Photo: Daily Mirror
Reims: Visit the home of champagne; Daily Mirror
AllAboutWorldHeritage
Friends in high places: Sri Lanka’s Knuckles mountains; Ben Tarring; Guardian
Photo: Ben Tarring
Snakes and spiders aside, a homestay with a pair of kindly subsistence farmers was a magical introduction to Sri Lanka’s Knuckles mountains for Ben Tarring and family…
Source: Friends in high places: Sri Lanka’s Knuckles mountains
Primeval Poland: where the bison roam; Jon Eldridge; The Guardian
Poland – Białowieża Forest
In Europe’s last primeval forest, on Poland’s border with Belarus, experts are fighting to protect the zubr, or European bison. Jon Eldridge investigates…
Campaign cities share ideas for protecting world’s ancient sites; UNDRR
Photo: UNDRR
Byblos, with its ancient port dating back 5,000 years, is dotted with Phoenician, Roman and medieval ruins along the waterfront that municipal authorities now fear are in danger from sea storms.
Source: Campaign cities share ideas for protecting world’s ancient sites
Salvador, Brazil’s real party capital; Gavin McOwan; Guardian
Photo: Caio Guatelli
As a three-month festival of Brazilian culture opens in London, Gavin McOwan tries out the real thing in Salvador, the country’s – and possibly the world’s – party capital
Damascus face-lift rouses ire of local activist; Ahmad Khatib; AFP
Photo: Daily Star
Damascus, arguably the world’s oldest city, is bustling with chic new life as Ottoman-era homes are turned into boutique hotels and trendy restaurants jazz up their traditional Middle Eastern fare.
A Lost World Made by Women; Richard B Woodward; NY Times
Photo: Herman Wouters
The Treasures of Timbuktu; Joshua Hammer; Smithsonian Magazine
Mali – Timbuktu
Scholars in the fabled African city, once a great center of learning and trade, are racing to save a still emerging cache of ancient manuscripts.
White robe fluttering in the desert breeze, Moctar Sidi Yayia al-Wangari leads me down a sandy alley past donkeys, idle men and knapsack-toting children rushing off to school. It is a bright morning, my second in Timbuktu, in the geographic center of Mali, and al-Wangari is taking me to see the project that has consumed him for the past three years. We duck through a Moorish-style archway and enter his home, a two-story stone structure built around a concrete courtyard. With an iron key, he unlocks the door to a storage room. Filigrees of light stream through a filthy window. The air inside is stale, redolent of mildew and earth.
“Regardez,” he says.
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