If you're looking for a task during the Christmas holidays, why not contribute a review or some photos to this website? I have found a couple of countries that are not that hard to visit, but haven't had a review of most of their WHS for years and/or lack good pictures of the WHS.

So if you have visited any of the following countries over the past 2 to 3 years:

• Algeria
• Bangladesh
• Cuba
• Ecuador
• Libya
• Sri Lanka

Please have a look at your archives! Pictures and Reviews can be sent via the usual ways (menu option WHS Traveller in your admin profile).

My recent journey to the Subantarctic has rekindled my interest in stories surrounding remote islands. So, while looking for a book to read on the long way home and scanning the lists of Best Non-Fiction and Best History Books of 2025, one book that caught my eye immediately was The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda by Andrew Fleming.

Like many people who have tried, I have so far never made it to the Scottish, WH-listed island of St. Kilda. People have been fascinated by the island and its human history for a long time, and cruises to St. Kilda were already a regular occurrence in the 19th century.

This book dives into the history of the islanders from the earliest times. It is filled with interesting tidbits.

A few takeaways:

• The archipelago was never truly isolated, not even in the Iron Age or before. There was contact with other islands and the mainland (including the lord of the land, and also colonists and prisoners). The population became a mix.
• The title of the book refers to the seabird feathers, the harvesting of which was the main ‘industry’ on the island since the …

My recent trip to WHS #999 (New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands) and #1000 (Australia’s Macquarie Island) was my first on an Expedition Cruise. I had selected the destination because of its remoteness. Still, I wasn’t really confident about the cruising aspect, as I am not a “water person” and do not do well mentally in confined spaces with lots of strangers. So with some hesitation, I stood at the quay of the Port of Bluff to embark on the Heritage Adventurer.

Find some tips for Cruising the Subantarctic below, both in advance and during the trip.

Preparations

Determine whether it is for you

These aren’t the “first holiday abroad” kind of trips, it requires a significant investment in money and an above-average interest in wildlife watching. To state it boldly: you spend 12 days on a ship to be surrounded by penguins for 3.5 hours. You must be able to find joy in the other things along the way as well, such as seabirds, sea mammals like elephant seals, plants and talks about the region’s conservation history. There wasn’t much else in the way of entertainment, though my ship offered kayaking, which looked good.

Save up because there will …

A fully updated Tentative List for Malawi has been publicized this week. They have gone from 5 TWHS to 7 TWHS.

New sites added:

• Karonga Fossilised Geoheritage Landscape (a dinosaur fossil site)
• Malape Pillars Geological Heritage (visually striking landscape of sandstone columns)
• Fort Mangochi and Makanjira Historical Corridor (19th-century indigenous forts; Mangochi itself is a double, as part of the Malawi Slave Heritage Route TWHS)

Nyika NP and Vwaza Marsh have been merged into one: Nyika-Vwaza Wildlife Reserve.

The other 3 sites are continuations of previous TWHS, albeit sometimes in a slightly different form. The Malawi Slave Routes are now called "Malawi Slave Heritage Route and Dr. David Livingstone Trail" and Lake Chilwa Wetland went from a Mixed proposal to a Natural one.

As always, pictures of these new sites are welcome (via uploading through Images). There is also some help needed for finding the right locations of some of them, see this forum post.

Look back at your past trip notes and photos to see if you have something covered from Kazakhstan's revised Tentative List.

New are:

• Architectural Resilience: The Anti-seismic Heritage of Almaty
• Medeu – Complex of Mudflow Protection Engineering Structures
• Monumental Monuments and Sanctuaries of the Early Steppe Tradition of Central Eurasia (Mausoleum of Kozy-Korpesh–Bayan Sulu, Ritual Structure Dombauyl, and related "Dyng" Towers)

The Almaty site includes three well-known structures in the city: the Ascension (Voznesensky) Cathedral (1904–1907), the House of Government of the Kazakh SSR (1950s–1957) and the Kazakhstan Hotel (1977).

Merged into one are:

• Petroglyphs of the Karatau Range (Arpaozen and Sauyskandyk)
• Petroglyphs of Zhetysu (Kulzhabasy, Eshkiolmes, and Bayan-Zhurek)

Four of these were previously listed as single TWHS. They had no coverage (reviews or visitors) on this website.

New Zealand is currently working on a new Tentative List; candidate sites can be submitted until January 2026. So its current Tentative List has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, I find it likely that there will be a candidate to represent the Bay of Islands (located at the northeast end of the North Island). This area holds the current TWHS of Kerikeri Basin and the TWHS of the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. Additionally, the Bay Island town of Russell has also publicly advertised its candidacy. So they might show up, either individually or as a serial site or a cultural landscape. They all relate to the same part of New Zealand history: the first decades of coexistence between the British and the Maori in the first half of the 19th century.

I visited these three sites on one day, basing myself in the town of Kerikeri.

Kerikeri Basin

Already on the drive up there from Auckland, I found that this region feels like the English countryside: green rolling hills, narrow winding roads, some livestock, and rain is never far away. Both the Maori and the British found the region’s fertile grounds and easy access by boat …

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 …