All our reviews

The Fujian Tulou were the last WHS of my 2019 China trip and it undoubtedly was the best sight of them all. They aren’t highly visited by our community members (ranked 620th out of 1092), but nowadays these distinct communal housing structures are easy to reach. From Xiamen, the nearest large city, it takes about 3 hours. On my way down I took a fast train to Longyan and a shared taxi from there. For the return trip, I caught one of the 3 direct buses per day from Hongkeng to Xiamen.

I can really recommend staying overnight in one of the Tulou. I did so at the Changdi Inn in Fuyu Tulou, which lies in the ‘folk’ village of Hongkeng. The Fuyu Tulou is not round like most but has a stepped construction (it apparently is “the most famous five-phoenix-style earthen building”). They have a number of rooms here that they rent out to guests; there were 7 other foreign tourists staying overnight during the same weekend as I was. The extended family of the owner lives there also. Together they inhabit a vertical cross-section of the Fuyu Tulou, with other families living behind the same front door in other vertical sections.

When you are staying in a tulou you get a good impression of what life in this kind of communal house entails. The doors are always open: which means that everyone walks in all day. It could be the neighbours, a greengrocer, or (in this …

I visited Bergamo in November of 2018 and Zadar and Kotor in July of 2019, each time focusing on the respective city as a whole. I frequently profess my admiration for the feats of human ingenuity, but walls around a city are hard to get really excited about. In the back of my head I can acknowledge their scale and impact in the context of the times that they were built in. Visually, it’s just really thick and old walls, with an occasional portal livening up the scene.

So, the time I spent on admiring or exploring walls was not too extensive. In Bergamo, the erstwhile main city gate of Porta di San Giacomo is a pretty good location for a quick survey of fortifications. The gate itself is quite impressive. If you are so inclined, you can walk the length of the walls and stop by a couple of other entry points to the historic part of the city, which I estimate can take around two hours. Additional fortified layers can be seen in some interior parts of the Upper City as well.

In Zadar, similarly, the Land Gate and the Sea Gate are the best points to admire the fortifications. The walls today do not surround the entire town core - if you walk along the marina on Obala kralja Tomislava, you will see their largest intact portion.

Because the core of Kotor is relatively smaller, it might be the best choice for a walk …

What can you say about the Galápagos Islands that hasn’t been said a thousand times before? They are beautiful. They are important and historic. And, as the world's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, they should be at the top of nearly all travelers bucket list - they were for us.

We'd spent over 10 years hoping to visit and a some incredibly cheap last minute airfare deals made it possible. We spent a week on the Ecuador mainland visiting Quito and the volcanoes, but the islands were our real destination. We were incredible lucky to find a good deal on a one-week cruise of the northwest of the Galapagos (itinerary B), including Baltra, Santa Cruz, Genovesa, Santiago, Isabela and Fernandina.

Actually, despite its fame, these islands are infrequently visited due the remoteness of the islands and limited permits from the government that are available (and the prohibitive cost, something that was a problem for us for a long time). But for this who do visit here, they will be immensely rewarded. 

It is in these remote islands that animal evolution took a turn to...the weird. You’ve got so many unusual Galápagos Islands animals: flightless cormorant birds, warm weather penguins, lizards that swim, and many other unusual animals. These unusual animals inspired naturalist Charles Darwin’s study and eventual theory of evolution by natural selection. This important scientific discovery fundamentally changed the way we view our natural world.

We found the best way to explore this part …

One of the charms (or challenges) of visiting tentative sites is that the usual tourist infrastructure is missing. No visitor center, no heritage trails, little to no signposting, no official website ... And worse, as it’s still a nomination neither the boundaries nor locations are finalized. So I was left wondering what the proposed site "Prosecco Hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene" entailed and what to visit. I found the nomination to be rather unhelpful in that respect.

One site that is mentioned and that can be visited easily is the Convitto Scuola Enologica in Conegliano. It is based in a 19th-century manor on the outskirts of town and supports to this day the local vineyards in growing the Glera grape.

From there you can travel onward into the main hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene. I googled a bit and found a trail in Premaor, more or less in the middle of the region. So I hopped on a bus and went on a hike in the hills. The trail was poorly signposted (see above) so I missed out on a Chateau along the way and had to walk back along the main road (not so nice). After 2h I decided to call it a day and headed back to Conegliano.

