Travel is like an excellent book. It gives you a fresh perspective on reality, refreshes your soul, gives you a sense of being in touch with yourself again and leaves you with a feeling of catharsis.
Your passions and aspirations start regenerating and you are left wondering why you do not do this more often. More than anything else, travel tends to offer a powerful spiritual experience, like the day you first believed. And like in the case of a good book, you never forget a single detail of a good trip.
Memorable experiences
You never forget the morning you travelled to Matemwe beach on the northern shores of Zanzibar, where you watched in awe, village women seated in those shallow salty waters of the Indian Ocean, farming seaweed or the dhow race that took place later that day.
You never forget your first experience on a German autobahn, a speedway with no speed limit, when you rode a motorcycle from Hamburg to Frankfurt and back. Sheer adrenaline. It is this newness you encounter so far away from home that truly brings you so close to home. It captures your imagination and quenches your natural thirst for adventure.
The allure of the forest
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park is one such place. It is one of the most prized tourist destinations in Uganda. The high-altitude rain forest is home to the largest population of mountain gorillas in the world, at over 400 of these endangered giant primates.
The forest has an aura like no other. It is cold and dark, (the word Bwindi means darkness), yet these very gloomy qualities make it exceptionally inviting. The intensity of the smells from the forest, a mixture of moth, mushroom, aging tree bark and all sorts of herbs are all soothing to the soul.
The air is so thin, your lungs skip a beat. Because of the high-altitude, you get the sense that you are approaching the cusp of the unknown. Your city-dwelling body is not used to this alien environment. It is glorious.
The slow, two-hour climb into the National Park from Kabale Town is a separate thrill on its own. The drive up the forested ranges is punctuated by the constant popping of your ears as you go higher and higher into the ranges.
The ferns and the bamboo reeds and the general shrubbery on the forest floor are as menacing and mysterious as the giant trees that have never seen an axe since the creation story.
Credit: Daily Monitor
Add Martinique to the list of destinations that you can reach via a Disney ship.
Disney today announced that it'll offer its first regular sailings to the Caribbean island in early 2016 out of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The new seven-night Southern Caribbean voyages also will include stops in Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and St. Kitts. The sailings will take place on the 1,750-passenger Disney Magic with four departures in 2016 scheduled for Jan. 10, 17, 24 and 31.
A Disney ship has called at Martinique only once before during a special holiday sailing in 2010.
Bookings for the new Southern Caribbean itinerary open on Oct. 30 with fares starting at $980 per person, based on double occupancy and not including taxes, fees and port expenses.
Disney today also announced a new seven-night Eastern Caribbean itinerary out of Port Canaveral for 2016 that will include a call at Tortola as well as St. Thomas and Disney's private island in the Bahamas, Castaway Cay.
The sailings will take place on both the Disney Fantasy and the Disney Magic with 11 departure dates from January through April 2016. Fares start at $1,120 per person, based on double occupancy.
Just how much pampering is there on a luxury cruise ship? Now you can see for yourself right here at USA TODAY's Cruise Hub.
Part 5 of our six-part video series on the recently revamped Seven Seas Mariner, in the carousel above, offers an insider's look at the wide range of indulgences available to passengers on the vessel, from hot stone massages to elegant wine tastings.
USA TODAY Travel received special access last month to all-suite, all-balcony ship, which is operated by Regent Seven Seas Cruises and emerged from a major makeover in April.
PHOTO TOUR: The luxury of the revamped Seven Seas Mariner
We'll be posting the final installment of the series here at USA TODAY's Cruise Hub on Wednesday. Part 1 of the series, which offers an overview of the Seven Seas Mariner's recent makeover, is located HERE. Part 2, 3 and 4 of the series, which focus on the ship's dining, entertainment and all-suite accommodations, respectively, are HERE,HERE and HERE.
For a deck-by-deck look at the revamped spaces on Seven Seas Mariner, don't miss our new, comprehensive Cruise Ship Tour of the vessel in the carousel below.
