Recently in _Asia Category

Namaste, city-lovers! Arun Bhat writes to us from Bangalore, India, and tells us why his city is the best.

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Bangalore is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is for a walk through Cubbon Park. It is a quiet place in the center of the city and it's surrounded by beautiful buildings that are more than one hundred years old. Pink and yellow Tabebuia trees loaded with flowers add colour to the park in winter.

When I crave ice cream, I always go to Corner House.

To escape the city, I head to Nandi Hills.

If I want to watch a play I go to Rangashankara. They have plays running six days a week.

For complete quiet, I can hide away Lalbagh. The park is big enough to provide solitude for everyone.

If you come to my city, get your picture taken at Vidhana Soudha (left). It is the most well-known landmark in the city.

Landmark Book Store is my one-stop shop for great collection of books, music, and videos.

When I'm feeling cash-strapped I go and eat in a Darshini, the quick-eat places you can see everywhere in the city.

For a huge splurge I go to Mynt restaurant in Hotel Taj West End and take a garden side table. Not to miss are the excellent Tortellini and Chocolate pudding.

Photo ops in my city include the Cubbon Park area and the Gandhi Bazaar (below). The best vantage point is Ebony Restaurant.


The most random thing about my city is the rain. Unlike the rest of India where it rains just three months, rain in Bangalore is completely unpredictable and arrives at any time of the year.

The exhibit "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" opens this Thursday, November 19th, at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC. We weaseled our way into the press preview to get you a sneak peek. But before letting us loose to see Emperor Qin Shihuangdi's lifesized warriors face-to-face, Stanford Professor Emeritus Albert Dien, guest curator of the exhibit, reminisced on his first visit to Xi'an, China, in 1977 to see the warriors who'd been discovered three years before by a local farmer digging a well. In our October Places of a Lifetime issue he relates this moment:

Turning a corner, we came upon the figure of an archer that I hadn't seen in any published literature. It was such a shock to see this startlingly lifelike figure that our hosts insisted I sit and rest awhile. . . [T]his archer seemed so vibrant, almost in motion. . .I simply sat and stared in wonderment--and the wonder has never left me, no matter how often I've returned to Xi'an.

The kneeling archer is here at our headquarters, along with 14 other figures including infantrymen, a chariot driver, two musicians, a well-muscled (albeit headless) strongman, a 700-pound horse, cavalrymen, a seemingly obsequious court official, and a general. Also on display in the 12,000-square-foot, four-themed exhibit space are 100 objects--decorative jade pieces, bronze weapons, coins, a naturalistic crane sculpture, details of the warriors' armor, and roof tiles--including 20 "Level 1" artifacts, those designated as the site's rarest and most important finds.

Food writer and Modern Spice cookbook author Monica Bhide recently returned from visiting her family in India, and we asked her to share some glimpses of contemporary life she noticed while there. You can read her previous posts here and here.

I have always loved to read, and I love a bargain. In India, the way to find out what titles are hot is through street vendors who sell their wares along the Delhi roads. When you stop at a traffic light, they come up to your car to sell books and magazines. They only carry books that are on the bestseller list. Almost all the vendors I spoke with were illiterate, yet they could tell me a bit about each book they carried. Mostly the description was "Oh, Madam, very good, very good book. You like. Nice. Nice." Everything from Dan Brown to Paulo Coelho was "nice, nice."

In addition to books, these vendors sell many other different products like windshield wipers, cleaning cloths, and children's toys. Bargaining is a must. I bought Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger for Rs.100 (a bit over $2), bargained down from Rs. 250 (about $5).  Bestsellers at a price I love--what is not to like? Of course, you have to be fast and learn to bargain in under three minutes, which is the time cars usually stop at long traffic lights.

Photo: Monica Bhide

National Geographic Magazine's International Photo Contest has just ended, and there are some great submissions, like this one taken in Shanghai.

We like how photographer Gail von Bergen Ryan was able to capture the bright colors in this tunnel. She says, "I was in the front car of the short subway between Pudong and the Bund, and was treated to the wonderful spectacle of an oncoming train in the tunnel's changing light show. I put my camera up to the window and shot as fast as possible to get this image."

For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine's site and vote for your favorite images. Viewer's Choice winners will be announced in early December. Check out the gallery of last year's Viewer's Choice favorites. Voting closes November 8.

National Geographic Magazine's International Photo Contest has just ended, and there are some great submissions, like this one taken in Bangkok.

This picture really does say a thousand words. Says photographer Ashutosh Karkhanis, "This picture was shot in Safari World in Bangkok last year. As we were waiting for the orangutan show to begin, this orangutan caught my eye. He looked so bored of doing the same act day in and day out. His body language seemed to say, 'When is this all going to end?'"

