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Roatan Marine Park, Honduras: A Scuba Diving and Snorkeling Mecca
Created on September 30, 2011 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterBefore you pack your regulator away, there’s one prime dive destination that may well have eluded your attention. The tropical paradise marine park island of Roatan in Honduras is an underwater world teeming with parrot fish, sea turtles and sharks. Roatan is a small island, 60 miles across, just off the coast of Honduras. The island is a prime dive site—one of the best dive sites in Central America—hosting the second largest reef in the world after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and attracting dive enthusiasts from all over the globe to dive Roatan. While the ocean bed shimmers pure white sand amid the dense reef, sea turtles venture as far into shore as to be almost visible from the beach. You need only snorkel 20–30 ...
Sai Baba Ashram: the Devine Disneyland of South India
Created on July 24, 2009 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterThe Sai Baba Ashram in India is as close to a spiritual Disneyland experience as you can get, minus the guy in the Goofy outfit posing for photos. In fact, the Sai Baba ashram in Puttaparthi defies even Walt Disney’s active imagination with its bright pink, blue, and yellow painted buildings, ice cream stalls and hordes of robed “devotees” from every corner of the globe. It`s like being inside a birthday cake on top of a fully decorated Christmas tree. In terms of ashrams, this one is the world`s gold standard. The town of Puttaparthi, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is what a university is to a university town. In other words, the town is the ashram. It was once a small, remote ...
Up Close and Personal with Alaskan Grizzly Bears
Created on July 24, 2009 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterThe northern U.S state of Alaska is more than a remote icebox of the Arctic Circle and the largest state of America. This is especially true for those interested in bear watching—seeing wild Alaskan grizzly bears in their natural habitat. These huge, beautiful, often misunderstood and underestimated animals roam the great white northern regions; and if the grizzly bear is your creature of choice, then timing and positioning are key to bear watching from a safe yet intimate distance. In the fishing season of southern Alaska, in the town of Seward, grizzly bears come down from the alpine tree line to feed on the abundant sockeye river salmon. Towards the end of the season, the fish are tired and an easy catch—which is perfect for ...
Rub Shoulders with the Dalai Lama at McLeod Ganj in India
Created on June 23, 2009 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterThis mountainside township in the foothills of the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, is Tibetan culture without Chinese officials leaning over your shoulder. The town is mostly populated by Tibetan refugees and their families who had fled their homeland just a few hundred kilometres away on the other side of the Indian border. A little bit of history is noteworthy here. In 1959, following the unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chairman Mao’s occupying Chinese army, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of the Tibetan people escaped across the mountains of Tibet and over the border into India. In doing so, a Tibetan Government in Exile was created in McLeod Ganj with the Dalai Lama as its spiritual leader. Over the years that followed, many more Tibetans ...
Rat Temple at Bikaner
Created on June 23, 2009 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterStrictly speaking, this temple is called the Karni Mata Temple, but to call it by anything other than the “rat temple” would depart from essentially what it is—a temple infested with rats. My mother used to tell me not to feed stray cats as they will come back every day. Try feeding about five thousand rats each day and see what happens. Happy well-fed rats will breed faster than their unfed brethren, which in rat terms is extremely fast! My bus arrived at the Rat Temple on the northern ridge of Rajasthan at 4 a.m. from Pushkar. I alighted into a dark and desolate dust bowl along with the three travellers I met at the bus stop. There was no one. Not even a rat—yet! ...
Varanasi: The Sensory Bomb of Hindu India at Peak Rush Hour
Created on June 23, 2009 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterVaranasi city is the living and breathing expression of Hindu India at peak rush hour. It is everything that has been said about it, and more than can ever be said through the limitations of language. India is generally like a sense-bomb detonating inside your head and saturating your senses. So much so at times, that one regularly stops in motion to drink in the wonderment of it all. Varanasi city is the brazen embodiment of this. Prepare for unbridled India minus any packaging—unwrapped and uncensored. Varanasi city is an animated pilgrimage of resplendent ceremonies guaranteed to shock and delight in equal measure. Coming into this ancient city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh is like walking back in time. The people, the buildings, ...
Ellora Caves of Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India
Created on June 16, 2009 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterIndia is like the proverbial box of chocolates. You never quite know what you’re gonna get. When fingering the relevant chapter in your guide book on the northern state of Maharashtra, the Ellora Caves are unlikely to be the last strawberry creams in the chocolate box that are unceremoniously oozing their sweet centre under the relentless north Indian sunshine. The fact is, there are no strawberry creams in India. Sandwiched between Agra’s Taj Mahal to the north, and the Bollywood stronghold of Mumbai to the southwest, the small medieval town of Aurangabad (or ‘City of Gates’ as it is affectionately known) is situated on a major silk trade route surrounded by UNESCO World Heritage caves. As such, it forms the cultural heartbeat in the state ...
Be Blown Away by the Aurora Borealis: Nature's Fireworks
Created on March 17, 2008 by Drew Tapley, Managing Editor & WriterDoes life imitate art, or art imitate life? This is a question you should not attempt to answer before witnessing the natural phenomenon of the aurora borealis: otherwise known as the northern lights. The aurora borealis is nature’s paintbrush dipped in pastel watercolours and smeared across the night sky. It’s an astronomical oil on canvas that can be seen from terra firma in most northern latitudes, such as Alaska, northern Canada, Russia and Scandinavia. The closer you can be to the Article Circle will yield the more spectacular sights. In fact, people have reported witnessing the beautiful northern lights as far down the Pacific as the Oregon sand dunes. Surely, watching the kaleidoscopic display of the aurora borealis while standing on the plankton beaches of ...
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