Amazing Destinations That Can’t Be Reached By Car

by Kraig Becker on

Modern transportation has made it extremely easy for travelers to get to just about any place in the world. Each day there are international flights that can take us to the four corners of the globe and modern roads and trains will deliver us to the best sights and monuments to be found at our destination, before whisking us back to a comfy hotel, complete with hot and cold running water, room service and a big comfy bed.

But not all of the world’s great places are accessible by vehicle. There are still some amazing destinations that fall way off the beaten path, that will force us to work a little harder to take in their splendor. The Times Online has put together a collection of these places, which they’ve dubbed “Holidays you can’t reach by car“, with a variety of unique locations that you’ll have to trek, paddle, or both if you plan to ever see them in person.

One of the more intriguing places to make their list is the Source of the Ganges River in India. The famous river which plays such an indelible part of Indian culture gets its humbles start at the foot of the Gangotri Glacier, located in the Himalaya at 12,600 feet in the Garhwal region. Anyone wanting to make the journey should be prepared for a ten day trek that will take them high into the mountains, past ancient caves where Hindu practitioners still meditate in their search for enlightenment.
The Omo River in Ethiopia is yet another interesting destination to appear on this list. The 470 mile long stretch of water drops more than 6000 feet over its length before emptying into Lake Turkana, while passing through rocky gorges and over beautiful water falls, offering up great whitewater in the process. The trip can only be made by raft or kayak, and along the way travelers will encounter crocodiles, hippos, and remote villages that still remain mostly untouched by the outside world.

There are plenty more similar treks, climbs and other adventures on the list as well, offering up great destinations that don’t just fall off the beaten path, they leave that path far behind. But for the adventure traveler, there is plenty to like here, with some ideas for your next trip that you may not even have considered before.

Multisport Adventure Destinations From Around the Globe

by Kraig Becker on

When most people go on vacation they like to visit someplace relaxing, maybe spend some time on the beach or hop a cruise ship and spend their days in a deck chair. Others prefer something a bit more active, preferring to hike, bike, and paddle their way across the destination of their choice. For those active travelers, Backpacker Magazine has put together a list of the best multisport destinations on the planet.

This list of adventure getaways spans the globe from Vancouver Island, British Columbia to Queenstown, New Zealand, with several points in between. Each of the places on the list excels in outdoor activities, offering up excellent opportunities for trekking, world class mountain biking trails, and the opportunity to put those kayaking skills to test in a variety of conditions ranging from whitewater to sea water.

Take Vancouver Island for instance. Visitors have the option to sea kayak amongst dolphins and a variety of whale species, including the a pod of orcas that number more than 200. The unique environments of the region also allow hikers to explore rainforests and mountain tops alike, which also happen to offer some great rock climbing. And if that wasn’t enough, Vancouver is famous for its amazing mountain biking trails, with something to offer beginners and advanced riders alike.
But amongst multisport fans, Vancouver Island is hardly a secret. For those looking to go someplace a little less well known, and more exotic as well, check out Darjeeling, India. Backpacker calls the region “one of the world’s great adventure hubs”, and with good reason. The place offers high altitude trekking and mountain biking, going up to altitudes as high as 12,000 feet, and whitewater rafting on the Teesta River, which boasts Class II-IV rapids. And when you’re done playing in the backcountry, you can take a jungle safari on the back of an elephant. Top that Canada!

The other destinations that make the list are equally impressive, and each has their own special attractions to lure in the multisport adventure traveler. Just make sure you pack all the right gear, and don’t worry about getting any rest, you can do that when you get back home.

Justin Timberlake To Climb Kilimanjaro?

by Kraig Becker on

Pop singer Justin Timberlake tells GQ magazine that he intends to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, to raise awareness for that continent’s dramatic water shortage which has hit nearly every nation and has had a tremendous impact on the environment and people that live there.

Timberlake is reportedly already preparing for the challenging trek to the summit of Kili, which stands at 19,340 feet, by working out four times a week in an attempt to increase the efficiency of his cardio system to deal with the altitude. He says the team will be climbing for “a week straight, carrying thirty pounds on our backs”, indicating the daypacks that typical trekkers on the mountain carry.