For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine's site and vote for your favorite images. Viewer's Choice winners will be announced in early December. Check out the gallery of last year's Viewer's Choice favorites. Voting closes November 8.

National Geographic Magazine's International Photo Contest has just ended, and there are some great submissions, like this one taken in India's Ganges River.

Says photographer Jenay Martin, "The Ganges is the holiest river in India. Every morning and every evening Hindus bathe in the holy river. However, it is very polluted, and in this very location there is no living oxygen and is pure sewage. Even in the filth of Varanasi, life goes on. People still bathe, and animals still manage to find things to eat. This goat is eating a holy garland that was offered to the river during a funeral procession."

For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine's site and vote for your favorite images. Viewer's Choice winners will be announced in early December. Check out the gallery of last year's Viewer's Choice favorites. Voting closes November 8.

Only a few days remain in National Geographic Magazine's International Photo Contest. Here's a standout from this week's batch of entries, taken by Nancy Dinh.

This photo reflects the communal sense of Vietnamese culture, where mother, father, and child sleep together on a mattress close to the ground, enveloped in a single large mosquito net in a room dedicated to nocturnal sleep and daytime playing. During the daytime, the child is gatekeeper.

For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine's site. The International Photo Contest ends October 31st, so submit your favorite images in the People, Places, and Nature categories now.

I'm setting off on a group tour to Morocco next week, and throughout my travel planning, I've been somewhat apologetic as I explain that yes, as a travel editor, I signed up for a tour. So I was heartened to read Daisann McLane's column in our current issue espousing the benefits of group travel, which she noticed on a recent bus trip through Guangzhou, China:

As I sat on a bus wearing a silly cap, eating pork buns, and being serenaded by a karaoke-singing tour guide, I had to laugh at myself. Not that many years ago I was so allergic to anything remotely "touristy" that I even refused to carry a camera when I traveled. I kept a list of "not for me" places--popular attractions, neighborhoods, even nations, that I refused to visit because I thought they'd be "too full of tourists." I considered myself a class apart, a traveler, and that meant going places nobody else did, and going, mostly, alone. Tour groups? No way.

In anticipation of the arrival of the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at National Geographic headquarters, Destination DC is offering a Weekend Warriors Package from mid-November to the end of March.

The Terra Cotta Warriors, the guardians of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, will be on display at the National Geographic Museum in D.C. from November 19 through March 31. Since their discovery in 1974 by farmers digging a well, over 1,000 life-size terra cotta soldiers, wearing full armor, have been unearthed and an estimated 7,000 additional warriors remain, waiting to be exhumed. Each warrior is unique, with his own hairstyle, facial features and expression. Since the discovery of the first warriors, life-size chariots and horses, servants, musicians, acrobats and animals have also been uncovered. It is believed that the warriors were made in order to protect the emperor during the afterlife, one example of his obsessive quest for immortality.

In an innovative approach to conservation, Japanese carrier All Nippon Airlines is suggesting that its passengers make a pit stop before boarding their planes in order to reduce fuel consumption. The AFP reports:

ANA estimates that if half its passengers went to the bathroom before boarding, it could reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 4.2 tons a month, said company spokeswoman Megumi Tezuka.

Apparently, the pre-flight flush is just part of their new environmentally friendly efforts. The airline also plans to recycle paper cups and plastic bottles, use napkins created from the byproducts of green tea production, and offer chopsticks produced from wood from forest thinning projects. These new tactics will be tested on 38 domestic flights-including the six-and-a-half-hour route from Tokyo to Singapore, all this month.

Though we realize the airline isn't suggesting you avoid the loo altogether, we wondered what crossing your legs for an extended flight would be worth in the way of CO2 reduction. Thankfully, The Toronto Star actually went so far as to calculate the overall conservation in passenger "weight" saved by a trip to the bathroom before you board:

The average human bladder holds up to a litre of fluid, which weighs roughly one kilogram. All Nippon's most popular aircraft, a Boeing 777, holds 247 people. So, in theory, if 247 passengers all go to the washroom before boarding, they could lighten the plane by up to 247 kilograms--the weight of three average men.

What's your take? Is going before you go the new eco-savvy way to travel?

[All Nippon Airlines E-Flights Campaign]

Photo: Grist.org

Only a few weeks remain in National Geographic Magazine's International Photo Contest. Here's a standout from this week's batch of entries, taken by Cesare Naldi.

