Articles tagged “adventure travel”

Filter the Adventure Travel category by popular activities:

Biking, Camping, Climbing, Hiking, Paddling, Scuba diving, Skiing, Surfing

Exploring a Somali camel market

by Sean McLachlan on

Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, is built on an oasis used by nomads since ancient times. It’s been a center for camel and livestock trading for centuries. Hargeisa’s camel market, the Senlaola Hoolaha as it’s called in Somali, is a huge and dusty field a mile from the city center. Most of the day it´s used as playground by schoolchildren, but between 7 and 12 a.m. the scene is taken over by camels, goats, sheep, cows, their respective owners and of course prospective owners.

It´s a tumultuous place. The men are inspecting the animals or standing in groups sharing the latest gossip. The women have occupied a big part of the field for their own business of selling food to hungry traders. Some have traveled for days to sell their goods. The camel herders, who generally travel without any motorized transport, have been traveling for as long as two weeks and from as far away as the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia.

A camel can cost anything from 300 to 1000 dollars depending on its age, strength, and of course the buyer’s ability to haggle. All camels have been marked with the owner’s special sign to avoid any conflicts about ownership.

%Gallery-93036%Not everyone can learn how to recognize a good camel, says Hassan, who has been buying and selling camels and goats at Senlaola Hoolaha for twenty years. He enthusiastically shows me where to check on the camel’s back to know its age and health. You have to know how what to look for or you’ll get cheated, he says. Many camel herders give their camels extra water to make them look fatter than they really are, and only a well-trained eye can spot the difference.

To make sure that your bargaining doesn’t affect anyone else’s deals, an intricate technique of hand signs has been developed. The two businessmen put a shawl over their interlocked hands, and the bids are communicated by touch. The negotiations usually last from five to ten minutes but can take up to half an hour. The system might seem complicated at first glance, but the logic is simple and easy to learn. Every finger has a number. All the numbers from 1 to 9 represented. One, for example, would be described by grabbing the index finger at the tip. In the case bigger numbers are needed a zero can be added by grabbing a bigger part of the finger. One finger can therefore describe 1, 10, 100, 1000. Since both parties know the general price for a goat or a camel the use of zero is limited.

If you’ve ever been to the camel market at Birqash, near Cairo, you’ll probably notice one significant difference. While in Egypt you’ll constantly be followed around by hustlers, in Hargeisa you won´t be offered anything but long gazes of amazement. Here you are the only tourist around and you´ll soon find yourself, not the camels, becoming the main attraction.

(Note: the photos and much of the text in this post are the work of Leo Stolpe, a Swedish photojournalist who joined me on some of my Somaliland adventures. I merely edited the text and added a few things. Unfortunately, the program I’m using doesn’t allow me to put him in the byline. Check out Leo’s website for more great photos from his epic travels in east Africa.)

Follow chef Jamie Oliver through culinary Stockholm

by Grant Martin on

One of our favorite cities over at Gadling is Stockholm, Sweden and one of our favorite chefs, Jamie Oliver. So imagine our glee when discovering that Mr. Oliver had put together a slide show and narrative from his recent journey into Scandinavia.

Fully available over at the Guardian, Chef Oliver’s slideshow is a love story written to the city, where he meanders in and out of lush, cultural descriptions and delicious, gastronomic profiles in his trademark, boyish tone. All of this is set against the backdrop of a beautiful series of Stockholm photos, from the striking, colorful waterfront to food and families strewn across the country.

Your grandparent’s slideshow, this is not.

It’s almost enough to encourage a wayward blogger to drop his belongings, jump on a 767 and fly directly to Stockholm, just in time for the Midsommar festival and for the long, sunny nights of summertime in northern Europe. Or perhaps that’s some not-so-creative foreshadowing.

Space tourism already getting cheaper!

by Kraig Becker on

Space tourism may still be a few years from taking off (pun fully intended!) but competition is already bringing the price down dramatically. According to this story from MSNBC, a company known as Space Adventures has partnered with Armadillo Aerospace to make space tourism relatively affordable. In this case, “affordable” means $102,000, which is almost half the cost of rival Virgin Galactic’s proposed flights on SpaceShipTwo.

