Earlier this month, Kraig reported on plans to scatter the ashes of famous Mount Everest climber Sir Edmund HIlary at the peak as a final tribute to the famous mountaineer. Now according to the BBC, it appears those plans have been canceled after concerns were raised by the Buddhist community.
Apa Sherpa, who is shooting for a record-breaking 20th climb of Mount Everest, was planning to honor HIlary by bringing his ashes to the top. But a group of Buddhist lamas has warned that doing so would bring bad luck to Everest, a mountain which is considered sacred by local sherpas. It was also feared that leaving the ashes at the summit would set a dangerous precedent, encouraging other climbers to leave remains at the top. Hilary’s ashes will instead be kept at a nearby monastery.
Edmund Hilary passed away in 2008 at the age of 88. He and his sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first climbers known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.
Nature has the power to amaze. From towering mountains to vast grasslands and immense oceans, there’s a world of natural wonder out there waiting to explore. But sometimes the outdoor world isn’t just amazing – it’s also downright weird. Mysterious sliding rocks, bizarre sinkholes…even lakes where you can float. We’ve put together a list of 17 strange natural wonders around the world. What strange forces are at work here? You’ll just have to read on to found out…
Lake Hévíz – Hungary Lake Hévíz is Europe’s largest thermal lake and a destination for people looking to rest their bones and experience the water’s alleged healing powers. The spring-fed lake is rich in blue and green algae, with good bacteria to aid in curing human ailments. Lake Hévíz is able to keep its own water fresh because a spring cave beneath the lake replenishes the entire body of water in a single day day. The lake’s strong health tourism industry has helped Hévíz continue to thrive.
Stone Forest – China
China’s landscape is rugged, yet lush and full of personality. The Stone Forest is no exception. Tall rocks shoot out of the hills like skyscrapers forming a city skyline. Most of the rocks are weathered to a smooth surface, but some formations look like animals and people. At times the rock formations move seamlessly between trees, blending in to create a scene almost like a painting.
Sarisarinama Sinkholes – Venezuela
The four sinkholes at Sarisarinama are very large and form almost perfect circles on the summit of Venezuela’s flat-topped mountains. Besides the geological abnormality, the unique plant and animal life found on the floor of the sinkholes is an object of much research by scientists – some species are found no other place on Earth.
La Brea Tar Pits – California
In the middle of Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits shelter millions of years of history beneath their murky surface. Tar seeps up from the bedrock to form a pool. The pool is then covered in water, making an attractive watering hole for animals. When an animal fell into the pit, La Brea became its final resting place. The museum at La Brea holds the preserved bones of a stork, a prehistoric wolf and even a mammoth.
Dead Sea – Israel and Jordan
This giant salt lake on the border of Israel and Jordan is unique for two reasons: extreme saltiness and elevation. The Dead Sea is one of the saltiest lakes in the world and the resulting in an added buoyant lift for visitors. Even inexperienced swimmers easily float atop the water. In addition to the salt, a hefty concentration of other minerals increase the therapeutic value of the water, and many visitors can be seen rubbing it on their skin. The Dead Sea is also the Earth’s lowest surface elevation; the resulting high atmospheric pressure is beneficial for people suffering from respiratory illness. Visitors often feel a renewed sense of energy due to the increased levels of oxygen.
Luray Caverns – Virginia
The Luray Caverns were first discovered at the end of the 19th Century and now offer commercial tours. Stalactites and stalagmites form draped curtains throughout the caverns. One drip formation in the cave looks like a pair of eggs, sunny side up. The shallow underground lake in Luray Caverns, called Dream Lake, is perfectly still and creates an immaculate reflection of the stalactites hanging above. This illusion makes it seem infinitely deeper than its actual depth of twenty inches.
Chocolate Hills – Philippines
Out of a generally flat landscape, the conical Chocolate Hills rise from the floor like their candy kiss namesake. During the wet season, they are covered in a fresh carpet of green grass that looks like moss. When rainfall drops off for the dry season, the grass turns to a milk chocolate brown. The limestone hills were carved by erosion and are known to contain ancient marine fossils.
Arches National Park – Utah Arches National Park in eastern Utah is known for the reddish-orange sandstone rock formations that adorn the landscape. Shapes have been created very slowly over time and the most famous feature at Arches National Park is Delicate Arch. Other arches include Landscape Arch and the Double Arch, branching from the same base in different directions. Surprisingly, Arches isn’t all about the arches. Tall, thin sandstone slabs stick up out of the ground like fins, or blades to form the Organ and Park Avenue.
Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa – California Racetrack Playa is a dried up lake bed in Death Valley National Park. Rocks appear in the middle of the playa with a trail behind them, making it look like the rocks have slid across the surface. There are no animal or human prints around the rocks to indicate they were pushed or pulled. Nobody has ever seen the rocks move and there is no concrete explanation for their movement.
Giant’s Causeway – Ireland
The hexagonal basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, formed millions of years ago by volcanic eruptions, are a natural wonder of geology and mythological lore. The columns look like prisms rising from the ground on the northern Irish coast. Finn MacCool, a giant of Irish legend, is said to have built the causeway with his own hands to make a bridge to Scotland.
Bonneville Salt Flats – Salt Lake City, Utah
Back before the Grand Canyon was even a blip on the radar, most of the western United States was underneath the Great Salt Lake. Though a portion of the lake still exists (one of the only landlocked bodies of salt water on Earth), most of the lake is gone. Left behind are the Bonneville Salt Flats miles of flat, barren, white landscape. The white dusting is actually salt, left behind after millions of years in the Great Salt Lake.
Penitentes – Andes Mountains, Argentina.
Similar to underground stalactites in caves, the Penitentes are spiky formations of ice and snow formed in vast fields along high-altitude mountainsides in South America. The formations, which seem to look like religious men bent in prayer, derived their name from the Spanish word for “penitent.” Some of the most famous fields cover the high peaks of the Andes Mountains in southern Argentina. Pine Mountain Laccolith – Southern Utah
Dominating the skyline of St. George, Utah is Pine Mountain – the world’s largest laccolith. A laccolith is a volcano that erupts from the bottom. Due to oddities in the sedimentary nature of the rock, the lava spills out of the bottom of the mountain. Though an eruption hasn’t happened for thousands of years, the lava beds still cover this seemingly contradictory landscape.
Molokini Crater – Maui, Hawaii
Millions of years ago, a volcano erupted just off the coast of the tranquil waters of Maui, leaving a moon-shaped shelf named Molokini that’s become a marine-lover’s playground. Cradling a reef just off coast, it’s an ideal location for snorkelers and divers to get a glimpse of tropical sea life – just don’t touch the turtles!
The Grunion Run – Huntington Beach, CA
Each year, the circle of life is on display as the Grunion fish of Southern California come ashore to lay their eggs in the sand. The sardine-like fish ride the waves inland by the thousands giving a silver glint to the shoreline.
Devil’s Tower – Wyoming
Although Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway is a remarkable example of the pristine beauty of nature’s own architecture, the largest group of columnar basalt is Devil’s Tower in eastern Wyoming, a staggering mesa rising 1267 feet above the natural landscape. Though the vertical cooling pattern of lava is the scientific reasoning behind columnar basalt, the Devil’s Tower appears to defy reason.
Red Tides – Florida’s Gulf Coast
Its impossible to predict the exact time and place, but one of the oddest natural wonders in our oceans happens in Florida’s Gulf Coast when dangerous algae “bloom” and expand in the water. Millions of the organisms have to be present for the event to occur, but when they are, they create a mystical wonder of reds, purples, browns, and even greens in the coastal waters.
As I strode into the restaurant, relieved to take a brief respite from the chaos that is Saigon’s streets, a warm smile greeted me. A young man, probably in his late teens, led me to a table and handed me a menu. There were fried pork ribs with lemongrass, ginger-braised chicken, steamed prawns in coconut juice. Not terribly surprising southeast Asian fare. But this was a surprisingly different restaurant.
People don’t come to Vietnam to eat. At least not historically. They came for other reasons. The Khmer, the Chinese, the French, the Americans came to occupy, to settle, to pillage, to exploit, to push back, or various other things that didn’t always sit well with the locals. And while they didn’t come for the food, their influence on Vietnamese cuisine is now indelible. The Khmer influence can be seen-or, rather, tasted-in the south, the Chinese in the north, the French all over the place (banh mi, anyone?).
But, like a lot of people these days, I came to Vietnam to eat. And I ate everything I could that didn’t previously bark. Including the wince-inducing stuff: rat, snake, pigs blood and various “other” parts of mammals. The Vietnamese are fiercely omnivorous and, like other southeast Asians, they don’t waste much of a plant or animal.
And while I left thinking that I could spend a decade or so eating my way through the country-the steaming bowls of pho in the morning, street cart sticky rice flavored with exotic fruits, the sweet, caramelized clay pot dishes have left me dreaming for more long after I departed-there was something else that was tugging at me: namely the estimated 19,000 street kids in Vietnam.
