In addition to the 3 major Emirates, the UAE comprises 4 other Emirates with a less strong international profile. Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Al Quwain lie at the northern part of the peninsula, just below Oman's Musandam Governorate. They did not get priority on the road to WH nominations. Abu Dhabi had to be first, of course, Dubai had to be second, but failed with Khor Dubai, and Sharjah succeeded with the Faya Palaeolandscape this year. But all other Emirates, except for tiny Ajman, now have sites on the UAE Tentative List. Together with fellow community members Philipp and Jay, I visited nine of them on a two-day road trip in and out of Sharjah City.

The original design of my itinerary, as posted here on the Forum, did not work out in reality. After calculating the driving times, the full loop would be too much to do in one day, so we spread it out across two days while also incorporating the Faya Paleolandscape WHS. Also, to do it Emirate by Emirate made no sense, as their boundaries are all over the place. Below is a day-by-day, chronological account.

Day 1: Center and …

It was less than 2 months ago that I wrote about the first set of findings from adding core zones to our maps. Within 3 months of having started our mapping project, we’re now past halfway, and we have gone beyond UNESCO's estimation of “48% that have no adequate map“.

Progress

So far, 649 different WHS have been given a Core Zone map and 43 countries are covered in full. To my knowledge, this is already by far the best coverage anywhere on the web; the UNESCO World Heritage Centre added "site boundary polygons" to 289 WHS on the official website, according to its latest report (July 2025).

Community members who submit are considerably more skilled than I expected (or have more stamina than I do), and there are also fewer poor maps than I had been led to believe by UNESCO reports. A core zone border hand-drawn on a physical map may look unprofessional, but that does not mean it is bad per se: as long as the outline follows recognizable elements, you can make sense of it.

The mapped WHS were mostly (547, 84%) drawn by community members. Thank you so much _oscar, mmarquez, JayT …

I came across an interesting statistic (thanks, Ian, for sharing) about the countries that have more than 1 WHS per 1 million inhabitants.

These are:

Andorra - Antigua and Barbuda – Armenia – Austria - Bahrein - Barbados - Belgium - Belize - Bosnia Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Cabo Verde – Croatia - Cyprus - Czechia – Denmark - Dominica – Estonia – Fiji - Finland - Georgia – Greece – Iceland - Israel - Italy – Kiribati - Latvia - Lithuania - Luxembourg - Malta - Marshall Islands - Mauritius - Micronesia - Mongolia - Montenegro - North Macedonia - Norway - Palau - Panama – Portugal - Saint Kitts and Nevis - Saint Lucia - San Marino – Seychelles - Slovakia - Slovenia - Solomon Islands - Spain – Suriname - Sweden - Switzerland – Vanuatu - Vatican City

(Considering “every country deserves at least 1 WHS”, the ones with more than 1 are bolded.)

Plotted on a map, the overachievers appear as follows. 32 of these 52 countries are in Europe!

A WHS for every million?

If we continue with the hypothesis that a country is allowed 1 WHS for every 1 million …

Earlier this week, I started to update our Whales connection, but quickly discovered that we don’t have one for Dolphins yet (except for the very specific River Dolphins). I don’t think there’s a reason to have a connection for Whales and not for Dolphins: they are about as common, and while the Whales may be more impressive, the Dolphins often are more fun!

The new connection can be found here. Please find below some findings while compiling it.

What’s the difference between Whales and Dolphins?

They are very closely related: scientifically speaking, a dolphin is a type of toothed whale. However, in common language, "whale" typically refers to the larger cetaceans, especially the baleen whales, while "dolphin" refers to the smaller, typically more agile members of the toothed whale group.

For the connection, I will include all of the Family Delphinidae: Oceanic dolphins. This also includes the Killer Whale, or Orca, the largest species of dolphin. Similarly, Pilot Whales and False Killer Whales are also dolphins.

What’s the best WHS to see Dolphins?

In terms of the number of named species, the Marquesas Islands and the Lagoons of New Caledonia stand out with 11 and 10 different …

I don’t think I am a very anxious traveller and I daydream about the sunny side of travel a lot. But a couple of times a year, I wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, where I am trapped in a travel-related loop that gets worse and worse….