If the Piedmont Vineyards were the threshold, the Prosecco Hills should have been inscribed the first time around. The viticulture university offers actually some uniqueness. But I hope to have made abundantly clear in both …

I was not planning to reach the Etna summit during my trip to Sicily in May 2014. However, it was impossible not to spot the mount Etna (always covered by cloud on the top) when travelling from Val di Notto towards Catania, and then from Nebrodi and Madonie mountains. We went via Bronte, which is famous for pistachio - it is grown almost everywhere around Bronte, and I was pretty surprised how pistachio tree really looks...

From Bronte we did short trip to Rifugio Piano Dei Grilli, which is already in the buffer zone of WHS; (photo: View from Rifugio towards Etna). However, the road from Bronte crossed the lava flow that already belonged to the core zone. From the Rifugio, there are quite a lot of marked trails going inside the national park. I felt like in gardes of Eden there, because everything was in bloom in May.

I enjoyed the trip a lot even without climbing the steep slopes of the Etna stratovolcano. 

I was a bit skeptical for this site before I visited since I already have been to Haeinsa and Bulguksa temples, so I was curious on the outstanding universal value on “Sansa”, which derived from Chinese word “Shan-si” or the mountain temple. From all inscribed components, I only visited two temples, Beopjusa and Seonamsa. These two temples were located in protected forests, the pathways from car parking areas were scenic with beautiful steams, light forests, pavilions, very nice surrounding but these kind of environment and setting are similar to Haeinsa, so while I was really enjoyed, I could not find uniqueness of the mountain temples that similar to many mountain or forest Buddhist temples in other part of Asia or other religious monasteries around the world.

One thing that I noted from Haeinsa was that apart from the famous wooden blocks’ storages, the rest of building complex of Haeinsa was nothing special, most were newly rebuilt, so I never gave credit to Haeinsa for its temple but only for the storages. My idea on authenticity of Bulguksa was even negative since all the temple structure, except the two stone pagodas, were built on archaeologists’ imagination. However, when I saw Beopjusa and Seonamsa, the aged wooden structures in the complex were so stunning, especially the pagoda of Beopjusa, something made you immediately impressed for its old age which really contrast to other many temples in South Korea. I walked around the complex tried to understand …

I am probably going to make “enemies” with this review but it has been in my head ever since visiting back in 2015. This is one of the worst tourist traps in the world! The reason why one has to be careful about saying that is because in the Philippines the world heritage underground river is almost holy. It is the #1 tourist destination for Filipinos, it is printed proudly on their currency, it was upvoted into the 7Wonder poll and it is a “must see” item on every visitor's list. So why am I so cynical to call it one of the worst places to visit?

There is nothing special to see. Nothing. You get on a boat ride after a 2h bumpy ride from Puerto Princesa and then you need to line up for a ferry ride (which if not in a preorganized group can be tricky as they are pooling them together) and the again queue up for a boat ride into the cave with a boring audio guide. At the same time the “no talking” rule is disobeyed by both tourists and the boat captain so the audio guide is useless. The ride is a short 30min, 30min for a whole day of driving and lining up. What you see on the way are the usual “cauliflower” formations, mushrooms, stalagmites of course shapes that only really look like what the guide said if you use a lot a lot a lot of imagination, and that's …

The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a curious specimen on the World Heritage list. It is not altogether unremarkable, but also not in any sense surpassing to warrant special recognition. And although its name is fully spelled out in the WH property title, the inscription is entirely devoted to the famous painting that adorns one of the walls of the adjoining convent’s refectory. I first stopped by the church more than five years ago but that visit did not include viewing of Leonardo’s The Last Supper. That was too significant an omission to be able to count the site as visited. In November of 2018 I made an extra effort to see the painting.

It is not a trivial exercise. Access to the painting is allowed at 15-minute intervals for groups of 30 people. Demand is always significant, so it is practically impossible to just show up and get in. Prior reservations are essential. I made ours full 3 month in advance.

The access procedure is a bit grotesquely over-secure. Large bags need to be placed in lockers at the ticket office and you have to go through a metal detector at the visitor entrance, which nowadays is par for the course at many important museums. But then you and your group of visitors are ushered through a series of automatic glass doors, which only open once the previous ones have closed behind you and the way forward is deemed clear by an invisible dispatcher. The …

Mandu is one of the few sites lingering on the tentative list since 1998. I couldn't tell you if there is an internal problem or if this was attempted and got early bad feedback for any reason, but since it “survived” for so long I figured I should add it to my trip sandwiched between Bhopal's WHS and Western India, i.e. Ahmedabad.

