India is definitely not short on famous cities, sights, and attractions. Almost anyone can name at least a few, from the Ghats of Varanasi to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Orchha, however, is a modest small town in the middle of Uttar Pradesh, the most populated area of the country. This city of barely 8,000 people might not be on the itinerary of most travelers, but it’s definitely worth the visit. Palaces, temples, sanctuaries… you name it!
The city of Battambang, in the northwest of Cambodia, is not often visited by tourists. Most of them will only spend a day there, probably on their way to Siam Reap. However, being short on time doesn’t mean you can’t explore the city at its full potential! Rides, new and ancient temples, nature, and the tragic past of the country, everything in a day in Battambang.
The Panama Canal has been the bridge between two oceans for more than 100 years. This massive engineering project that divides in two the small country of Panama is vital to the international trade. While it’s not your typical tourist attraction, the Miraflores locks are a spectacle worth visiting if you are in town.
Jungla de Panama is a rescue centre in the small village of Palmira, not far away from Boquete, one of the most popular destinations in Panama. For almost a decade Dorothy, the owner of the centre, and her family have taken care and reintroduced into the wildness all kind of animals. I was pleasantly surprised when I visited it, and it was a unique chance to interact with amazing animals.
Persepolis, or Parsa in its original Persian name, is one of Iran’s jewels, a city once capital of the world’s largest empire, a place that brings visitors back in time, to the time when the ancient Persian kings were the lords of everything, richer and more powerful than any other man on the planet. Today the city is famous, ironically, for its destruction by Alexander the Great during his conquest of Persia.
Very close to Istanbul, just 25 kilometers southeast there is a group of islands known as the Prince Islands, which we decided to go to on our last day in the city. The trip is quiet and relaxed, and lasts about an hour and a half before arriving at Büyükada, the main island.
When we think about Iran and its religion the first thing that will come to our minds is going to be, probably, Islam. Although that’s a reasonable reaction, being the country currently a Theocratic Islamic Republic, Iran is actually the birthplace of one of the oldest religions of the world that is still active: Zoroastrianism.
Zoroastrianism takes its name from Zoroaster or Zarathustra, the Iranian prophet whose teachings of the religious traditions of the religion helped its development and expansion. There is no scholarly consensus about when he was born, but there are evidences pointing at somewhere between the 1st and the 2nd millennium BCE (3,000 or 4,000 years ago). Other scholars, however, put him way later, on the 6th century BCE, as a contemporary of Cyrus the Great and Darius I. On top of that we are not even sure if he was just one man or a series of prophets and masters, being the Zoroaster we know one of them. In any case, his main contribution to Zoroastrianism was the creation of what became the core of Zoroastrian thinking and liturgy. He, according to the legend, created the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism.