And the restaurant I was eating at in Saigon was trying to do something about it. Welcome to Huong Lai, a pioneer of sorts, not because of the acclaimed food it serves, but because of the employees. They’re all street kids, orphans whose first years of life were one of begging for money and sustenance.
Haong Lai isn’t the only restaurant and training center in Vietnam to turn streets kids into culinary stars. Koto, in Hanoi, has been doing the same. There’s also a similar school/restaurant in Cambodia. And they’re not just learning how to prepare spring rolls. They’re trained in cooking western dishes as well as other aspects of restaurant hospitality and they’re taught English.
The latest to throw its toque into the kitchen is Streets International. Located in Hoi An, on the central coast of Vietnam, Streets was founded by Neal F. Bermas, a resident of Hoi An and New York City who teaches at New York University. The school and restaurant, located smack in the center of UNESCO-protected Hoi An, received donations from various international organizations as well as an annual charity event in New York City. Which was where I caught up with Bermas last week. While the attendees were munching on food from restaurants such as Blue Smoke, Cabrito, Tabla, and Colicchio & Sons, Bermas told me about that light bulb moment for Streets: “It was my first night in Saigon over a decade ago and I came across these streets kids. They had these dark yet beautifully compelling eyes. And as time went on, I just kept coming back to that image.” Bermas hopes to expand the model to other parts of Vietnam and even southeast Asia.
Which got me wondering: what is it about southeast Asia, in general, and Vietnam, in particular, that has bred this great idea to deal with poverty? Bermas had an intriguing answer: “This model works particularly well in so-called developing countries when the tourism industry is just starting to take off.” And in Vietnam it’s doing just that. Tourism is up fifteen percent in the last few years. The economy grew last year by four percent, which is a lot considering most of the world’s economic activity has slowed to a crawl.
Because Streets International is about a year old, no one has graduated from the 18-month training program yet. But the endeavor can already be called a success. Not just for taking a handful of kids off the streets. As Bermas told me last week, Nam Hai, the upscale resort on the coast near Hoi An, has said they would hire the entire first batch of trainees.
Now that’s well worth tucking in to a bowl of steamed prawns in coconut juice during your next visit to Vietnam for.
13-year old mountaineer Jordan Romero set off for Kathmandu yesterday, where he hopes to not only become the youngest climber to ever summit Mt. Everest but the Seven Summits as well.
We first mentioned Jordan more than a year ago. At the time, he had already well into his quest to climb the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, having completed Kilimanjaro (Africa), Elbrus (Europe), Aconcagua (South America), Denali (North America), and Kosciuszko (Australia). He has since added Carstensz Pyramid in Papua New Guinea, considered the highest peak in Oceania to his resume. That leaves just Everest and Mt. Vinson in Antarctica. left to conquer. If successful on Everest, he’ll go for Vinson in the fall.
Jordan and his team, which includes his father, will be climbing from the North Side of Everest, located in Tibet. The South Side falls under the jurisdiction of Nepal, who enforce an age requirement of 16 years or older on all climbers, but the Chinese have no such restrictions on their side of the mountain, which is why Jordan and company have elected to take on the mountain from the North. Curiously, the team is also making the climb with out the support of guides.
A few days back, we had a little fun here at Gadling with a host of April Fool’s Day travel posts. My contribution to those posts was written in the spirit of good fun of course, but was also meant as a bit of social commentary. While I completely respect what Jordan has accomplished as a climber already, I’m not a huge fan of the recent trend to have younger and younger kids attempting dangerous things in order to claim some dubious “youngest” record. Climbing Everest will be unlike any of the other mountains that he has summitted, and spending time above 26,000 feet, dubbed the “Death Zone” in popular culture, is dangerous for a full grown man or woman. It could be potentially disastrous for a young, still developing teen. Hopefully everything will go well, and he’ll come home safe and sound. Reaching the summit is optional, coming back home is not.
For all the great things happening in Flickr user leahgoodman’s photo, it’s the colors that first catch your eye. The faint sky blue of the rickety rowboat pairs nicely with the flowing cloak of the mysterious figure sitting on the riverbank, tying the objects together in a kind of visual interplay. Does this unknown person own the boat? What are they thinking about? Like the very best photos, it’s a series of questions left to the viewer to decide.
Have any photos of mysterious cloaked characters from your own travels? Add them to our Gadling group on Flickr. We might just pick your shot as our Photo of the Day.