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There is not much that can be added to Solivagant's excellent review of les tombes de la Basse Selca in Albania. I will only give an update on how to get there and what to expect as of August 2022 when I visited the tombs on my way from Elbasan to Lin.

Now, the location is even mapped on google maps as "Gradishta e Selcës së Poshtëme" (coordinates: 40.990687532328295, 20.519241375903466). This is the correct position so it's a good way to find the right spot. Don't get confused with the nearby "Gredishtë" as it will lead you to the wrong spot.

A car is needed to get there. The tombs are in the middle of nowhere and there is no public transportation that could take you near enough.

I left the main road (E852/SH3) in Qukës and turned towards Karkavec. This road is either beeing built or being completely renovated. It is not paved and some parts, especially the beginning near Qukës, are in pretty bad conditions. The GPS told me that it would take 1 hour to reach the tombs from Qukës, however as I drove ahead, the road improved and it wasn't that bad after all.

After about 10 km and a steep uphill slope, you'll find a small country road on the left that looks pretty bad. This road, which leads to a group of houses called Lagja e Kumellarëve, is indeed very bad and completely unpaved, however, it can be done even …

I'm not a fan, and not just the site but also of the idiot who designed a roundabout on the highway that if you are heading back to town you either have to drive the wrong way for a long time or you do the smart Zoe thing and slowly drive against traffic on the shoulder to reach that roundabout and go the correct way - something you learn in Thailand. You'll know when you see it!

For one most stuff up here is in rubbles and I can't say it's put back together quite well either. Second, Mithras temple is off limits so you don't even get to see what is apparently the best part. It's all free to visit but surely doesn't excite anyone if you passed through Turkey seeing better places which you undoubtedly did.

It makes for a decent hike around the hill and the few billboards give some idea why it's important to see but it just doesn't cut it.

The Agra Fort is a huge fort very similar to the Red fort in delhi. To be honnest, i'm not able to distinguish either one if i had two pictures in front of me. But, contrary to the red fort, i visited this one. 

It's quiet interesting but not so much beautiful compared to all the indian monuments they can build. I mean it's not the best souvenir i had in India. However, the size of the red stones are impressive. And it's rare i guess: you can see another WHS from this WHS! It's obviously the famous Taj Mahal, along the Yamuna river. We could start a thread on the forum about such possibility: to see a WHS from another one? :) (maybe it already exists, i didn't verify)

The plain of Serengeti has been a myth to me since childhood. I loved watching these wild and dangerous animals on TV. Now it was my turn to explore it live!

Having spent two weeks in Tanzania at this point we were well adjusted and used to being here, but nevertheless – it’s a special feeling passing the Naabi Hill gate and entering the park.

By leaving our Ngorongoro lodge on the rim in the morning and visiting the Olduvai site on the way it was already noon when we entered the park, but as we were staying for three nights there would be enough time to explore this enormous plain.

The first experience meeting us in this eastern part of the part was all the kopjes (the rock formations) scattered around with its special vegetation, as taken straight out of Disney’s The Lion King movie. While driving to the park we had animal encounters all morning, but around these kopjes we didn’t have any luck, to our and our guide’s disappointment. But soon after we had our first male lion within sight – resting on a tree branch. We were told that tree climbing lions were rare, but in fact we saw many of them. Shortly after we found a leopard resting the same way, which is more common. Five hours later and several animal encounters we arrived in Mawe Tented Camp for the night. It is a camp without much extravaganza, but still very nice. …

There is a lottery to get to see the real cave but we didn’t plan far enough in advance or wasn’t lucky enough to see it. 

I have to say I was expecting to be disappointed by the replica cave but they did a pretty good job. 

My only recommendation would be to skip the movie. Took too long and was uninteresting. I talked to the docent and they said it was possible. 

Not a lot to do here but what you can do is pretty cool. Sledding and hiking through the dunes is sandy but fun. Compared to sand, gypsum isn’t as hot so you can go barefoot, even in the hotter times. Nearby Townes are pretty dumpy but a stay in nearby Cloudcroft would be the ideal way to break up a road trip here. 

We paired this trip from El Paso to Guadalupe mountains, Carlsbad caverns (another unesco site) and White Sands 

Patmos I found the prettiest of the Greek-islands-with-a-WHS. It does particularly well on ‘views’: of the blue sea and the surrounding islands, of that little chapel against the blue sky, of its obligatory row of windmills. The three components of its WHS also look well cared for. Like the other islands, Patmos does see its fair share of cruise ships, anchoring in the bay outside of the harbour: in 2022, no less than 285 of them will arrive. Overall, I encountered many more 'regular' tourists than pilgrims, which took away a bit of the holy atmosphere of the island.

