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I from Odisha, India and i have visited Konark Temple many times, there are lots of things that the researchers need to figure out as its not only a temple but it has many hidden secrets.... People think that Dinosour existed on Earth millions of years ago, but if you have a keen look at the the stone architecture on some places at the base of the temple, you will find some Dinosour looking like stone sculpture

I visited this tentative WHS in June 2017. Ideally it would be included as an extension to Bukhara and not as a separate WHS. That way it would stand more of chance.

There is a UNESCO plaque outside as if it were already inscribed, which is something quite common in Central Asia - you either find no trace of the sites' inscription (like in Samarkand) or else the UNESCO symbol is paraded everywhere even where it shouldn't be (like in Chor Bakr).

The exterior would be a valid extension of Bukhara's WHS. On the other hand the mausoleum now houses a very interesting museum on water management in Bukhara and the information provided could easily be beefed up into a nomination file for yet another water management system like Iran's qanats or the UAE/Oman's aflaj system. It is a worthwhile stop next to the local market, however I'd argue in favour of removing the fake stork statue placed on the restored conical dome if this site is ever to be included on the WH list.

The Lotus temple in New Delhi is a Bahai temple built in modern style - something special in a land where almost all places of worship are built in a traditional style. The design of the temple is quite pleasing and sure looks good on photos, however actually visiting the place can be a bit underwhelming. Firstly, visiting takes a bit of effort - you can't just walk in. Arriving is the easiest part - you can take the Delhi metro to get near and then walk the rest (or take the inescapable tuk-tuk). You then have to wait in a long queue - there are a lot of other tourists (mainly indians) who want to visit the temple. Don't take any bottles with you (even empty ones) - they throw them away, then send you back to the end of the queue. After entering, you have to deposit your shoes at a busy storage station and walk through the gardens without them, all while being pushed around in a long stampede of visitors. The gardens are well-kept, but offer nothing special. The view of the main building could be great if the Delhi smog does not spoil it - you are still within the city's dust dome. You can't enter the temple itself, but you can peek inside and see that it is almost completely empty - no lavish treasure, statues or decorations in this temple. You will not learn much about the Bahai faith, and don't expect any …

Site visited in July, 2017. Located around 2 km from Sarazm village, 14 km from Penjikent, north-western part of Tajikistan. There is no direct public transport to the place, although there are marszrutkas from Penjikent to Sarazm village (not very frequent, mostly in the morning). The most convenient way to get there from Penjikent is to take a local taxi. Standard fare for such a trip is around 20 somoni (one way) plus 10 somoni for waiting time on the spot.

The whole area is fenced and can be visited free of charge. It consist of 5 excavation places, all covered by steel roofs for protection. In fact apart from walls measuring up to 1 meter high there is not much to see but have in mind that the city is 5500 years old. Small museum located nearby was closed during my visit, probably there is much more to see in the museum in Penjikent.

The site is pretty similar to Shahr-i Sokhta in Iran (similar semi-desert location, comparable age and material used for construction) althouhg the latter one is much bigger and by far better exposed and prepared for visiting (visitrs centre, plaques, walking paths, tables with English description).

I visited this tentative WHS in June 2017. I combined this visit with a visit to Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa Palace which is on the way to Vobkent and worth visiting if you have extra time to spare in Bukhara.

The minaret of Vobkent is similar to the one in Bukhara. It is slimmer and stands tall without any other religious structures nearby. It is a very worthwhile stop if travelling to Bukhara from Samarkand by car or a pleasant half day trip from Bukhara combined with the Sitorai Mokhi-Khosa Palace or one of the outer madrasas of Bukhara. It is in a very good state when compared to the taller minaret in Konya Urgench, Turkmenistan but I don't think it stands a chance of inscription any time soon.

I visited the silk road site of Anau in June 2017. Being relatively close to Ashgabat (around 8km) I made an extra effort to visit the remains of the Seyitdzhemaliddin Mosque included on Turkmenistan's tentative list.

Anau derives from Abi-anau meaning new water and surely enough there's a well and water system just next to the mosque. The mosque was heavily damaged by the Ashgabat earthquake, however locals still pray (mostly for fertility) at this site. There are a few turquoise tiles left but nothing really outstanding which would add value to the WH list in my opinion.

Visited June 2017. Lushan National Park is located in the northern part of Jiangxi province and can be easily reached from the city of Jiujiang; there are many buses and minibuses from the long-distance bus station, at least one every hour till 6 pm. (Jiujiang is also a good starting point for the trip to Poyang Lake/Nature Reserve, on Chinese tentative list, already deferred at the beginning of ’80, and re-submitted in 1996.) The entry fee for the park is 180Y – you have to pay it while still in the bus, at the main gate to the park. The bust stop is located in Gulingzhen village, where there are also many places where you can spend a night or two (we slept in one of these old villas and recommend choosing a villa instead of hotels), shops and restaurants. By the bus station you’ll see a huge tourist information centre with a very big UNSESCO sign above the entrance and… no one speaking English, French or any other language but Chinese.