There are multiple routes to the peak of Kilimanjaro, and it can take as little as five days to summit, although most take eight or nine days to top out. Porters carry the bulk of the equipment, while the climbers usually carry a daypack with a variety of gear, food, water and so on. While it is mostly a non-technical climb, the fairly rapid ascent, and high altitude can be quite daunting for many, which Anne Curry of the Today Show discovered when she made an attempt on the mountain a few months back.

At the moment, there is no word on when Timberlake is expected to make his climb. The spring is traditionally the rainy season in East Africa, so it’s likely to not take place until June or later.

[via Backpacker.com]

Top 10 stupidest laws you could encounter abroad


The inaugural Competitours starts Monday and Team Gadling will be there!

by Kent Wien on

Ok, I think I’m man enough to admit it. My wife and I watch The Amazing Race religiously. Haven’t missed an episode, in fact. I think we both enjoy sitting on the couch while second guessing the strategic choices each team makes as we watch some of their relationships disintegrate while they work their way around the world.

After nearly every episode, I’ve realized two things:

1) I’m incredibly lucky to be married to a non-psychopathic, intelligent and sweet woman who has the ability to see both sides of any argument.

and,

2) I know we could get through the Amazing Race together without destroying our 16-year marriage.

It’s impossible NOT to watch The Amazing Race without imagining how you and your partner, whether it’s your wife, brother, friend, parent or child, would accomplish the tasks and handle the challenges associated with traveling around the world.

Unfortunately, my wife has zero interest in testing our travel skills and marriage on television, and as much as I’d like to do it, I’d never be able to get a month off to fly around the world with her. Not to mention the trouble with finding someone to look after our kids while we’re gallivanting around the globe.

But the day before my 40th birthday in January, the Gadling team received an e-mail from Grant Martin, our editor, telling us about Competitours, an “Amazing Race like” tour of Europe. Close to a dozen teams would be competing for 7 nights at any Starwood hotel (Sheraton, Westin or Le Meridian) worldwide and $700 cash.

Grant wondered if anyone would like to go on the inaugural Competitours trip and write about the experience? Whoever went would have to pay their way, of course – this was no freebie.

I decided to wait until the next day to spring it on my wife.

“Come on, honey! It’d be a blast. And it’s only for a week!”

In a moment of weakness, she caved, probably because it was, in fact my birthday after all. She also gave in to my incessant whining about how I needed the latest Canon digital SLR.

I ran the kiddy-care plan past my sister who lives in Seattle. Could she come to New Hampshire to take care of our girls?

Again, milking the birthday, I was able to convince her that this would be a fun thing to do. I mean, how often do you get to take care of a seven and three-year old, big sis? Shockingly, she agreed.

The event starts on March 15th, when we’ll meet up with ten other teams of two in Newark before heading to our first destination, which has just been revealed. We’re going to Frankfurt, Germany, but we still don’t know the two cities after that.

For us, not knowing the destinations is a big reason to take this trip. While Competitours is a tour operator, they’ve managed to put together a compelling reason to travel, key at a time when many are closely evaluating their expenses.

Each day teams will choose up to 6 of the 9 to 12 tasks in and around a city to accomplish. Bonus points will be given for teams that take on the risk/reward task portion of each challenge. Each task has to be documented with a Flip Mino camera. We’ve chosen the Mino HD version to use.

So my wife and I are excited to report on the launch of this innovative tour here at Gadling, and I’ll enjoy a break from my day job, and the first vacation my wife and I have taken in this decade that didn’t include the kids.

The other teams are coming from all over the country. Five of these teams have been sponsored by FlyerTalk, a forum for frequent flyers that take great pride in racking up miles in rather creative ways. They competed and won the honor of traveling on behalf of FlyerTalk, and some of them have already proven adept at finding out what the third city will be.

So we’ve written off in our minds any chance that we’ll beat these type-A travelers, but we hope to have a great time along the way.

Competitours offers much larger prizes after our inaugural, with one prize that includes 40 nights at a Starwood hotel and $5,000 cash along with a pair of airline tickets. I can’t think of too many travel packages where you can win something so significant.

Follow along with us each day starting on March 16th. We’ll be uploading video of some of the challenges without giving too much of the Competitour secrets away, and introducing you to the other teams.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, take a look at the 8, 10 and 14-day trips Competitours is offering for June, July and August of this year. If you go, please let us know, as we’d love to hear how Competitours evolves from our inaugural/trial/test run that starts this Sunday. Of course, I’ll be using updating everything as it happens via Twitter as well.

