World Heritage Site

“Reviews” of Visits to WHS for long have been a cornerstone of this website. We do now have 6,446 reviews publicized, and have covered 1033 of 1073 WHS. Here are some review statistics for 2017:

• 555 new reviews have been added of both WHS and TWHS
• 86 different people contributed
• 9 WHS were reviewed for the first time.

A special mention goes out to Jarek and Solivagant, as they each covered 3 of those 9! You may have missed out on one or two reviews during the year due to the high turnover on the homepage of this website, so I’ve picked out reviews of 10 WHS that deserve a rerun:

Derbent and Grand Canal

In February, Szucs Tamas reasoned that travelling to Dagestan is not difficult at all for Western travellers. He ticked off Derbent. No fridge magnets on sale here, but they have the oldest mosque of Russia with a stunning interior. Juha Sjoeblom took us to 4 locations of the Grand Canal. His post is about granaries - not a surprise as "the canal is originally created for transportation of grain".

Virgin Komi Forests and Western Tien Shan

Martina Ruckova and her husband Ivan have covered Russia well over the years. They did a crazy weekend trip by plane, marshrutka and helicopter "just" to get close to the rock formations part of the Virgin Komi Forests. 2017 also was the year of WH Travellers rushing to Kazakhstan. We received 3 reviews in a row about the Western Tien Shan, a previously uncovered site. Probably unaware of each other, Solivagant, Jarek and Clyde visited a different location each. That is what we like!

Shahr-i Sokhta, Darien, Bassari and Sumatra

The Polish WH travellers have been contributing greatly this year. Jarek Pokrzywnicki covered Shahr-i Sokhta and Darien National Park for the first time for this website. Just as intrepid is his fellow countryman Stanislaw Warwas. He went to Senegal's Bassari Country: "It is not easy to get there – west of Kedougou there are no roads and I can hardly imagine how they travel in the rainy season…". And Wojciek Fedoruk encountered an orang utan in the wild in Sumatra.

Stevns Klint and Mt. Athos

Visiting WHS isn't just fun. Tsunami shared his ordeal after arriving at Stevns Klint by public transport in the evening, and finding everything closed. While Tsunami was eventually helped out by the B&B owner, Alexander Parsons found out at Mt. Athos that you cannot always count on a friendly local: "When we eventually found a monk around the guesthouse area, he was visibly confused and angry at our presence, at first trying to ignore us."

Many thanks to all reviewers of this year. Keep the reviews coming in 2018! Especially for those little reviewed sites and locations.