Travel and Adventure
Your Guide to the Persian New Year
Nowruz ushers in the Persian New Year and the summer solstice – a time for feasting, music, and watching buzkashi, offering visitors the ideal opportunity to immerse themselves in local culture.
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Heritage
Making Tracks
The Orient Express has the literary cache, and India’s Palace on Wheels has the opulence, but the greatest train journey on Earth is without doubt the Trans-Siberian Railway. For more than 100 years, locomotives – first steam trains, then diesel and electric engines – have run the 9,289 kilometres between Moscow and Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. The world’s longest railway crosses seven time zones and the journey takes at least a week to complete.
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Heritage
On the Silk Road
A caravan of camels crossing the desert is the romanticised epitome of the Silk Road. Where were they going? What were they carrying? Why were they even journeying at all?
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Travel and Adventure
Leaving More Than Footprints
Working with Pathein University and the Myanmar Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry, Worldview International Foundation (www.wif.care) was asked to restore acres of barren forest, and by the end of 2015 they had rescued and planted no fewer than 2.5 million trees. The site was completely transformed, and it is now known as the Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park.
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Travel and Adventure
A Pilgrim’s Progress
Follow five of Asia’s most majestic pilgrimages – from Japan’s snow country, to the mountainous vistas of Tibet and Sri Lanka, and trace religious passages through India and Turkey.
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Heritage
A History of Violence
You have heard of Alexander the Great and Hannibal, but it’s likely that the greatest general and military strategist of all has passed you by. Subotai led the largest and most devastating horse-borne force ever seen, and conquered territories stretching from Hungary and Syria in the West, to Vladivostok and the Sea of Japan in the East.
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Heritage
Lighting the Way of Faith
Before Abraham and what we know as the three Abrahamic faiths, there were already those who worshipped one god: the Zoroastrians, or Parsis, as many of the modern-day adherents of the religion are known. A small community, who traditionally marry amongst themselves and have no doctrinal requirement to proselytise, their history and the tenets of their faith are poorly understood by outsiders. But the impact of their ideas over the past 3,000 years has been nothing short of revolutionary.
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Heritage
The Way of the Gods
Shinto is ‘the way of the gods’ and, just as it is for many mortals, sumo wrestling is a favourite pasttime. For nearly 2,000 years, sumo wrestlers have performed their martial art, first in intimate shrines, and then in stadiums before thousands of spectators. At least as early as the 3rd century AD, the wrestlers would perform complex rituals to purify both their body and their spirit, and then fight for the entertainment of the gods during the matsuri (religious festivals). It was a sacred act of ritual, not a sport.
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