These natural clearings filled with wildlife from the Congo Basin are the holy grail among mammal watchers. For me, Dzanga Ndoki (the Central African Republic part of this transnational site) was to be a splurge visit in March 2020 – but it became my Covid travel disaster. After the park reopened, I still wanted to go but the prices rose beyond belief. Fortunately, I found a group tour operator wanting to do it for much less by entering overland from Cameroon.

This site also had been unreviewed so far on this website. Sangha Trinational WHS consists of 3 parks, of which the one in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) surprisingly is the best equipped to receive visitors. Lobéké in Cameroon is rundown, while Nouabalé-Ndoki in Congo is temporarily closed and rumours have it that they want to turn it into a luxury destination. I wrote a Getting There topic on the Forum to elaborate on the practicalities of visiting the park in the C.A.R. This review further deals with what you can expect there.

Our first day was spent at Dzanga Bai, the most famous forest clearing, known as ‘the Serengeti of the Forest’. It’s …

The topic of foreigner pricing (“WHS where differential pricing is practiced between local and foreign visitors”, a.k.a. dual pricing) has already been discussed a few times on this website. But with 117 entries in the connection (and I am sure there are many more), it seems to be a common and accepted practice globally. So in this post, I’d like to draw a few conclusions from the data we have gathered. It also gives an insight into the pricing of WHS overall, as we managed to collect exact and fairly recent entry fees of almost 10% of all WHS.

Wealthy countries practicing foreigner pricing

Despite the practice being discriminatory and thus morally wrong, in the earlier discussions some people gave understanding to the poorest countries for introducing higher prices for foreigners (or maybe discounts for locals). Cambodia and Angkor is the classical example here. But are there also wealthier countries that do it? I used the UN’s country classification , which ranks countries from High Income to Low Income, with Upper Middle Income and Lower Middle Income in between, to verify this.

It turned out that, sporadically, a few High Income countries use it: on the list are examples from …

2023 was my second year of full-time travel (read here about Day 0 and Year 1 ). It felt like a routine already, as I found the right balance between being home and away and I can now budget (travel) expenses like no other!

There were memorable trips to Madagascar, Pakistan and Zimbabwe (photo 3 shows a "bender" at Mana Pools NP), and I finally got to see what New York is in reality. You can find my updated Trip Planner here , including the actual ‘results’ of 2023. With an added total of 63 (44 new + 19 from the WHC), I am still right on track to reach 1,100 visited WHS before 2028.

Things I learned about WH Travel this year:

The best ones for the quest are the “free” ones

The ones that help the most to stay on track are the ones gained from a WHC session. In 2023 we had a double session with a lot of new inscriptions, of which I already visited 19. These made my total go up significantly without additional cost and compensated for the more expensive trips I did this year.

Going the extra mile

Some of my best memories …

It’s the final day of the year – time to squeeze in another yearly overview of the reviews submitted to this website. 2023 was the year of a double WHC which gave most of us large numbers of bonus ‘ticks’.

Community Travel

Zoë (finally) has taken the top spot and crossed the mark of 1,000 visited WHS as the first on this website. Slowly we see that the people who still travel a lot are taking over the high rankings from the names we have become so familiar with over the past 10-20 years. The Top 10 was entered by Roman , climbing from position 16 to 9. Overall there was a strong rise in totals, aided by the high number of new WHS that were added during this year's double WHC session.

Memorable Reviews

We saw 510 new reviews published, 60 more than last year. 85 different people wrote them. I ( Els ) wrote the most (71!), followed by Clyde (42), Zoë (33) and Timonator (27).

We saw the first reviews for Dholavira ( Randi & Philipp ), Rachid Karami International Fair ( Christravelblog ), Lorentz NP and Ogasawara (both …

I had been looking forward to my trip to Pakistan , one of the few countries that were still on my “must-see” list, and the reality surely met my high expectations. People are friendly (they give you a bit more space than their Indian neighbours), the food is very good (if you like meat) and the country looks quite cheerful thanks to the colourful decorations of vehicles and even food stalls. Pakistan has become more accessible since it eased its visa requirements a few years ago to a fairly simple e-visa, and the region has seen less violence since 2021 although there is plenty of internal conflict left . Herewith are some tips for travelling to Pakistan as a WH Traveller.

1. Take in many of its TWHS

Pakistan only has 6 WHS to date. All are fully deserving and are rated between 3 and 4 stars by our community. But India, with whom it shared most of its history except for the past 75 years, has managed to get to 42 WHS! So Pakistan which is about a quarter of its size could easily aim for 10-12 as there is plenty of potential still lingering on its Tentative List.

