Tag Archives: UNESCO

Pashupatinath, three kilometres northwest of Kathmandu on the Bagmati River, is home to one of the most sacred of Nepal’s Hindu temples and cremation sites. One of the “seven groups of monuments and buildings” that make up the UNESCO-listed Kathmandu Valley, Pashupatinath Temple and the Bagmati Cremation Ghats are also on just about every tourist’s itinerary while in the city. So, the site hosts a mix […]

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If you want to be a successful traveler, it pays to do your homework. For example, checking the expected temperatures all around a region – not just on the coast – and packing accordingly! This was not the first time I’d been caught out by weather in Asia: last year, my husband and I “forgot” […]

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It’s hard to imagine how the Wachau Valley could be any prettier! “The Wachau” is the name given the narrow gorge where the Danube River runs between the Bohemian Massif on the northwest, and the Dunkelsteiner Woods to the southeast. For roughly fourty kilometres between the Lower Austrian cities of Melk and Krems, the hilltops are dotted with castle ruins and the hillsides are covered […]

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I lived within easy reach of Australia’s Blue Mountains for many years, and while I’d take visitors up there regularly for day-trips and hikes, I guess I rather took them for granted. I knew some of the stories of the hardships the early explorers (Blaxland, Wentworth, Lawson, and their unnamed servants) faced trying to find a […]

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In Bali, rice is synonymous with food. The word nasi (rice) also means “meal” in Bahasa Indonesia, the lingua franca of the region.  But, rice is so much more than that: it is an integral part of the Balinese culture. This little Indonesian island has been inhabited by Southeast Asian Austronesian people since at least 2000 BCE. From around the 1st century CE., […]

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