Nazroo, a mahout (elephant driver), poses for a portrait while taking his elephant, Rajan, out for a swim in front of Radha Nagar Beach in Havelock, Andaman Islands. Rajan is one of the few elephants in Havelock that can swim, so when he is not dragging timber in the forest he is used as a tourist attraction. The relationship between the mahout and his elephant usually lasts for their entire lives, creating an extremely strong tie between the animal and the human being.

For more images, visit the weekly galleries on National Geographic Magazine's site. The International Photo Contest ends October 31st, so submit your favorite images in the People, Places, and Nature categories now.

Food writer and Modern Spice cookbook author Monica Bhide recently returned from visiting her family in India, and we asked her to share some glimpses of contemporary life she noticed while there. You can read her previous posts here and here.

One of my favorite things to do in India is to visit temples, but as I set out to visit several in New Delhi during my recent trip, I noticed that one major thing had changed. At the entrance of all the temples were metal detectors and police personnel checking each person entering and leaving.

Yes, it is a sign of the times, and not a happy one. After the events of November 2008, when a group of terrorists held the city of Mumbai under siege, security has become a prime concern for all places frequented by locals and tourists alike. There are metal detectors at hotels and malls, monuments and museums. On this particular visit, I went to the ISKCON Hare Krishna temple (pictured, above), one of the most beautiful temples in New Delhi. (It has a loyal following, and the restaurant attached to the temple offers vegetarian food, with some rather contemporary choices on the menu: baked beans, walnut pies and pizza!) While we waited patiently for the security check, what broke my heart was a young man standing in line with his mother behind me. His words to her: "If God needs all this to protect him, how on Earth will he protect me?"

Photos: Monica Bhide

Food writer and Modern Spice cookbook author Monica Bhide recently returned from visiting her family in India, and we asked her to share some glimpses of contemporary life she noticed while there. You can read her first post here.

For centuries India, particularly North India, has been a country of tea drinkers, while steaming cups of coffee were loved by the folks in South India. And then something happened. Since 2000, coffeehouses like Barista and Café Coffee Day have begun to spring up in major cities by the hundreds. They offer different types of coffees, smoothies, and snacks very much like Starbucks does. The initial reaction was interesting to watch. "The affluent young Indians will love it," the media claimed, as they noted all the youngsters gathering at the coffeehouses. There was an outcry from lovers of Indian culture and tea--it was blasphemous for them to even think that coffee culture could be percolating here in India, sacrilegious that a tea-drinking nation could love drinking coffee. Culture watchers were quick to point out that people drinking in these fancy coffeehouses weren't any better than the ones who drank tea off the street stalls.  

My view is a bit different.

Food writer and Modern Spice cookbook author Monica Bhide recently returned from a visiting her family in India, and we asked her to share some glimpses of contemporary life she noticed while there. Today she notes how a traditional festival in New Delhi has changed since her childhood visits.

Raksha Bandhan--the Bond of Protection--is a festival that has been celebrated in India for years. It's a recognition of the bond between brother and sister, in which the sister ties a special thread around her brother's wrist to show her love and affection. In turn, the brother gifts her a bit of cash and promises to "protect" and take care of her.

When I was a child growing up elsewhere and visiting India over many summers, this holiday would always make me sad since I had no brothers. But it always fascinated me. The custom, however, has grown to include women tying rakhis, or the special threads, on men not related to them. This gesture gives the men the status of brothers. The rakhis themselves used to be simple golden threads, decorated perhaps with a golden flower made of lace, some beads, pearls, or a customary rudraksha bead (a brown seed with religious significance) in the center.

So, opposable thumbs aside, we have more in common with the Japanese Snow Monkey than previously thought.

Perched high in the Japanese Alps, in the village of Jigokudani, is a tranquil retreat for anyone needing some well-deserved R&R. At the Korakukan Inn, visitors can ease into natural hot springs and let the curing waters do wonders - the benefits of which are no longer strictly limited to the human race.

The Korakukan hot springs, originally for the inn's paying guests, also have a regular following of local snow monkeys who often trek from the nearby Jigokudani Monkey Park for a delightful warm-water dip. They're seen here year-round grooming each other or carelessly sprawled out with their arms over the spring's edge. It's during the winter months that their spa rendezvous becomes a notorious habit.

[via Spot Cool Stuff Travel]

Traveler alumnus and Travel Telegraph blogger Emily Haile is spending the next several months in Taiwan, and she sent us a note from her new home.

Before I left home, I looked on Flickr for some photos of Taiwan and was immediately captivated by the photographs of John&Fish.

