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Tag Archives: Geographic
National Geographic reveals its top destinations for 2023
(CNN) — It’s never too early to start planning for next year’s big trips.
National Geographic is getting an early start, too, releasing its Best of the World list in late October with 25 must-see destinations for 2023.
Respect — for the people and their cultures, for the land and its conservation — is an overarching theme of the list, which is divided into five official categories.
The hope is that 2023 will be not just a big return to travel but also to rediscovering wonder, said Amy Alipio, senior editor for National Geographic Travel.
“Because when you are awed by something, you treat it with respect. And that spirit is something we want to encourage with this list,” Alipio said.
The list focuses on destinations that have community-led conservation efforts, healing and heritage journeys and ways for travelers to give back as well as places that are doing important work in ecotourism, sustainability and inclusive travel.
A young nang keo dancer performs in Luang Prabang, Laos’ former imperial capital that is now reachable by bullet train.
Kike Calvo/Nat Geo Image Collection
Looking at community
National Geographic has introduced a new category in this year’s list, replacing “sustainability” with a broader “community” category.
“It’s about broadening the focus on the people striving for sustainable destinations and the various ways that manifests, from making travel more accessible to supporting local businesses,” Alipio said.
Sustainability has been woven into every category a bit more. The other four categories are nature, culture, adventure and family.
The five destinations listed under the “community” heading represent a diverse range of strengths.
Ghana is listed as an important destination for Black heritage travelers in West Africa.
Alberta, Canada also makes the list.
“They have been a leader in Indigenous tourism, basically getting travelers out there learning the stories and the ways of life of the First Nations here in North America,” and their vibrant, contemporary cultures, Alipio said.
In Laos, a new high-speed train is making the country more accessible to visitors and bringing economic opportunity to locals.
The Great Lakes city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is listed in part because it has been “really supportive of its creative community,” Alipio said, citing Bronzeville, which is opening a cultural center focused on African American art.
And in Greece’s Dodecanese Islands, Karpathos is a standout for sustainable tourism with female leadership.
Big openings, small crowds
The list is not without big new attractions. The long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum outside of Cairo figures into Egypt’s appearance on the 2023 list in the “culture” category. And Charleston, South Carolina, will soon be home to the International African American Museum, which is set to open in January.
US wilderness features on the list in two categories, with an emphasis on getting away from the crowds.
Utah, where five national parks are a huge draw, appears in the “adventure” category in part for its efforts to direct tourists to some of its lesser-known areas to combat overtourism.
Visit Utah has a page dedicated to responsible travel where it asks visitors to consider their impact with questions including “Am I doing what I can to avoid crowded locations?” State parks including Dead Horse Point and Goblin Valley are located near one or more of Utah’s five spectacular national parks.
Big Bend National Park in Texas appears in the “nature” category. While Big Bend hosted a record 581,000 recreational visits in 2021, it was still far less visited than some of the United States’ most popular national parks. Yellowstone welcomed 4.9 million visitors and Great Smoky Mountains National Park hosted a whopping 14.1 million recreational visits in 2021.
Slovenia, “a longtime leader in sustainable tourism,” is pairing cycling trails with visits to vineyards, cheesemakers and other food producers in a way that earns it a slot in the “nature” category with a culinary bonus.
The Scottish Highlands, Portugal’s dazzling Azores volcanic archipelago and Botswana also make the “nature” list for their efforts toward conservation and sustainability.
Young sperm whales in waters surrounding the Azores. The Portuguese archipelago is on National Geographic’s Best in the World list in the “nature” category.
Andy Mann/Nat Geo Image Collection
Family, adventure and culture
Colombia has been in the spotlight with the Disney movie “Encanto,” making it a timely choice for the “family” category. In California, San Francisco’s Crosstown Trail is another spot perfect for family adventure.
Speaking of “adventure,” that category also includes Choquequirao, Peru, an Inca site to rival Machu Picchu that is becoming more accessible and spurring economic development.
And New Zealand, long an adventure capital, makes the list as excitement builds with travel’s resurgence.
The Austrian Alps also provide great opportunities for adventure within the Bergsteigerdörfer network of 29 mountaineering villages.
Asia, which has been slower to reopen from the pandemic, features prominently in the “culture” category. Busan, South Korea, appears in the category for offerings from craft brews to Asia’s top film festival.
While China remains closed to international tourism, its Longmen Grottoes in Henan Province also make the “culture” list as new technology brings attention to the largest collection of stone statues in the world.