The park is pretty big and if want to get as more as possible from it, you’ll at least two days. But if you just want to thick it on your list, one day is enough to see the most important places/monuments, but be ready for a long and sometimes very steep walking. You can hire a taxi but remember that here everything is more expensive than anywhere else in the area or take one of two tourist …

First things first, travelling in Wales made me feel like I was back in elementary school: “Could you repeat that?” was a common reply to me trying my utmost best to pronounce any place name. For the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct I eventually settled on referring to it simply as The Aqueduct. That worked splendidly.

Coming from the bus stop I made my way across rather quiet Trevor town. The aqueduct is not directly visible as you are on the upper plateau. So it’s a bit of a surprise when it suddenly gets busy and you get to see the aqueduct standing majestically in the landscape with the Severn flowing way below you.

Another surprise was the width of the canal on the aqueduct. I anticipated it to be way wider than it actually was. As a consequence, the barges travelling along the canal are very narrow, albeit quite long, and have a unique look. What they don’t have is much speed. So walking at a bit more than leisurely pace will allow you to overtake most of them. But the views you get from the aqueduct are stunning, so I paused frequently taking yet another picture and having the barges pass me by.

Getting There and Around

The closest train station is Ruabon (Ru-a-bon as I pronounced it was clearly wrong). From there buses run to Trevor (direction Llangollen). Be advised that some buses do not stop in front of the train station in Ruabon, but …

With the recent inscription of Yazd, I am not quite sure how Maybod, another silk road desert city in the same region, would be able to position itself differently and subsequently provide a fresh perspective/OUV to the list.

Highlights of the old city include the 2,000 year old Narin castle, an intact ice house, working qanats, a few badgirs, what is perhaps the most beautiful dovecote in all of Persia, and the Shah Abassi caravanserai, which also happens to be a component of the Persian Caravanserai - TWHS and quite possibly a part of the Silk Route - TWHS of Iran as well.

Interestingly, I have observed that inscribing a site more than once seems to be something that Iran enjoys doing, i.e., Pasargadae - Persian Garden, Yazd - Persian Garden - Persian Qanat, Bam - Persian Qanat, as well as many others still brewing in the T-list. Maybod can easily be reached as part of a regular day tour offered in Yazd.

When I stepped off the bus in Ironbridge and got my first glimpse of the bridge I was already smitten. It’s a picturesque site, embedded in a lovely river valley with the usual English countryside charm. Little points to this having been a key site in UK’s industrial revolution.

Prior to the industrial revolution the iron ore was melted using charcoal. In my line of work we would call that biomass and consider it CO2 neutral, i.e. pretty great. But charcoal was tied to sustainable (then phew!) forestry and this severely limited the volume of ore you could melt. So you couldn’t actually leverage larger production sites. Only when the switch to coal and better yet coke occurred was real growth possible. The area around Ironbridge, already a center for iron production since medieval times, offered both iron and coal and grew rapidly as a consequence.

While this is yet another of UK’s industrial sites, I had a pleasant time and I think this is a valuable site. Due to this being on the forefront of industrialization the buildings seem to have fallen out of time compared to a later industrialization site such as Völklinger Hütte. But well, with the furnaces in operation and the chimneys blowing out huge smoke clouds day and night, the area probably looked far less idyllic.

Getting In and Around

From Monday to Saturday there are regular busses connecting Telford to Ironbridge. They do not run via the train station. …

Coming in from Arras by train I immediately ticked off this site when I stepped off the train in Lens; the Gare de Lens is part of the inscription. From the station I headed into town and ticked of all locations in Lens. This included a World War 1 memorial for the fallen citizens, a unionist memorial, the historic union building, a worker housing district and the former headquarters of the mining company. Unfortunately, the signposting is lacking, so I found myself repeatedly wondering if I had found the site or not.

After Lens I headed to Liberville to get a bit more of the industrial feeling of the site. From the train window several furnaces and mines could be seen, some of them part of the inscription.

In Liberville I found myself lost again, wandering around a simple neighborhood and looking for the site and its OUV. I guess, the neighborhood itself was the site. The area wasn’t really touristy and the one furnace in town closed, so I decided to call it a day and head on to Lille by train.

Looking back, I found Lens rather interesting and would recommend it as a good place to explore the site. There are no mines and furnaces in Lens, though. Instead this is where the workers lived. I guess they took the same train line I did to get to the work in the mines every day.

