A Year of Adventures

Long time fan of Lonely Planet, though I still don't understand why it's 'Lonely'. Course traveling can often be lonely. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world, but if your world isn't right inside, you might as well be back at home, checking and re-checking your email and phone messages.

Tangent - LP has a cool new book out called A Year of Adventures. It lists by week of month of the year where the best places are to be to experience an adventure. It ranks the activities by fitness level required as well which is thoughtful. Some of the adventures are definitely ones I am putting on my list of places to leave my flip-flop print before I die. Here are some of my dog-eared pages:

pg 39: Scramble to Tigray's Rock Churches - over 120 Ethiopian churches carved out of sheer rock cliffs only accessible by climbing for an hour and then crossing a narrow ledge.

pg 43: View Loggerhead Turtles at Mon Repos - watch baby turtles hatch on the beach in Australia and scurry to the ocean.

pg 77: Sail the Bermuda Triangle - why not sail in search of the triangle and see what happens?

pg 87: Gobi March - OMG this sounds unbelievably grueling. You run between 20-80km a DAY across the Gobi Desert carrying your own food, water, clothing and tent on your back in temperatures of 38 degrees Celsius. Wow. That beats any IronMan contest out there as far as I'm concerned. Thing you've got what it takes and are probably a little insane, check out their site.

pg 126: Visit Chornobyl - umm, what? Yes, you can tour Chornobyl, which in case you've been kept in a closet your whole life, is now only slightly radioactive after being the site of a nuclear accident in 1986.

pg 174: Sinai Peninsula, Egypt: I've been there! I will definitely have to post about this later on properly, but let me just say that hiking up Mount Sinai at night and watching the sunrise at the peak while Orthodox priests chant their morning prayers was an experience I will never forget. Just beautiful. And at the base is St. Katherine's monastery, the one monastery in the world that can boast the longest running Christian occupation in history, built in the 3rd century. It is unique in that it also has a mosque inside, as the Christians and Muslims live in harmony there together.

You can find this book in the Fab Reads section to the right.