ica.

While You Are There

Obviously, if have made it to …

Come to Guilin and spend an extra day to visit Lingqu rather than enjoy the beautiful scenery to the south! (or, don't!) They say "The North has the Great Wall, the South has Lingqu". Comparing the two sites alone is a laughable. Basically Lingqu is special because it was used for military purposes in order to attack the Baiyue tribes in the south. Whatever the success rate it must have beaten moving the troops about on foot. I don't find it that special and the historical use may be correct but I find it very intangible. There are no remains of troop barracks or anything like that as far I see.

The other purpose of the canal was the obvious: connecting the mighty Xiang and Li rivers for water diversion and transportation (if you look at the map there is no water body that comes anywhere near so the canal makes total sense). Whereas those are great and they claim to be the first "first canal in the world to connect two river valleys", thus enabling boat transportation from Hong Kong all the way to Beijing, this may not be enough to deem it WHS. What you get to see now is a boring stretch of canal with mainly houses built around it. The traditional "washing clothes and vegetables" in the canal is also intangible and I find it rather disgusting.

There could be more than one place to visit but I found Xin'an to be ideal because …

I am an entomologist, both amateurly and professionally. This means that my job is to study insects, but that I also collect insects as an amateur out of passion. In fact, the monarch is the first butterfly I got when I learned how to pin and preserve specimens. In addition, we have planted milkweed in front of the house (the monarch's host plant) and we follow the development of caterpillars and chrysalis every summer. It was therefore natural to visit them on their wintering grounds with the rest of the North American population. This WHS was definitely made for me and it was the main reason why I chose Mexico as my destination in 2019. My expectations were very high and, fortunately, I was not disappointed.

I landed in Mexico City from Montréal and took the metro to the Observatorio bus station, from where buses to Angangueo frequently leave. This small town on the border of the states of Mexico and Michoacán is the perfect base camp to visit the sanctuaries. I spent three nights there in mid-February, the first night to arrive and drop off my suitcases and the next two nights to visit two sanctuaries. It is also a convenient town to thereafter reach Morelia via Zitácuaro. Monarchs were already flying in the village when I arrived. On my first day, I met a very friendly guide and driver with whom I planned my two excursions. The price may have been too high, but I was not …

The Byzantine monasteries of Daphni, Hosious Louas and Nea Moni were built in the 11th century, in what amounted to the peak of Roman power and also the beginning of the ultimate demise. Around the turn of the millennia, the Romans had pushed the Arabs out of the Eastern Anatolian border regions and recaptured parts of Armenia and Syria, protecting their Anatolian heartlands against the incessant Arab raids of previous centuries. On the Balkans, Emperor Basil II, aptly nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer, had subdued the Bulgarian Empire in a decades spanning war. When he died in 1025 CE, the Empire was as powerful and large as it hadn't been since Justinian.

A mere 50 years after the death of Basil II, though, in 1071 CE the historic battle of Manzikert resulted in the Romans losing control of most of of their Anatolian heartlands to the Turks. The Romans would only continue to control the coastal towns. Nowadays, most historians consider Manzikert the beginning of the end of the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Daphni was built after Manzikert in 1080. I wonder how the Romans of the period perceived this epic event marking a turning point in history. Probably, it didn't occur to them that they had just witnessed the beginning of the end. If you are interested, I can recommend the Byzantine History Podcast.

In how far it impacted their architecture is hard to tell. It would be interesting to compare all three inscribed sites and see the …