The former wealth on display is impressive. …

Røros wasn’t really what I expected it to be. While preparing for my short visit to this former copper mining town, I discovered that it sees one million visitors yearly. And indeed: upon arrival, it resembled one large parking lot. I also had imagined a mountainous setting, showing the “harsh climatic conditions” the inhabitants had to deal with that form part of its OUV. At an altitude of 628m, it’s not that extreme. Although it does get pretty cold in the wintertime at this latitude of course.

I reached Røros by train from Trondheim: there is only one practical departure that allows you to visit it on a day trip (leaving at 9.45, and returning at 16.30). Try to sit on the right side of the train, as it has the best views of rivers and lakes which are part of the so-called Circumference (the allotted area of privilege to the Røros Copper Works). From the train station, I walked straight to the outskirts of the city, where the Røros Museum is located at the site of the old smelting house. Daily at 1 p.m., an English-language walking tour of the town starts from here. The museum area is the most industrial part that you’ll see in the city by the way: the actual mines are miles away and not reachable by public transport.

The tour led me and about 10 other tourists first to where the poorest people lived - near the smelting house and the slag …

I visited this WHS in June 2017. Even though the area is quite big, it is not comparable to Ancient Merv. The different sites are a good example of how some of Uzbekistan's top WHS would look like without restoration. Moreover, the conical cap-like Islamic structures (top right photo) are in a way quite similar to Armenia's and Georgia's monasteries which I found quite striking. It's the mix of architectural styles and beliefs that I liked most in the ancient Khorezm capital as well as the fact that most remains are still believed to be sacred sites by the locals.

The absolute highlight of this WHS is the Mausoleum of Turabek Khanym. It is the largest building in ancient Konya Urgench and its dome holds an impressive mosaic of 365 interlocking geometric tiles that give the appearance of the night sky (top left photo). The number of magnificently preserved arches, niches and tiling suggests time keeping and calendar keeping was kept in mind when building this structure.

This is perhaps Turkmenistan's most important pilgrimage site and all pilgrims come to visit the Nadjm-ad-din Kubra Mausoleum (14th century). This mausoleum is quite similar to the Shah-i-Zinda complex in Samarkand, Uzbekistan but lacks the most of the magnificent turquoise and blue tiles on the mausoleum facades. However, the main tombstone inside has recently been fully restored and cleaned up to its former glory (bottom right photo).

The tallest structure is of course the minaret with its Zoroastrian symbols and Koranic script (bottom …

I visited this WHS in June 2017. The inscribed areas include vast stretches of semi desert land stretching from a few kilometres away from modern Mary (the Archaelogical Site of Ancient Merv) to a very long day trip some 60km away from Merv on terrible roads to Togoluk and Gonur Tepe.

The Archaeological Site of Ancient Merv is made up of different sites (top photos) relatively close to each other and with roads and small parking areas near each site. On the other hand, the sites of Gonur Tepe and Togoluk contain the remains and impressive foundations of whole settlements on an area of around 55 hectares. Most remains in the Local History Museum of Mary and in the National Museum of Ashgabat came from the these two sites. Gonur Tepe is among the largest ruins in the Morghab delta region with over 150 ancient settlements dating to the early Bronze Age. Moreover, Buddhist remains were also found here (bottom left photo). If you have an extra day in Mary, go for this worthwhile day trip, otherwise just focus on the closer sites. Apparently the lead archaeologist has passed away and further excavations are at a standstill. It is a recurring theme in all Turkmenistan's WHS and you feel as if you're trespassing in an archaeological site which is still being excavated (hopefully!).

In the archaeological site of Ancient Merv, the main highlight for me was the 12th century Great Icehouse (bottom right photo) as I had never seen anything …

I visited this WHS in June 2017. Having read the previous reviews I didn't have high expectations. I agree that a visit to the National Museum in Ashgabat is essential to understand the importance of this Partian site and it is relatively easy to combine such a visit as the site of Nisa is very close to modern Ashgabat.

The view from the platform next to the entrance (top right photo) is the most 'iconic' view you'll get even though the view from on top of the partially excavated mud brick walls with the surrounding mountain landscape is not bad either (bottom left photo). Like in the Ancient Merv archaeological site, while walking through the maze of mud brick walls and pillar remains, it's easy to observe the now exposed repellent materials used during the site's construction against insects (mostly termites and wasps) and birds.

Same as in Merv and Gonur Tepe, there are several old clay fragments still scattered everywhere on the floor. There's a small room where a few important remains and fragments from the building's coloured friezes could be seen but it's more of a storage room raher than a visitor centre proper. The most important artefacts can be seen in the National Museum in Ashgabat. The highlights were the dozens of beautiful ivory rhytons (bottom right photo) and the head of a clay statue with traces of colour painting (top left photo).

