If you ask me whether the ancient cities in Mali are worth the long haul, my answer is blunt: yes for Djenné, yes for Timbuktu if you do the reading first, and not yet for Gao. That verdict comes from weighing excavation reports, UNESCO condition…
I have spent eleven years leading photography expeditions to famous geographic landmarks on five continents, and the honest answer to the question everyone asks me is uncomfortable: global recognition and personal reward are rarely the same thing. The icons that dominate postcards are usually crowded,…
I’ve spent the better part of a decade working from whatever UNESCO World Heritage sites list I could find, and after nineteen countries the honest conclusion is this: it is a nomination-driven catalog, not a ranking of the world’s greatest places. Countries nominate what their…
Twelve UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Austria sounds like a tidy long weekend on paper, and that was my first mistake. I crammed Salzburg, Vienna and Hallstatt into three days, spent half of it on platforms, and remember the trains better than the towns. The…
