World Heritage Site

It’s the year's final week – time to squeeze in another yearly overview of the reviews submitted to this website. 2024 was a rather dull year at the WHC, with 24 new sites inscribed at a poor average rating of 2.79/5. Thanks to Astraftis we had a last-minute meetup in Brussels. For Nan and myself, it was also the year that we were forced to move the website to a different hosting provider – which proved to be a blessing in the end as the performance of the website has much improved.

Community Travel

Overall, there has been a steady increase at the ‘top’ without any new kids on the block. Atila has joined Zoë in the over-1,000 club. We now have 4 members with more than 900 visited WHS, 5 more with over 800 WHS, and 11 more with over 700 WHS. And 39 members in total have seen over 50% of the WHS!

Memorable Reviews

We saw 581 new reviews published, 71 more than last year but still a far cry from pre-Covid levels such as 891 in 2019. 94 different people wrote them, also significantly more than last year; there were many novice reviewers this year. I (Els) wrote the most (60) but not as many as last year, followed by Zoë (33), CugelVance (28) and Clyde (27).

WHS

Only 18 WHS are unreviewed now. We saw the first reviews for Sangha Trinational (Els), Odzala-Kokoua and 'Uruq Bani Ma'arid (both Randi), Noel Kempff Mercado, Badain Jaran, Hawraman/Uramanat (all Zoë), and the Minaret of Jam (Wojciech). Plus those of the newly inscribed WHS Bale Mountains, Gedi, and Pleistocene Occupation Sites of South Africa. 

Other recommended reviews to re-read include Bernard cycling along the Wadden Sea, much-needed updates by Mihaela reporting on Altyn Emel, Joel on Yin Xu, Thomas on Aasivissuit - Nipisat, Els on Iriomote and Ogasawara, Zoë on Nanda Devi, Timonator on Vat Phou, Can on Pimachiowin Aki, Patrik on Talamanca, DannyB on Purnululu, Hubert on the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin, Clyde on El Vizcaino, Wojciech on the Lower Valley of the Awash and Jacob on Haiti’s National History Park (posted in the last days of 2023 but published early January 2024). I was also happy to see the reviews by Triath of visits to Syrian WHS such as Palmyra, presenting the first impression after the Syrian Civil War. Let’s hope Syria becomes safe and stable next year so we can visit again in a new era.

TWHS

There are 754 TWHS left to review! For 2025, making a dent in those would be great – try visiting and reviewing one of those, instead of the commonly visited European WHS. You can find the todos here (with a 0 in the column Reviews).

70 TWHS got a first review in this year, including Varanasi (Bernard), the Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf (CugelVance), the enigmatic Prehistoric Stone Structures in Saudi Arabia (Philipp), a flurry of TWHS from Afghanistan such as Band-E-Amir (Wojciech), the upcoming Vietnamese nomination Oc Eo (Frederik), the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and Seaflower Marine Protected Area (both by Frédéric), the Stuttgart Television Tower (Hubert), Gemer and Abov churches (Jarek), Kazakh Rocky Mosques (Ana), Fell and Pali Aike Caves (Els), Flinders Ranges (Shandos), Churches of the Altiplano (Clyde), and Dirre Sheik Hussein (again by Wojciech).

Awards

As always, we have awards to hand out to the "best" reviews: 

The Tsunami Award for Travel Misadventure goes on the shelf this year as there weren’t true misadventure stories shared. But an honorable mention goes to Frederik, whom we mostly know for pointing out the finer details of Southeast Asian cultural sites: he got stuck in a cable car at Yen Tu. 

The WH Explorer Award recognizes reviews of (parts) of WHS, where a new access route has been explored successfully, resulting in reviews that show determination and reflect on both the choices made during preparation and the journey itself.

In terms of remoteness, it’s a toss between Central Africa (Randi: Odzala, Els: Sangha) and Afghanistan (Wojciech: Minaret of Jam). 

• All 3 found, due to clever networking and keeping on top of offerings, rather exclusive group tours that suited their needs without breaking the bank.
• Randi had to be driven 14h from Brazzaville to reach the site, Wojciech 13h from Herat and Els did 25h across 3 days from Yaounde.
• Where I could then relax at the fairly comfortable Sangha Lodge, Randi and her partner Svein had to deal with a large rodent and a snake in the bathroom of their more basic lodgings and Wojciech slept in a tent.

What tips the balance though: Randi and Svein weren’t only the first to review the WHS, they were the first two community members to visit Odzala-Kokoua overall! To show how unique this is: there are now only 2 sites left out of the 1223 (Tell Umm Amer and Salonga) that have no visitors and no reviews.

Finally, the Best Review of the Year Award can only go to one: the Civil Rights Movement Sites by Solivagant. It wonderfully describes a visit when the OUV was created!

10 of the notable reviews from 2024 will be rerun on the homepage in the coming week. Are there any memorable reviews from 2024 that you’d like to put into the spotlight again?