More coloured paintings are still buried under the mud and have not been excavated …

I visited the Hedeby site, which is well developed for tourists, with a museum (closed at the moment for refurbishment), walking pathes and reconstructed houses. Hedeby (or Haithabu in German) was a well-sized city at the edge of the viking lands. As with other viking sites (like Birka or Trelleborg) the problem is that almost everything was built out of wood, so there is not much left of it but the earthworks. In the case of Hedeby, the earthen city walls are still standing (and walkable), but most of the area inside is empty. There are some quite nice reconstructions of viking houses, which will be the most interesting thing for most visitors. There are also demonstrations, market stalls and exhibition houses, so there is more to do than to stare at mounds. Also interesting is the visitable archaeological dig, although most finds seemed to be small things like nails or bone remains. The whole area is rather idyllic, with a nice lake and an undisturbed environment. It is a good place for hiking. As there are no nearby settlements today, getting there can be a problem. It is rather easy with a car, as the main highway from the north (e.g. to Jelling) to the south (e.g. to Hamburg) is quite close, but public transport might be difficult.

All in all, I had a very pleasant visit there, and really got a good impression of how they lived in the viking times. However, the most interesting things are reconstructions …

I went to Gamzigrad-Romuliana on Thursday of last week (late July). I don't know if I would recommend Serbia in high summer, as it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit most days. But the site itself was beautiful.

I was staying in Belgrade, and hired a driver to take me to the site instead of staying locally for the day.

The ruins themselves were beautiful. Not as spectacular as other ancient Roman sites, but Magura hill (where Galerius and Romula underwent apotheosis to become gods), was beautiful and interesting.

If you're in Belgrade, it's a three hour drive on a very open highway (not a small mountain highway like you get in western Serbia).

I have a longer review and more pictures here: UNESCO World Heritage Site: Gamzigrad-Romuliana, Palace of Galerius.

Lush, green rainforests carpet the low hills of the Wet Tropics of Queensland, which border the beaches, coastal towns, and agricultural fields of the northeast coast of Australia. When I visited the Great Barrier Reef in June 2012, my friend and I chose to visit the hill town of Kuranda, using the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, which transits through the World Heritage Site. The gondola ride provided an incredible view of the Atherton Tablelands and Barron Gorge National Park, as well as two sightseeing stops along the way. The first stop featured a museum and a walk through the canopy, overlooking ferns and tropical hardwoods; there were also displays about local fauna, though I never did find a cassowary. The second stop included an overlook of Barron Falls, which was not particularly impressive in the dry season. Kuranda town itself was rather charming, with a couple nice nature walks from town into the rainforest. On the way back to Cairns, my friend and I opted to take the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which gives a closer look at the rainforest. I highly enjoyed the brief visit to the wet tropics, and if I return one day, I'll have to rent a car to drive to Daintree National Park to see the mangroves and crocodiles.

Logistics: The Wet Tropics of Queensland can be easily combined with a visit to the Great Barrier Reef. The Skyrail and scenic railway to Kuranda are both near Cairns, and can be reached by private transportation.

Site visited April 2017. Rjukan – Notodden industrial heritage site is located in the beautiful Norwegian landscape. Sometimes I found the landscapes more interesting than the industrial values. This site needs a bit of background research to really understand it.

There are plenty of industrial sites around Nordic countries. Some of them have been inscribed already: Falun, Engelsberg, Røros and Verla. The first question I had, what makes just this site worth of World Heritage status? What qualities it has that the other uninscribed Nordic industrial sites don’t have?

I had a business trip to Oslo so I decided to make a short side trip to Rjukan and Notodden after my duties. I travelled to Rjukan by bus. The trip took 3,5 hours. I stayed overnight in a small hostel just beside the river and Såheim power plant.

It was a sunny spring morning when I started to explore the city of Rjukan. The first thing I noticed already the previous night was nearby Såheim power plant with its robust grey stone exterior and towers. It is impressive especially during night when it is beautifully lit. It was a nice weather so I decided to walk along the river Måna all the way from Rjukan to Vemork power station and Rjukanfossen waterfall. The trip by foot takes about an hour. Along the route there are lots of original factory buildings from the early 20th century. Lately some of them have been converted to offices and workshop spaces. I think Vemork …

I visited the Medieval Monuments in Kosovo last week while staying in Pristina. I only had enough time to see Gracanica Monastery, but I very much enjoyed my time there.

The monastery is a lot like other medieval Orthodox Churches on the UNESCO list, but I thought the frescoes inside the church were especially vibrant.

I did not have a hard time getting there. I read online that the easiest way from Pristina to Grananica was to get a taxi arranged by your hostel or hotel. It cost me 15 euros for a taxi there and bring me back to the city.