The Chad Visa

I am in line for a visa to Chad. Well, that’s to say the queue with the people all getting their visas is to my right. I am standing on the left side of the desk. For some reason, I am trying to pick up this visa in Germany, not at an embassy, but at a counter that resembles a post office. All the other people are receiving their visas, but there’s something wrong with mine. They have the application with my name on it, but I need to make another appointment. But I only have 3 weeks left! I try to plead, go through other options (Brussels!) in my head… and then wake up.

I visited Chad years ago, so I no longer need a visa for Chad. Also, for my upcoming trips, I have no difficult visa procedures. Could it be because I …

For those in the Gulf region in early November, there's an option to join me on a short (T)WHS-focused trip.

The plan is:

Saturday, November 1, 2025: visit to Faya Paleolandscape WHS (both the Mleiha entrance and the Buhais Geology Park entrance), Mleiha TWHS (some later remains across the street) and Hatta Hill TWHS (shortlisted).

Sunday, November 2, 2025: road trip along the Tentative Sites of the UAE in the north of the peninsula, taking in all Emirates except for Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

You can join for 1 or 2 days, bring your own car or ride with me. All options are open. I will be starting from Sharjah City.

More details can be found here. Send me a message if you want to join.

I made at least two earlier, failed attempts to visit Syria. I rediscovered a Bradt Syria guidebook from 2006 in my bookcase, so I probably tried around 2008-2009, but the trips got cancelled. But as I now can see the end of my “country wish list”, Syria was at the very top. As a destination, it also has the advantages that it does not require a long international flight from Western Europe and that its “Cost per WHS” is low.

So here are some tips for travelling to Syria at the moment (September 2025), with the caveat that the situation on the ground can change at any time for better or worse in this highly flammable region.

It’s open for business

It is hard to find the “best” time to visit Syria, but now it is easier than it has been for years. It still is slightly earlier on my 'Windows of Opportunity' curve (as described here) than I usually do, but it definitely is past the “sights have yet to reopen” stage. All WHS and all major Points of Interest were easily accessible, no need for permits, except for Palmyra and the Aleppo Citadel. There are many checkpoints …

Some three months ago, I announced to the other members of the WH Map Data Working Group: “I found my new summer hobby!”. And I was right: I love learning a new skill and there is a meditative quality to nailing down a core zone in a specific way so it can be shown on our maps.

Here are my main findings after having added core zone maps to some 200 WHS. You can follow the current standings and future progress at the dedicated Forum Topic.

We cannot do all, but we can get far quickly

It seems a gigantic task, but progress has been good. On average, it takes me about 20 minutes to make one. And yes, of course, I am picking the low-hanging fruit first, but most natural WHS (often national parks displayed correctly on any map already) or the more recent cultural ones are easy to do. Cultural landscapes are a drama as they are a WH-specific “fiction”.

We can also import them from other sources: community members who did some mapping in the past, or “professional” resources such as Protected Planet (cooperating with IUCN for the natural WHS but not always correct), or the …

As a final new feature before we take a break to travel in September, we are now introducing Galleries.

They can be reached from each Site Page (WHS and TWHS). On the main site page, a set of featured images remains to introduce the site. It is displayed in a carousel - no longer automated (as it irritated some people), but it can be scrolled through using the arrows to the left and right.

Above these featured images, you will find a link to Gallery. This opens a new page that shows all the photos we have of this site. Look, for example, at the Pile Dwellings Gallery: it shows photos for each location as far as we have them (collected by Philipp, thanks!). The location photos are the same as displayed in the pop-ups when you click on one of our icons on the maps. We also show Point-of-Interest photos, Review photos and other categories if present.

If you click on one of the photos displayed on this page, you can view it in full size and original format.

The feature may need a bit of tweaking here and there, and the captions with …

The prominent role of photos in the new version of this website cannot have gone unnoticed. We even invested in a specific server to store all images! So far, the feedback on this aspect has already been great and hundreds of photos have been added. What I noticed as well is that this feature attracts "new" people: members that had not been that active before, who maybe found writing a review too cumbersome, or just are better photographers than writers. Submitting photos has become a simple and worthwhile contribution to the website.

In this week’s blog post, I’ll zoom in on three examples where you can make a difference with your photos.

1. Fill in the empty blocks on the List pages

Our goal is to have at least one identifying photo for each WHS, Tentative Site and Former Tentative Site. The ones we're still lacking can be recognized on the List pages, where they are displayed as an empty purple block:

Especially if you have visited many Tentative Sites and/or Former Tentative Sites, it can be a fruitful exercise just to browse through these blocks and see where you can add from your private photo collection.

Tip …