When you arrive at Patmos from the sea (there is no airport), you’ll immediately notice the large fortress on top of the highest mountain on the island. What looks like a castle is in reality the Monastery of St. John. It was only half past 11 when the boat delivered me, way too early to check in at the hotel. So I had a first look at the WHS. About once an hour there is a bus from the port town of Skala to Chora, the old town where the monastery is also located. The distance between them is only five kilometers, but it's a steep climb.

Many people visit Patmos as a day trip only from one of the other islands, so it is busiest around noon when the boats have arrived. Fortunately, I had two days here, so I saved the more popular sights for the other …

Visit July 2022

Bagamoyo is one on several sub-sites in the tentative site of “The Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route”. It is now a small town, 1,5 hours north of Dar es Salam. We booked a trip by car with driver through our travel agent.

It is a historical town with ruins of early settlement from 1300 century (Kaole), but the town is more famous for its part in slave trades. This was the end of the Central Slave Route with slaves from the area around Lake Tanganyika, Kongo, Uganda. The journey by foot, chained and with little food and water, lasted up to 6-8 months. Many of them never made it all the way to Bagamoyo. Here they were examined and stored. The strongest were sent to slave market in Zanzibar, the rest to plantations along the shore. In late 1800 the trade was abolished by various countries, but trade was secretly going on until 1920’s when it was totally abolished in Tanganyika. The abolition of slavery took a long time and had many consequences both for the slaves with no skills and for the plantation owners without their cheap labourers. It is just recently that descendants of slaves were treated with equal rights. They had a long way to go to be accepted, and our guide told us there is still a shame to be offspring of slaves.

We visited the old Caravan Serai Museum. This used to be the house were the traders …

Harput is a few kilometres outside the city of Elazig. It’s about half way on the road between Divrigi and Diyarbakir. You will need to drive through Elazig to reach the town. I hadn’t taken into account, that Harput is a hilltop town with and altitude of around 1300m. When I arrived in March 2022 there were still patches of snow all over the town.

The relevant core is rather small. I parked my car at the end of Elazig Street and walked through the center to the castle, which is clearly the highlight of Harput. Entry to the castle was free. Probably also because it is rather a ruin. There are archaeological remains on top of the castle, mostly fenced off. Parts are roofed to protect the remains.

Apart from the castle, there is not much to see. There are a few Ottoman houses and but not in the dimension of old parts of Turkish towns not up for inscription. It seems however to receive a fair share of local tourists. There are many restaurants and a few shops to cater them.

Especially compared to the many excellent sites Turkey has on it’s T-list I don’t see Harput as a great candidate.

"You have to look for a rock lying on a rock," was the advice from our guide as we peered through our binoculars in search of a Saimaa ringed seal. Unfortunately, the best time to observe the seals was already over at the beginning of June. The best chances to see them are during the moult in May. "They don't like rain and they don't like wind", was another piece of information that our guide shared with us. Well, it was warm and dry and almost windless on our three-hour sunset tour. But only at the end, when I had almost given up on it, did we get to see two of these cute animals.

For my visit, I focused on the two national parks that are mentioned in the description on the Unesco website. I largely followed Juha's recommendations, his review was really helpful. I stayed for two days in Oravi village which is the logistical centre of the region. Here you can find tourist information, boat rental, supermarket, restaurant and reception all under one roof. On the first day, I took a boat taxi to the island of Linnansaari. The one-way fare is 15 euros, but a minimum of 50 euros per boat. The regular service didn't start until mid-June, but luckily a family of four also wanted to go to the island, so I only had to pay the regular price. Five hours was more than enough for the hike to the Linnavuori viewpoint, and there …

I feebly rated this site as the other members of the Community because it remains almost nothing of this old city. It looks like trenches of the WWI in a dry area...It's comparable to susa in Iran.

However, these are the ruins of one of the first capital of the Parthian Empire.

But it's an easy WHS to do thanks to its proximity of the crazy capital of Turkmenistan. So do it :)

During my visit of Galicia in August 2022, I spent one day in Lugo to explore the town and its two WHS: the Roman walls and its cathedral.