For more information, the Chicago Sun Times has written up a nice piece and GoNomad.com that details some examples of the tasks we’ll be given each day. And finally, each team has been encouraged to post about the race from their perspective at BoardingArea.com, so check out our competition. There are some amazing teams competing!

Be sure to follow all of Kent’s posts about the Competitours race.

Kent Wien is a regular here at Gadling with his Cockpit Chronicles and Plane Answers features.

Read what happened for the rest of the week: Pre-departure, departure, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5.

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Grytviken, South Georgia

by Jon Bowermaster on


In the whaling museum here the most fascinating thing to me – after the touch-me-feel-me penguin skin – are the trophies and sports uniforms worn by the different South Georgia whaling station teams which competed against each other in rugby, track and field, ski jumping and more during the heyday of whale killing here.

Grytviken was South Georgia’s first whaling station/factory, set up by Norwegian explorer C.A. Larsen in 1904. Initially only blubber was taken and the carcass discarded resulting in beaches of bones along the coastline which I can still see lying in the shallows off what remains of its main dock. By 1912, seven whaling stations had been established and South Georgia became known as the southern capital of whaling.

That heyday was during the early 1900s, when a variety of whales (blue, fin, sei, humpback and southern right whales) were abundant in South Georgia’s waters during the austral summers, feeding on the massive quantities of krill found on the edge of the island’s continental shelf.

By the late 1920s such shore-based whaling factories on the island declined due the scarcity of whales around the island, followed by a boom in whaling on the high seas. The stations on South Georgia then became home base for repair, maintenance and storage. It was the uncontrolled whaling on the high seas followed – up to two hundred miles off shore – and led to significant reductions in populations of exploited whale species.
Whales were harpooned with an explosive grenade, inflated with air and marked with a flag, radar reflectors, and latterly radios. A catcher would then tow them to a factory ship or shore station. The whale was hauled to the flensing plan. The blubber was removed and boiled under pressure to extract the oil. Meat and bone were separated and boiled. The results were dried and ground down for stock food and fertilizer. Baleen whale oil was the basis of edible, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and chemical products. It was also an important source of glycerol to manufacture explosives.

Between 1904 and 1965 some 175,250 whales were processed at South Georgia shore stations. In the whole of the Antarctica region a low estimate suggests one and a half million animals were taken between 1904 and 1978. Probably the largest whale ever recorded was processed here at Grytviken in 1912, more than one hundred feet long, weighing in at nearly two hundred tons. This intensive hunting reduced the Southern Ocean stock, once the largest in the world, to less than ten percent of their original numbers and some species to less than one percent.

It wasn’t until 1974 that the International Whaling Convention agreed to protect the few remaining species in the Southern Ocean, and whaling here was mostly stopped in 1978. Paul Watson and his Sea Shepard – now Animal Planet heroes apparently, though that has happened this season while I’ve been in Antarctica – are still attempting to dissuade the Japanese from their annual hunt. Today. On occasion, you can spy whales close to shore at South Georgia, as they make a slow recovery, in particular southern right whales and humpbacks.

THE BOSS IS BURIED HERE

On top of the sense of history left at this beach by its whaling history, Grytviken is famous in Southern Ocean lore too for being the burial site of Ernest Henry Shackleton.

In 1921 – six years after successfully rescuing his men off Elephant Island, thanks to the help of the Chilean naval vessel “Yelcho” – he sailed south for what was to be his third Antarctic expedition. Its vague intention was to survey the coastline and carry out somewhat ill-defined science. You get the sense he was just itching to get back down south.

This time out his sailing ship, “The Quest” barely made it to Grytviken and in the early hours of January 5, 1922, he suffered a fatal heart attack here. His body was on its way back to England when the ship carrying him home stopped off in Uruguay and learned that his widow wished her husband be buried on South Georgia. His grave is still the focus of the Whaler’s Cemetery at the end of the beach.

It is tradition to toast “the Boss” – no, not the bard of New Jersey! – with a shot of rum poured onto his grave, which I happily did. Unlike the rest of those buried in the small, white picket-lined cemetery, Shackelton is interned with his head pointing south, towards Antarctica.