Visiting all three parts actually costs more than any WHS in India which seem on a standard price (currently 600), so I find it a bit ridiculous that they can't offer a group ticket for this price but instead 300 x 3. Saying this, if one is not interested to spend 900 they should just focus on the group of monuments. This is the best and biggest part.

To get here you need transportation from Indore, 90 minutes away. More than half is a good highway, the last part can be frustrating and inside the Mandu fort area the road is often single lane. Many of the sites in the fort are off limit mainly due to lack of infrastructure to support visiting them although I saw locals climbing around on them.

First stop was the Jami Masjid and marbel Hoshang Shah’s Tomb. The mosque is not very special, the tomb is pretty neat. You can actually see the tomb from the side of the road so you could also skip this but I think it was okay for an introduction. There were no other …

Kulangsu: a historic international settlement comprises of an island off the coast of Xiamen that was inhabited by foreign traders, missionaries and diplomats in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Later in the 20th century, it also became home to Chinese who returned from abroad. Together they gave a modern impulse to China through the input of Western culture and technology. The circa 1000 preserved historic buildings show a mix of European, Chinese and South Asian architectural styles.

The island lies really just right off the coast, you can almost swim towards it. The ferry for the local residents also takes only 5 minutes. Tourists have to leave from a location further away though, with a boat that takes longer (20 minutes). There were at least 200 people on 'my' boat, all Chinese. Kulangsu (Gulangyu in modern Chinese) is a very popular destination for Chinese tour groups: there are no less than 13 million(!!) visitors per year. And that while there even is a daily limit on the number of visitors. On the weekends and around Chinese holidays you have to book the boat in advance, otherwise, you run the chance that the tickets for the day in question (with a maximum of 50,000!) have run out.

After arriving at the dock at 8.30 am on a weekday, I could leave with the 9.10 am ferry. The first boat of the day is at 7.10 am, so there were not many others on the island yet. It is …

When I reviewed Manas NP for India I wasn't even considering that Bhutan may have listed the Royal part in their northern section as a tentative inclusion to the world heritage program. *checks the map* Indeed, and unsure if they plan of an extension. The park stretches through the border and on the map one could not tell you they are different. Is this a Sundarbans phenomenon where both countries just decided to inscribe their parts? Probably not. Manas NP was a great park before the trouble with the Bodo tribe started. Bhutan wasn't even in the UNESCO program at the time. Nowadays the Indian side is very poor and has hardly recovered. It feels empty and encroachment, poaching are still a problem despite guards, fences and strict rules on visiting.

Visiting as an Indian nationals allows you to do a full day tour to the Bhutan side. As an “other” national one doesn't get the option. However, the guide will still take you to the border and beyond before heading back, maybe 30 minutes tops. You have to ask and perhaps “negotiate”.

Just as landing in Paro gives you that different kind of feeling of fresh air and enlightenment, the forest beyond the basic “border control” just feels thicker, denser, mysterious and I swear I saw more animals in 30min up here than the rest of the tour. What gives? Okay so it's not really fair to say this is because one is in Bhutan. The more …

In Nov 2015 I reviewed our visit to Knossos (below). In Dec 2018 we “found ourselves” in Crete yet again and visited a further 3 of the 5 “Minoan Palatial Centres” (as well as re-visiting Knossos and the fabulous Heraklion Archaeological Museum) - perhaps a bit of “overkill” on the Minoan front, but providing an opportunity to compare and contrast the 4 locations and, potentially, to reassess the chances of any nomination and its likely success.

It is worth mentioning perhaps that there are a large number of archaeological sites on Crete which date back to the civilisation now called “Minoan”. They are signposted everywhere when one drives around! For instance we also visited the site of a Minoan “town” now called Gournia. This was one of the 5 sites included in the original T List entry of 1985 (see my earlier review below from Nov 2015 for a history of changes to this T List entry which resulted first in Knossos standing alone and then a revertion to 5 sites but with Gournia replace by Kydonia). It was excavated around 1903 and contains what the archaeologists titled a “Palace complex”. It was important enough to have been called the “trading centre of the island in Minoan times” (Wiki) - but it is significantly smaller than the 3 largest and most famous “palace” sites on Crete. These are all identifiable, according to archaeologists, as being relatable to the later Homeric myth regarding …

What makes a truly great site? To me a truly great site is one where you could remove the best parts of the site and still have a great site. E.g. Rome is great even if you were to ignore the Colosseum and the Pantheon. You still have the Forum Romanum, the Roman Walls, the Circus Maximus, ... The same applies to Angkor. Angkor is not just about Angkor Wat or Bayon. Its a huge area with a host of great temples, some smaller, some bigger, but all unique and incredible.