I went there by car, drove under one of the gates and parked within the Roman walls. I first went for a stroll to get a feel of the town and to visit the tourist office, that also offers an interpretation centre for the Walls. Unfortunately, it’s only in Spanish, so I whizzed through looking at some of the pictures about the construction of the wall.

I went for a small walk around the outside of the wall and then did the whole tour of the town on top of the walls starting at the ramp in front of the cathedral, where you will also find a stele with the Unesco symbol. The wall doesn’t offer many places with shade, so a walk on the walls maybe wasn’t the best idea when the sun is at its highest and hottest, but it gave me something to do during the time most of the other sites were closed because of the siesta. There are nice views over the historic centre, but you also have parts where you just see less attractive backs of houses.

To get a better understanding of the Roman history of Lugo, or “Lucus Augusti” as it was called in those days, I visited the Provincial Museum, which has some Roman mosaics and other objects from the …

I flew in and out of Gaziantep to cover WHS in eastern Turkey and visited the town on my last day. The proposal talks about structures in plural. There might be several structures left, but there is only one fountain open for visits. It is more or less correctly marked on Google Maps as “Pisirici Mescidi Ve Kasteli”. The Google entry says it is open around the clock, but I highly doubt this is true. Just go for office hours to make sure you get in. There was a tiny house with a guard and next to it stairs leading down to the kastel. The guard just let me in. There seems to be no ticket fee.

What you can see down there is basically one room. A nice room with a fountain and small side niches, but still one small room. There was some information in English available, but even including reading those it’s hardly more than a 15 minutes visit. Not sure is this is enough for enscription.

Spending 15 minutes in a hole is not the only reason to visit Gaziantep. The Zeugma museum is clearly worth a visit. I also visited the castle with its very patriotic and rather tacky panorama museum inside. Further, the town is known for good food. I had a nice dinner in İmam Çağdaş Kebap ve Baklava restaurant. While I have a question mark behind this TWHS, I can recommend a visit to Gaziantep.

Out of the 5 components (St. Nicholas Abbey, Morgan Lewis Windmill, Newton Burial Ground, Codrington College, Mount Gay Historic Distillery), I visited the first 4. In my opinion and experience, this proposal has high chances of getting inscribed on the World Heritage list. 

Barbados was one of the prime British colonies in the Caribbean and has been widely accredited to be the birthplace of rum, a product of the sugar plantations on the island. The sites proposed tell the story of this sugar and rum production in the Caribbean, in my eyes more than sufficiently. 

St. Nicholas Abbey (which was never a place of religion, but rather a plantation), Morgan Lewis Windmill (the biggest and only surviving sugar windmill in the Caribbean) and the Mount Gay historic distillery (the oldest continious rum distillery in the world) are all relatively close to each other, on the north(-east) side of the island.

Entry to St. Nicholas Abbey is 20 USD, but can be upgraded with a tour on the new Heritage Railway to a total of 40 USD. I think this is quite steep, but tourist attractions in Barbados have high entry fees in general.

The Morgan Lewis Windmill was a cool site to visit, especially for a Dutchman. However, the site is quite small as it comprises only the windmill. I did not go in, but the surroundings made it a worthwile visit. 

I did not visit the distillery, as I already has visited the distillery …

Continuing our southern roundtrip in the south, our guide took us from Kilwa Masoko to Kibiti (about 180 km) on the B2 road before turning west. On the map it looks like turning west at Ikwirir would be better, but apparently a bridge was out of order. From Kibiti it’s dirt road for 70-80 km, and it's a lot of heavy traffic due to the construction of the giant hydroelectric power plant.

It took roughly 5 hours to the Mpingo Lodge a few km outside the Nyerere National Park, which is the part of Selous Game Reserve you can visit without a hunting license. The lodge is run by two local tough girls which really make your stay special and the place has a wonderful overview og the Rufiji river. As at our prior lodge we were the only guests which suited us just perfect.

Still early afternoon, we managed to arrange a visit to the nearest local village, Mloka. While enjoying the local life we couldn’t help noticing that this village recently has been drastically changed. Heavy trucks were parked everywhere, either to be fixed or the drivers simply having a break. The enormous “clouds of dust” these vehicles make is devastating to the plants, animal life and the local villages.