…

The Monuments of Uch Sharif are on Pakistan’s Tentative List under the cumbersome name of ‘ Tomb of Bibi Jawindi, Baha'al-Halim and Ustead and the Tomb and Mosque of Jalaluddin Bukhari ’. They comprise a cluster of three stand-alone monumental tombs and a mosque-mausoleum in the town of Uch Sharif. They’re probably the most colourful sights you will encounter in Pakistan, and posting a photo of its iconic Bibi Jawindi tomb anywhere on social media will attract countless ‘likes’ from those who have never seen it.

Uch Sharif is considered the cradle of the ‘shrine worship culture’ that is still very present in today’s Pakistan. In the later Middle Ages, religious missionaries and scholars came from as far as Bukhara to Uch Sharif to convert local tribes to Islam. When they died, a tradition was started of veneration of their tombs and local people wanted to be buried close to them.

The four buildings of this ensemble stand together on a low hill adjacent to a river, which caused them severe flood damage in 1817. The compound has kept its original desert-like conditions and is mostly covered with small cemented graves.

The visit starts …

There are some WHS on the List where it is hard to imagine what they are about and what they look like before you visit it. For me that always has been the case with “ Makli, Thatta ”. What’s Makli and what’s Thatta? Well, Makli means “little Mekkah” and is the name of the site, while Thatta is the name of the city it belongs to. The site is usually described as a necropolis, but I believe it is not really about the number of burials. It stands out for its set of monumental tombs and mausolea created in different styles by local dignitaries, who wanted to be buried near the shrine for the Sufi scholar Shaikh Jamali.

Makli was already inscribed in 1981, which seems a little early as although it is a nice site to visit it can hardly be seen as globally influential in any way; it’s more the eclectic result of a local building tradition. There is little info to go on why exactly it was made a WHS. It went through a re-focus stage post-inscription (including a name change) as described here , as the earliest incarnation seemed to suggest …

I just spent 8 days in Saudi Arabia. It hadn’t been high on my travel wish list, but it presented itself as a convenient stop-over on my way to Pakistan. You can find my itinerary here . I am glad that I did it, despite the pitfalls described below: Saudi Arabia never has been as open before as it is now. Maybe it’s better to go in 5 years when they have ‘finished’, but who knows which way the political winds will blow then? Herewith are some tips for travelling to Saudi Arabia as a WH Traveller.

1. They don’t adhere to the WHS Commandments

Saudi must be among the worst followers of the WHS Visitor Commandments – you’ll hardly find anything that could pass for a plaque, most sites are first inscribed and only afterward made ready to receive tourists, there can be unannounced closures when bigwigs show up and they don’t like you looking around on your own at archeological sites. There usually is some on-site explanation available in Arabic and English, but it is generally of little depth.

They seem to have created a few Commandments of their own though, such as: “Don’t open a site before …

Nabatean Hegra may be its main tourist attraction nowadays, but Saudi Arabia’s Unique Selling Point is being the custodian of the two holy sites of Islam: Mecca and Medina. No less than four TWHS are directly related to the pilgrimages to these sites. There are three Hajj Road serial transnational sites, of which the Darb Zubaydah seems to be prepared at the moment as a joint nomination between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. And there’s also the Hejaz Railway , which despite the “transport” theme also is closely associated with the Islamic pilgrimage route. The Islamic pilgrimage routes probably are the closest the Saudis will get to putting forward its holy sites as WHS (Mecca’s Kaaba is #9 of our Missing List ).

My first encounter with this subject was at the National Museum of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh. At the moment they are hosting a special exhibition called ‘Hijrah’. It tells the story of how the Prophet Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina to avoid persecution. Although this seems like a difficult and intangible theme, they found clever solutions to bring the message across also to non-Muslim visitors. Large video screens show his journey day by …

At first, I thought it was only me, noticing how many WHS I have visited using a bicycle as my main means of transport, as I practically grew up on a bicycle in the Netherlands. But then I saw other community members doing it too – even Hubert from mountainous Austria! And long-distance cyclist Michael Ayers has proven that you can cycle almost anywhere. There are just so many WHS where a bicycle is the right kind of transport.

What advantages does a bicycle have?

If you have to choose between walking and cycling, the advantage of a bicycle is that it takes you just that bit further. It’s ideal for distances between 15 and 40km and perfect for exploring serial sites or cultural landscapes that are spread out.

Choosing between driving and cycling, a bicycle will give you of course that breath of fresh air. But also more of a ‘feel’ for a certain area (cultural landscapes again come to mind), as you move through it more slowly. You can also take smaller paths and don’t need to worry about parking. And it’s cheaper to rent a bike than a car.

Which …