In total I spend 3 nights in Siem Reap and two days visiting the sites of nearby Angkor. I did not have the time to venture further outside to Banteay Srei as recommended by others. My personal highlights were Angkor Wat, South Gate of Angkor Thom plus bridge, Bayon (amazing stonework), Preah Khan and Ta Prohm (the Tomb Raider temple). Most scenic is Neak Pean, tugged away on a small island in a huge artificial lake.

Admittedly, I got into a bit of fatigue each day. Literally, as the temperature and humidity in combination made visiting Angkor quite tiring. And more generally as there is just so much to take in. Personally, I would recommend having a few days and starting with the lesser sites first before making your way to the big ones. The lesser sites also tend to be less frequented by tour busses and less crowded as a consequence.

Getting There & Around

Of the 4 nominations I visited the "easy one", the Qutb Shahi tombs in Hyderabad, and with Hyderabad being on the tentative list at the same time there are more things to see than the mosques all over town, but the Golconda fort being nearby makes this an easy morning tour of the western part of the city. The other 3 nominations are in smaller towns but not unreachable, but unfortunately I found nothing else to combine it with over there so one location will do. Perhaps on a future trip when it is inscribed.

You actually don't need to get a ticket to see at least one of the tombs, although the guard points you to the ticket counter at the front gate. The first tomb of Abdullah Qutb Shah is just before the ticket check. Naturally you want to see more than that because all tombs are nice, and for a low cost of 50, yes, 50(!) Rupees this is a ridiculously low fee. Sure, you pay another 50 for the mobile camera which today is hard not to have and the nice man didn't even charge me but I said I would take pictures so he took the 50 back. Most WHS sites are 600 now, and even non-WHS sites charge maybe 200-300 for foreigners. I am sure this will not stay low for long.

Still before the ticket check is a museum dedicated to a little history about the Deccan dynasty, restoration project as …

I only like religious buildings for the architecture and Al Bidya is cute. It's a bit far off from Dubai but I drove a large circle around the country and the extra hours plus beach time was all right. Shoes off, head scarf on, here we go. Most of the tourists are Indian do they prefer selfies out front but people do come in to pray - I waited for them to finish (both the prayers and the “selfie-ers”). First thing you will notice the 4 domes on the roof. If that's not unique enough then the pillar holding this all together, that's some fancy design. The decorations on the walls gives the interior enough light. It's really tiny so don't expect much time inside, maybe 5 minutes tops to see it from all angles. I didn't find the roof decorations special and the minbar and mihrab are obviously still in use and worn out.

You can then ascend to a guard tower out back, with a good view of the coast, again mainly for selfies. You can also see the roof from up here much better.

It's a shame the origins of the mosque are so unclear. I also think the guard tower has been redone and lacks authenticity. It still looks imposing as a background to the mosque. Entrance was free which I usually expect for a house of worship but isn't much of a case these days, and parking outside is enough for the amount …

COMPONENTS of SLOVAKIA, GERMANY and ITALY

I really love this WHS and spent quite a lot of days&nights in beech forests mostly of Slovakia components. Paradoxically, I am not surprised by low ratings of other travellers, since it is not easy to recognize qualities of this WHS. Though this huge transnational property looks a bit odd and quality of individual comonents is hardly comparable, if it results in better protection of beech forest it makes me very happy. In my case it was love at first sight, and as true love it has its ups and downs. To be clear: the entire ecosystem of primeval beech forests is simply amazing and fascinating, sadly, this is not definitely true for several state parties and even their NGOs (ego of NGO) that should take care about WHS...

Visited sites:

(1) Slovakia - they have incredibly valuable naturale heritage in these WHS components, but even after 10 years after inscriptions the state party of Slovakia has not been able to decide what belongs to the component and what not, because there are huge discrepancies between reality and official proposal. The worst thing is that the strict protection has been declared in the nomination text, but reality is completely different - only certain parts of WHS are sufficiently protected by law. Unfortunately, almost nobody form Goverment, Municipalities, and local people carred about this problem in the past. Even NGOs attitude and action were problematic in my opinion. In the past and …

The Hani Rice Terraces are a cultural landscape in the mountains of southern Yunnan. I had been to this region before, almost 25(!) years to date on a 4-week tour of this province. From the photo album that I have left of that trip, I know that we were near Daluo. This lies close to the core zone but none of my remaining photos show the spectacular rice terraces that this WHS is known for. So in early 2019, I went back for a proper visit. It takes a full day of travel to get there by public transport from the provincial capital of Kunming. But it was well worth the effort.