They say all great mysteries begin at the end and end at the very beginning; River Nile is a perfect picture to accompany that phrase.
We all know where it ends, pouring northward through the sudans, where it meets its biggest tributary, the Blue Nile before heading to Egypt and finally into the Mediterranean Sea. But locating, let alone, agreeing on the origins of this magnificent river, has befuddled the world since time immemorial. The Bible and the Quran both hint on this mystery and both ancient and present day voyagers have waded in with their own suggestions.
John Hannington Speke has been principally credited as the man who discovered the source of the Nile which he pinned down at the Ripon Falls on Lake Victoria in Jinja centuries ago.
But almost every year, a new person claims to have found the “true” source of the world’s longest river and the debate goes on and on.
Last month, one of the world’s largest scientific and educational establishments; National Geographic, joined the fray as they premiered a television series titled Wild Nile on their NatGeo Wild platform (DStv Channel 182).
The series opens with an establishment shot of the sky-hugging Mountains of the Moon; then the camera rises from a tropical forest through alpine valleys to the glaciers that crown the various mountain ranges. Close-ups of the snow-capped peaks of Rwenzori is a sight to behold. The legendary three-horned chameleon and the shimmering Ruwenzori Turaco – both endemic to this region – make an early appearance on this naturally-embellished stage of geographic wonder. Rwenzori is dotted with many small rivers but it is River Mobuku – notoriously famous for flooding and swallowing human lives – that gets a good feature here.
Then the narrator elaborates that White Nile – which is the Nile’s headwaters – starts with the melting snow of Rwenzori and the rains of mountains of Rwanda and Burundi all which send their waters downwards into Lakes Edward and Albert before feeding Lake Victoria which eventually spouts the Nile out northwards.
Well, another rather other sources of the Nile. But the clearest of all things throughout this argument has always been that River Nile flows out of Lake Victoria at Jinja making it the only place where one can see something tangible to call a source. Jinja is the ‘official’ source of the Nile and it was recently declared one of the seven wonders of Africa by the Seven Wonders of Africa Project.
About The documentary
The three-part documentary series looks critically at the different possible sources of the Nile before taking viewers on a truly spectacular journey along the Nile, revealing the secret lives of its inhabitants.
The first part Wild Nile. Paradise Found explores the different sources of the Nile while the second part Wild Nile: Heart Of Darkness continues the story from when the river leaves Lake Victoria to progress peacefully through Murchison Falls National Park until the third part Wild Nile: River Of Kings is introduced as the river reaches Sudan. The last part looks at the Blue Nile tributary which originates from Ethiopia. In Wild Nile: Paradise Found, which premiered on September 9, National Geographic claims that the “Nile’s source can be pinned down to the area of the Rwenzori mountain ranges in Uganda.”
Rwenzori, a possible source
But some experts have argued that a source of a river has to be a melting glacier at a higher altitude and it cannot be a lake because something else has to feed the lake first hence Rwenzori Mountain and other water bodies around the great lakes region coming into the picture here.
Gladly, National Geographic doesn’t allow the bigger story of the significance of the Nile to the people and wildlife living on its banks it to get lost into the argument of the source.
The series confirms just how, for instance, in Uganda alone – the Nile has a herculean effect on the people and wildlife creating and supporting some of the country’s best tourism products.
Straight from the source at Jinja, the Nile turns Uganda into the best adventure destination in the region thanks to a range of activities, including the best white-water rafting in the world, bungee jumping, quad biking and camping.
Move to Murchison Falls and the Nile presents a spectacle of a waterfall squeezing through a 6-metre rocky gorge to fall 43 metres which is the hardest water drop in the whole world.
This is no ordinary river and this definitely is not an ordinary storyline of source to sea; Wild Nile series explores the countless waterways, islands and lakes that support the entire river system and looks at some of the river’s most fascinating inhabitants using state-of-the-art cameras to slow down and capture fast moving animals in all their glory.
Source: Daily Monitor