Unlike Virgin Galactic’s two-stage space plane design, Armadillo is developing a more traditional vertical launch system. Tourists will sit inside a capsule that will be propelled by a rocket 62 miles into the sky, taking them to the very edge of space. Once they reach that altitude, they’ll be treated to five minutes of weightlessness and a 360º view of the Earth below. The entire flight time will be less than an hour in length, but the price tag does include several days of training as well.

Space Adventures already has a track record for sending tourists into space. The company has partnered with the Russian Space Agency to send clients to the International Space Station, with several very rich travelers spending upwards of $35 million to take the journey. In those cases however, the space tourist actually spends several days living aboard the ISS.

Both Virgin Galactic and Armadillo are currently conducting tests on their flight systems, and while neither company knows when they’ll begin sending regular flights into space, most believe it won’t happen until 2012 or later. Who knows, by then there may be a third privately owned space tourism company that will be driving prices down even further.

So, what do you think? Would you pay $100,000 for a chance to go into orbit?

Hargeisa: a capital in search of a country

by Sean McLachlan on

For a people without an official nation, Somalilanders sure love their flag.

It’s everywhere–painted on doors, flying from government buildings and private homes, hanging from rear view mirrors, worn on belt buckles and even knitted into a cap like this barber is wearing in the photo. Somalilanders are proud of their nation and want everyone to know it.

After sleeping off a grueling ten-hour bus ride to get to the capital Hargeisa, I wake up and see at least a dozen flags from my hotel window. I’m eager to start exploring. I don’t know what to expect. Somalilanders say the capital is safe, but can an unrecognized government next to one of the world’s worst war zones really keep the peace?

My contact in Harar, Muhammed Dake, had assured me, “Hargeisa is safe. Just watch out for two things. Foreigners are offered prostitutes and alcohol. Both are illegal.”

I can handle that. I’ve never paid for sex in my life and if I can’t go without booze for a week, I should go without it forever.

I’m staying at the Oriental Hotel, the country’s oldest, having been built in 1953 when this was still the colony of British Somaliland. After two months in the Horn of Africa it is by far the nicest place I’ve stayed in–clean sheets, good service, new facilities, and water and electricity that never go off. Even before making it into the street I can see the government and investors are getting at least some things right.

The Oriental Hotel is in the center of town next to a large mosque, rows of low concrete buildings housing shops and apartments, and the gold market. It’s here, in the first half hour of my first day, that I get a lesson about the kind of country the Somalilanders have built.

%Gallery-92887%First stop is the money changer, who sits on the ground with a pile of bank notes around him. The Somaliland shilling isn’t internationally recognized, so it fluctuates constantly and hard currency is in big demand. “Hard currency” even includes Ethiopian birr, the currency of their biggest trading partner. You can use it as cash just about anywhere, and every shopkeeper knows the day’s exchange rate. One U.S. dollar is worth about 6,800 shillings, but since the government hasn’t printed notes above 500, any trip to the money changer gives you a gangster-style wad of cash. These exchanges happen in the open without any sign of worry. The money changers do keep the hard currency in their pocket, though.

At the gold market, mesh wire boxes the size of small tables sit by the side of the street displaying chains, rings, and earrings. Most of these “shops” are run by women in niqab, a full face veil made of black cloth. The niqab has become increasingly common in Somaliland and the Muslim parts of Ethiopia in recent years. Gold is handled freely and in the open, despite there being no police around. At one point I see a gold seller showing a tray of earrings to a customer. The customer walks away without buying anything and the jeweler goes off to talk to someone else, leaving the tray on top of her box. I stand a few meters away, watching and wondering what would happen. Will someone run up and grab it? Will another merchant chase down the dealer and tell her to put away her gold? Or will they put it away for her?

What actually happens is what I least expect–nothing. Nobody touches it, and after five minutes the jeweler finally comes back and calmly puts away the earrings.

When I ask Muhammed Dake about this later he shrugs and says, “Nobody steals in the market. It would mean a bullet, and that would mean civil war.”