The weather had been a constant worry on this trip so far. Fortunately, on the evening that I arrived in the Yuanyang area – where the terraces are located – it was sunny. The minibus driver who picked me and some other tourists up from the bus station was kind enough to improvise a sunset photo stop at one of the terraces. Glistering water-filled terraces, that’s why we came here - wow!

I was staying overnight in the core zone in the village of Duoyishu. Actually, the whole area is dotted with traditional villages: 82 of them. It was much more built-up than I expected. There’s a lot of construction going on as well. It seemed to me that this was mostly geared toward getting the residents better housing though. There are a few hotels but …

One of the most beautiful beaches of Europe can be found in Sardinia - I guess I am not only person agreenig with this statement. I spent there my September holidays 2017 with suspicion I traveled to another planet... We explored almost all East Costline of Sardegna from Capo Testa to Capo Carbonara.

I travelled to la Maddalena archipelago from Palau by ferry. Town of la Maddalena is quite ordinary, but it is not deffinitely true for uninhabited parts of the islands. Then we went to Caprera island, it is connected with la Maddalena with bridge - Ponte Moneta. From the bridge, we could see a couple of dolphins. Even though they appeared in rather fair distance from me, it was emotional experience. There are several marked track on Caprera island, so we would explore the vegetation (quite typical fro Meditterain) and walked to several beaches (photo) - ask locals which Spiaggia is the best in the area... For person prefering history to nature, there is also Tomba di Garibaldi on Caprera island.

As the most interesting and significant features are hidden under see level, it is hard for me to fully recognize the qualities of the Archipelago. Definitly, the granite costline is unique. Unbelievable granite rock can be found in Capo Testa, some 15-20km from Palau (not included to TWHS). Therefore, I support the inscription.

The Chengjiang Fossil Site comprises preserved fossils of sea creatures that lived in a shallow sea some 530 million years ago. Although it was a shoo-in at the 2012 WHC and IUCN regarded it “an emblematic site for the record of life in the Cambrian period”, it has the questionable honour to be among the 10 lowest-rated WHS on this website. Unfortunately, I could not raise that score. I visited it right after Zuojiang Huashan, which meant two disappointing WHS in a row with a lot of hard travelling in between. It makes one sometimes wonder what the point is of ticking off this kind of sites.

I visited Chengjiang from Kunming. Although the distance is only about 60km, from door to door it took me 3 hours by metro, bus and taxi. And the same amount of time back of course, which turns even the quickest visit into almost a full-day trip. The local taxi driver at Chengjiang bus station knew exactly where to go when I uttered ‘Maotianshan’. He offered to wait as well, obviously knowing that people do not spend lots of time there. The return trip cost me 180 yuan.

It’s a pleasant drive out into the countryside and into the hills. After some 20 minutes, you arrive at the gate of the Geopark. Here the driver had to enter his car details into a list (and probably his personal info as well, as IDs are checked in China all day anywhere). Somewhat further …

Site visited April 2018. I visited five inscribed sites of the Peruvian section of the Andean road network.

This WHS all about roads and archaeological sites associated with them. The Qhapaq Ñan road system is one of the most complex road infrastructures in the world. What makes it unique is its extreme geographical setting.

For some reason, this kind of sites are very intriguing for me. Whether it is Silk Roads, Grand Canal, Stećci or Struve, there is something like ’collect all the pieces together’ feeling. At first these inscriptions seem hard to grasp. But when you take a closer look at the single sites there are too many interesting places and you want to include as many sites as possible to your itinerary. But in the end there is time only for very limited amount of sites.

Reading the nomination document it takes some time to really understand which sites are actually inscribed and which are not even though they are mentioned in the document. To a non-devoted traveller there are some choices that could seem a bit confusing and inconsistent. For example impressive fortresses in Ollantaytambo are not inscribed even though Ollantaytambo is mentioned as a starting point to one of the road segments. Sacsayhuamán citadel on the outskirts of Cusco is not even mentioned. Llaqtapata archaeological site which is well known among hikers is not inscribed but other site with the same name that is only a minor site. The wall of Portada Rumiqolqa …