When I arrived in the city, I sent them a message through Flickr. A few days later, they were driving me to their home overlooking the Waishuangxi River (sometime written Waishuangsi). Fish set out a feast of sushi and sashimi that was entirely vegetarian. They are devout buddhists, and will not eat any kind of flesh. Between bites, they told me about their adventures bird watching in Taiwan.

By day, they work for a software programming company; every weekend they turn into avid birdwatchers, driving around the island and into the mountains in search of kingfishers, grebes, terns, and egrets. John shows me his camera. The lens looks about as long as an elephant's trunk.

The 2009 North Korean Ariang Mass Games were just extended to October 10, Pyongyang reported last week. As it's the only time Americans are allowed into the country (with a four-night limit), more tours are being arranged at Koryo Tours company in Beijing. Friend of IT Ashley Thompson happened to visit Koryo Tours in June and filed this report.

Earlier this summer, while passing the time of an unexpected extra travel day in Beijing, I happened to stumble upon the Pyongyang Art Studio, located in the Chaoyang District near the famous Yashow Clothing Market. Pyongyang Art Studio is part of the Koryo Tours operations, "your PRK tour experts," founded in 1993 by Brits Nicholas Bonner and Josh Green.

Soon after opening, Koryo Tours took the first Westerners to the slopes of Mt. Paekdu. In 1995, more than 100 Koryo tourists arrived in one group to North Korea --  the largest contingent of Westerners to have arrived in the country since the end of the Korean War.

The opening of the Art Studio followed soon after. Today, the building houses the travel office, the gallery, and a store brimming with a broad range of authentic North Korean merchandise. Random items such as North Korean tea, cigarettes, vitamins, translations of books by Kim Jong Il, propaganda posters, specialty honey liquor and old maps of Pyongyang lined the stuffed shelves. This is the absolute closest I'm going to get to North Korean culture, I thought to myself. I bought some postcards and books and then headed to the art gallery, which featured an exhibition of North Korean film posters.

Koryo's co-founder Nicholas Bonner has produced three documentaries on the Hermit Kingdom since 1996. One of the films, which was featured in the poster gallery, is 2003's "A State of Mind." It follows two young gymnasts as they go through the grueling preparations for the country's annual Mass Games, a dazzling display of hundreds of thousands of acrobats, not performing for medals but rather for glorifying and giving hope to the country. Another featured movie was the story of a young woman who entered the sexist work-world of North Korean barbers, an esteemed profession in the country, as it's recommended that North Korean men have a haircut every 15 days.

Movies ranged in date from the '60s to the present, and nearly all had been approved, and perhaps heavily rewritten, by the Dear Leader or the Great Leader.

While perusing the gallery, I was able to chat with Koryo's Hannah Barraclough, who has made more than 30 trips to North Korea in the last three years leading tours. I asked her what it's like to be one of the estimated 2,000 annual foreign visitors to go to North Korea, and about the misconceptions of the planet's most mysterious country, and the stipulations for American tourists.

Continue reading for Hannah's interview...

For many people, Southeast Asia conjures up images of ancient stone temples, vibrant colors, spicy cuisine and warm, musky rains breathing life into lotus ponds.

But imagine instead hiking for miles shin-deep in mud, fending off bloodsucking leeches and existing on a diet of tarantulas and cockroaches, while risking infection, heatstroke and malaria. Not exactly your typical camping trip. For most people, such an excursion would sound treacherous and even insane, but for young herpetologist Perry Wood Jr.  it's simply a passionate pursuit of knowledge in the name of science.

When Perry (aka JR) Wood began studying Southeast Asian amphibians and reptiles more than eight years ago, he never imagined the rough trails and beautiful landscapes his fieldwork would lead him to. As a graduate biology student specializing in taxonomy and molecular systematics, Wood regularly makes trips to Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia in an effort to identify new species in what he explains is an understudied region for herpetological diversity.

When I was three years old, I made my first trip to the Philippines where my family is from and still resides today. The geometrically stunning rice terraces and lakeside volcanoes paint a landscape bound to awe anyone who's lucky enough to get a glimpse of it. But for me it's always been the sea, that great expanse of water and marine life surrounding the islands, which even twenty years after my first visit, still bears a spellbinding magnificence unmatched by anything else I've encountered in my travels. So when Philippine President Gloria Arroyo visited National Geographic headquarters last week to discuss the Coral Triangle Initiative, it alarmed me to think that this natural beauty could ever be in jeopardy.

The 2.3 million square miles of the Coral Triangle, which includes the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, is home to more than 75% of the world's known species of coral, 3,000 species of fish, six of the world's seven species of sea turtle, as well as whales, dolphins and coelacanths, a fish believed to predate dinosaurs. But the vanishing reefs could face peril if we fail to sustain them.