Early morning next day we started with a river safari upstream on the Rufiji river. Since this wasn't our first ever river cruise we had expectations and they werer fulfilled. WE really appreciate this kind …

Motivated by Wojciechs review and combined with a visit to Abu Mena to complete Egypt, I went back to the Fayoum and Lake Qaroun. I only then realized that I during my first visit I was never in the proposed core zone. The Qaroun Reserve covers only the northern part of the lake. I entered the reserve from the western entrance, after my revisit to Wadi Hitan. The police was highly concerned about me driving around Fayoum the whole day and called me several times. They finally met me before Qaroun and escorted me to and inside the reserve. It was already afternoon and nobody was there at the checkpoint. Thus I never paid any entrance fee. The road is mostly fine and only from time to time covered by sand. I stopped several times, trying to get to rock formations marked on google maps as attractions. Unfortunately there are no side roads to these places, so I only saw formations close to the main road. The only place with an unpaved, but somehow drivable access was Nesos, part of another THWS.

A few kilometers before entering the regional ring road to Cairo, I found the entrance to the Gebel Qatrani Area. This is probably the heart of the site. The road is unpaved and therefore not marked on google maps.

I read about Wojciech gotten stuck in the sand while trying to reach the petrified forest. So naturally I took exactly the same route, but without anyone knowing I …

Tchoga Zanbil is a nice and interesting pyramid but in my taste not so wonderful. I guess it depends on the people, one of my friend found it memorable, one of the best place in Iran ; it's not my own opinion.

The real positive point for me is that is the only heritage of the Kingdom of Elam. What is rare is precious.

This site just looks like a big "ziggurat" (pile) of bricks more or less recently arranged. It is, but some of these bricks are carved of an ancient writing, probably restored.

To conclude, it's a very interesting place which deserves its inscription, but I make express reservations due to a kind of non-authentic place.

Derbent was the first and only part of Dagestan Ivan and I have managed to visit in our first year in Russia together. In 2013, Dagestan was still quite a wild place to visit. Ivan arranged via his tyre-seling colleagues for two local bike club members to meet us at the train station and to show us around. We arrived via night train from Baku, which was quite an adventure all by itself, including some cockroaches on train and very puzzled border guard who probably never saw our kind of passport and visa before. But it was well worth it, we made it up the Naryn Kala fortress, walked around, took shots of the city and imagined the 5000 years of history. There were some exhibits and info panels. I remember walking around the ramparts with no rails and pondering how more Health and Safety conscious countries would have had a field day here.

After visiting Derbent, our biker guides took us to Makhachkala for some lunch and drove us to the airport for our flight back to Moscow. I remember it having a place where one deposits their weapons before flying to Moscow. It was definitely a curious visit, though even back then the people of Caucasus have been very welcoming and friendly, genuinely interested in foreign tourists. And that has not changed. We toured Dagestan in November 2021, skipping Derbent this time as we only had four days and the hospitality was amazing as always. The general …

I'm going to put it out there right at the start of this review: the Murujuga Cultural Landscape is one of the most impressive collections of petroglyphs (rock carvings) I've ever seen. It would be justifiably world-renowned if it were located on other continents, and certainly ranks well above many of the other rock art collections already inscribed on the World Heritage List. So what is it?

The cultural landscape is centred on Murujuga National Park, part of the Burrup Peninsula in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia. It's located on the traditional lands of the Ngarluma, Yindjibarndi, Yaburara, Mardudhunera, and Wong-Goo-Tt-Oo peoples, collectively known as the Ngarda-Ngarli (pron "nahda nahli"). The national park is about 37,000 hectares, so it's not an extremely large area, but it's packed with an estimated one million petroglyphs. It's believed to be the densest collection of hunter-gatherer petroglyphs anywhere in the world. What's truly amazing about Murujuga is the incredible variety of petroglyphs, in both age and subject matter: the oldest petroglyphs here have been dated at around 40,000 years old, while some are as recent as the 19th century.

Petroglyphs of humans are quite common with a variety of imagery, ranging from static figures to abstract faces, hunting scenes and ceremonial activities. You can also see plenty of spiritual art telling stories of the Marrga, the ancestral beings who created the world during the Dreamtime.

But it's the imagery of animals at Murujuga that we found most striking. The sheer number …

Gonur Depe and Merv belong to a very special country that I deeply recommend.

The site is composed of different and distant places which require small routes by car. It's a little bit special to see ruins of buildings dating of periods very different, that's probably why the site is laid out like this.

I remember the multitude of fragments of earthenware jars scattered on the ground, and above all the strange green vestiges of the old ovens.

My favourite building is on the joined picture, quite massive.

To finish, I met a black and white snake, so be careful ;)