In Somaliland, even the thieves appreciate stability.

Everyone knows what it could be like. Somaliland became independent in 1960 and a few days later joined Somalia. It was a fatal mistake. Soon the brutal dictator Siad Barre was in power and the Somalilanders tried to break away. Barre’s air force leveled Hargeisa, killing thousands. Somalia disintegrated into dozens of warring factions and Barre’s regime eventually fell. Only Somaliland was able to create a nation. The rest of former Somalia is a living hell of constant warfare. A steady stream of refugees flees to Somaliland looking for a better life.

Hargeisa is a new city, having risen literally out of the ashes of the old one. Every now and then you spot evidence of the past in a heap of rubble or pockmark shrapnel scars on a concrete wall. Most buildings are new and the sound of countless hammers counterpoints with the muezzin’s call over the city.

This place is a traveler’s dream. There’s nothing to see–no museums, no art galleries, virtually no monuments, there are only the people. Ancient ruins and fine art are great, but in any country it’s the people who teach you the most.

In Somaliland a foreigner will have no trouble meeting the locals. In a week I see only half a dozen other Westerners, even the Chinese engineers ubiquitous in the rest of Africa are absent, so I’m a curiosity wherever I go. I cannot walk down Hargeisa’s dusty streets for more than two minutes without someone starting a conversation. If I stop for any length of time a crowd gathers. At times I even block traffic. When I tell them I’m writing about Somaliland the inevitable answer is, “Thank you,” followed by,

“See how safe it is here, don’t forget to tell them that,” or,

“It’s not like the rest of Somalia. Why don’t people understand?” or,

“We need recognition. Then we can get more investment.”

Recognition is on everyone’s mind. Recognition would provide foreign investors, international aid, and dignity. Somaliland doesn’t even have a postal system because the Universal Postal Union won’t recognize it as a nation. Everyone uses private couriers like DHL or the reliable broadband Internet available in most cities. And while the Somali diaspora invests millions in the country, international recognition would bring in international organizations and specialists to help with building infrastructure, dealing with refugees, and tackling poverty. Somaliland has only a fraction of the NGOs that Ethiopia has, and few foreign companies. Yet this region of former Somalia has built up a stable nation with virtually no help from abroad. Meanwhile aid money pours into the chaos to the south, to no visible effect.

So as I wander in and out of shops selling the latest electronics, or through street markets filled with shoppers, or watch workers busy putting up yet another building, I ask myself, “What did these people do wrong? How isn’t this a country?” It’s like suddenly every court in the world decided my wife and I weren’t married, and my son is a bastard.

Who decides these things, and why?

Don’t miss the rest of my series on travel in Somaliland.

Next time: Hargeisa’s camel market!

Enjoy mountain biking and skiing at Whistler this weekend!

by Kraig Becker on

Outdoor enthusiasts are in for quite a treat this weekend as the Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort, in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, opens its mountain bike park for the summer season. As of Saturday, May 15th, sixteen trails and two skills centers will be open for riders, who can transition from their bikes to their skis, all in one very active afternoon.

With one of the longest ski seasons in North America, Whistler is a great destination for spring skiing. A number of the higher altitude ski runs remain open even as we approach mid-May. But at the lower elevations, the trail crews have been hard at work preparing the mountain bike trails for the first riders of the year. Reportedly, the trails are in excellent shape for the opening this weekend.

Some of the signature trails from the resort that will be available for riders include A-Line, Crank It Up, B-Line, Karate Monkey, Ninja Cougar, and Heart of Darkness, amongst others. Each of these trails is rated for the intermediate rider and higher, so beginners will have to wait a few more weeks for other trails to open. Riders can also hit the Air Dome for a little indoor action as well. The 8400 square foot training facility features foam pits and wooden ramps for a completely different kind of ride.

So, if you’re looking for a little outdoor adventure this weekend, take advantage of a rare opportunity to both mountain bike and ski on the same weekend. How about spending Saturday on the trail, then hitting the slopes on Sunday? Better hurry though, as that snow won’t last forever, and summer is closing in quickly.