For more of National Geographic’s Best of the World list, visit their website.
Elephants graze among the lush waterways of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, which appears in the “nature” category.
Beverly Joubert/Nat Geo Image Collection
National Geographic’s Best of the World 2023 list:
CULTURE
Appian Way, Italy
Busan, South Korea
Longmen Grottoes, Henan Province, China
Egypt
Charleston, South Carolina
NATURE
Scottish Highlands
Botswana
Slovenia
Big Bend National Park, Texas
Azores
ADVENTURE
New Zealand
Choquequirao, Peru
Utah
Austrian Alps
Revillagigedo National Park, Mexico
COMMUNITY
Dodecanese Islands, Greece
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Alberta, Canada
Laos
Ghana
FAMILY
Trinidad & Tobago
San Francisco Crosstown Trail, California
Colombia
Manchester, United Kingdom
Switzerland
WHO renames two monkeypox variants to avoid geographic references
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Saturday that it renamed variants of the virus monkeypox as it looks to counter concerns about the original naming conventions.
“Newly identified viruses, related diseases & virus variants are given names to avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups, & minimize the negative impact on trade, travel, tourism, or animal welfare,” the WHO said in its announcement.
The Congo Basin and West African variants were reclassified as Clade I and Clade II, the latter of which has two subclades. The new names go into effect immediately.
A global expert group decided on the new naming convention “as part of ongoing efforts to align the names of the monkeypox disease, virus, and variants—or clades—with current best practices.”
The WHO is also workshopping new names for the monkeypox virus as a whole, including the disease it causes, after outcry over potential stigmatization. The WHO cautioned early in the COVID-19 pandemic against referring to the virus as the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus” due to potential discrimination.
The name change for monkeypox could also correct assumptions about the origin of the virus, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported is unknown, despite monkeybox being discovered in 1958 in a group of monkeys kept for research.
In its best practices for infectious disease names, the WHO cautioned against using geographic locations, people’s names, animal species and other specific references.
The WHO said it’s holding “an open convention” to rename monkeypox.
“Anyone wishing to propose new names can do so,” the organization said on Twitter.
The CDC reported 11,177 monkeypox cases in the U.S. as of Aug. 12 as well as 31,799 global cases.
Cases have been cropping up predominantly among men who have sex with other men, but WHO officials have cautioned that the outbreak should not be expected to stay contained in that community. A number of U.S. monkeypox cases have been reported among children and women.
The WHO declared monkeypox a public health emergency in July, and the White House followed suit earlier this month.
‘Afghan Girl’ From National Geographic Evacuated to Italy at Age 49
- “Afghan Girl” who was on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 was just evacuated to Italy.
- Sharbat Gula, 49, lived anonymously for many years in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
- She’s in Rome as part an evacuation program for Afghan citizens, Italian government said.
The “Afghan Girl” with piercing green eyes who gained worldwide recognition after appearing on the cover of a 1985 National Geographic has fled her home country and arrived in Rome.
The Italian government said in a statement on Thursday that the move was “part of the wider evacuation programme in place for Afghan citizens” since the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan. CNN reported that she has been granted refugee status by Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
The girl, Sharbat Gula, now 49, was photographed in a Pakistani refugee camp during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1984.
At the time, Gula was roughly 12 years old, and sitting in a tent being used as a classroom. After her picture was taken, she grew up, left the refugee camp in the early 1990s, started a family, and remained largely anonymous until the American photographer who took her photo, Steve McCurry, tracked her down again in 2002.
McCurry told NPR then that Gula had led a “relatively peaceful” and “traditional Pashtun” life.
Felix Hörhager/picture alliance via Getty Images
But then, in 2016, Gula was deported from Pakistan to Afghanistan after she was accused of buying a fake Pakistani ID card. At the time, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani welcomed her back to the country and promised to house her in a furnished apartment.
“I’ve said repeatedly, and I like to repeat it again, that our country is incomplete until we absorb all of our refugees,” Ghani said at the time, the Guardian reported.
Five years later, it was Ghani himself who fled Afghanistan, as the Taliban took control of the country in August.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images
McCurry told NPR the photo of Gula is one that people tend to come back to “over and over again.”
“I think part of the chord that it struck in people all over the world is this combination of a young girl who’s very pretty, yet there seems to be something troubling about her,” he said. “There’s a dignity, there’s a fortitude, there’s a lot of different levels.”