10 out-of-this-world places

The salt flats of Bolivia. (Photo: Laumerle / Dreamstime.com)

Rivers that run red. Blinding white landscapes. Cliffs that wave in swirls of orange. No, those aren't works of science fiction. They are wonders of nature that will leave you shaking your head and wondering just how that is possible. 

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The best part? You won't need a spaceship to get there. We've outlined exactly how you can get there—which in most cases is surprisingly easy.

Salt Flats, Bolivia

The name says it all. This blindingly white landscape in central Bolivia really is salt. Also known as Salar de Uyuni, the area is said to have been created about 30,000 years ago when Lago Minchin dried up, leaving the salt behind. 

Today, 10 billion tons remain spread across around 4,000 square miles, where it cracks in naturally occurring hexagonal designs. Go during the rainy season (January to March) and the thin layer of water spread over the flats creates the illusion of a never-ending mirror.

The Chocolate Hills, The Philippines(Photo: Olga Khoroshunova / Dreamstime.com)

Local lore has it that the mounds on the Philippine island of Bohol were formed from the tears of a giant who fell in love with a local girl. The scientific reason behind the formation of the limestone hills is likely far less romantic (though geologists have not been able to reach a conclusion on the hills' origin). Alas, this is not a Willy Wonka paradise. The name comes from the brown color of the mounds in the winter. If you go in the summer, they will be a vibrant green. Either way, the more than 1,200 conical hills, which vary between around 100 and almost 40 feet high, are a site to behold.

Rio Tinto, Spain(Photo: Luis Estallo / Dreamstime.com)

Rio Tinto literally translates to Red River, and it is not a misnomer. The 62-mile-long river does run red and the banks look downright lunar as well. The cause? A combination of rare bacteria, a low oxygen count, and pollution from mining for gold, silver, and copper—which has been going on since 3,000 B.C. The river and landscape in this area of southwestern Spain are so Martian that NASA scientists have studied the composition.


Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland(Photo: Dariophotography / Dreamstime.com)

Hike down along the coast at the northern end of Northern Ireland and you'll come across a scene that will leave you scratching your head: Hexagonal stones that stacked along the water like the world's largest Qbert set. There are almost 40,000 of the ballast columns, formed 60 million years ago by magma that spewed and cooled along the coast. Some of the columns reach almost 40 feet high, while others are short enough to walk across. One of the most striking sites is the Giant's Organ, a collection of 60 ballasts more than 39 feet high with three shorter tiers, giving the effect of an elaborate organ.

Spotted Lake, British Columbia(Photo: Lijuan Guo / Dreamstime.com)

This may be the most psychedelic place on earth. During the warmest months of the year (June through September), the water in this 61-acre lake evaporates, leaving behind rings that make canonical shapes. The high levels of minerals like calcium and magnesium (plus silver and titanium) have the water reflecting blue, green, and even yellow. The lake is a spiritual place for the people of the Osoyoos First Nation and legend has it that the minerals give the water healing powers. Don't even think about filling up a bottle, though. The lake is protected and there is no direct access to the public.

Socotra Island, Indian Ocean(Photo: Courtesy USAHITMAN)

While the other locations on this list are amazing due to the landscape, it's the flora on this island 250 miles off the coast of Yemen that makes it so unbelievable. The largest of the four-island Socotra Archipelago, the island has about 250 species of plants that are not found anywhere else in the world. This includes the canopy-topped dragon's blood tree, which has blood-red resin that runs down if the trunk is pierced, and the desert rose, which can grow to 10 feet with a bulbous trunk that swells with water absorbed in anticipation of dry weather.

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona(Photo: Marcel Schauer / Dreamstime.com)

This wilderness in northern Arizona/southernUtah is home to some of the most striking landscapes in the American Southwest, and that's saying a lot. The nearly 300,000-acre site is known for its abundance of colorful shale and Navajo sandstone that been eroded by the elements to create cliffs and escarpments that rise as high as 3,000 feet. In the northwest of the park is the Coyote Buttes, where you'll find The Wave, a wall of red sandstone that twists and turns in a way that just doesn't look natural—but is.

Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina(Photo: Courtesy pclvv/Flickr)

The immense size of the Perito Moreno Glacier is incredible—it is more than 50 miles in length and 500 feet deep. The terminus of the glacier is Lago Argentino, where a 50-foot blue-hued ice wall rises from the lake. The Perito Moreno is also one of the only glaciers left on earth that is still growing. As it expands it causes a dam in the lake, and when the lake's water wears away at the ice, a giant rupture is caused. The natural occurrence happens every few years. The last one was in March 2012.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, China(Photo: Jerryway / Dreamstime.com)

The towering limestone pillars at this park, part of the Wulingyuan Scenic Area in China's Yunnan Province, may look familiar—rumor has it that they were the inspiration for the floating forests in “Avatar's” fictitious world of Pandora. There are 3,000 of the jagged columns—at least one rising more than 3,500 feet in the air—that got their start more than 200 million years ago when seas receded and the limestone landscape took over. Today about 157 different types of trees grow in the forest park (including the rare Chinese dove tree) and the frequent fog that covers the area makes them seem even more cinematic.

Simpson Desert, Australia(Photo: Olivier Meerson / Dreamstime.com)

Australia is a large land mass with many extremes, but there is nothing like the Simpson Desert, which lies in a largely uninhabited region near the center of the country. That's because sand that swirls through the 54,000-square-mile desert is a blood red. This is a dunal desert, with linear dunes that can be 125 miles long and as tall as 23 miles. The color comes from iron oxide in the sand, with shades ranging from light pink to blood red. The further you get from area's river channels, the deeper—and more unsettling—the tone.

Be Our Guest

A longtime hotel employee pulls back the curtain on the business of hospitality.

By Alice Gregor

Illustration by Lilli Carré.

The novel sensation that unites any trip—business or pleasure—is how quickly the hotel becomes home. You swipe your keycard, flop face down on the bed, root around the minibar for snacks you won’t eat, and assess the shampoo situation. Within moments you’ve memorized the contours of your suite as though it were a childhood bedroom, and you treat it as such—leaving laundry in piles and neglecting to turn the TV off.

This is common sentiment. Wayne Koestenbaum refers to the hotel’s “sluttish core,” and Geoff Dyer, in his fantastic essay on sex in hotel rooms, writes that in a hotel “you become a non-person and are granted an ethical equivalent of diplomatic immunity.” (Although maybe not if you’re Dominique Strauss-Kahn.) That ease is of course thanks to the teams of polyester-suited employees whose job is to maintain this adolescent unreality. The systemic sleights of hand that make up hotel life—many of them nefarious—are chronicled in Jacob Tomsky’s new book, Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality. Tomsky’s M.O. is profane populism, and with it he cracks open hotelier extraordinaire Cesar Ritz’s maxim that “people like to be served, but invisibly.” In so doing, Tomsky offers up insider tips, galling confessions, and just enough smut.

If Kitchen Confidential dissuaded you from ever ordering mussels again (remember how they “wallow in their own foul-smelling piss”?), then Heads in Beds will make you question the sparkliness of complimentary flutes of champagne (shined with furniture polish) and pause before spraying your own cologne (potentially tainted with an employee’s vengeful urine). Never again will you wonder why, when visiting New York, the phone in your room rang off the hook: You were rude when checking in and given room 1212 as punishment—people forget to dial 9 to get out.

Tomsky, who worked his way up from valet in New Orleans to Manhattan front-desk agent, is part shaman (“I was infinite. All things to all people.”) and part Patrick Bateman (“Service is about minimizing negatives and creating the illusion of perfection”). “Hotels are methadone clinics for the travel addicted,” he writes, and indeed, the book follows him to Europe and back again. However humiliating and tedious his duties, Tomsky remains resilient. What seems to buoy him despite rude patrons, incompetent managers, and deluded celebrities is the promise of outsize creative returns. Constant cordiality is taxing, but there’s no arguing the fact that the infinite stream of guests makes for good fodder—Faulkner too worked a front desk, after all, and Nathanael West wrote Miss Lonelyheartsduring his night shift.

Tomsky’s anecdotes are endless: a co-worker learning to drive stick shift on a guest’s overnight ticket, a Pepsi exec who rents a block of rooms for a convention and demands that the Cokes be removed from all the minibars. And the fun facts are bountiful: Hotels’ no-show rate averages 10 percent, which means hotels try to always book at 110 percent capacity. “Putting a head in every bed,” writes Tomsky, “is called a ‘perfect sell.’ ”

The book, which charmingly has no 13^th chapter, is cut through with detours, many of them more interesting than Tomsky’s actual memoir. Early on, he gives a microhistory of hotels in America, which were nonexistent until after George Washington embarked on his first presidential tour and insisted—for the optics—on staying at local taverns rather than with friends. He was disgusted with his lodgings, and a new industry was born. Later, we get the origin story of the wheeled suitcase and a riff on how it “instigated a catastrophic change,” turning now-obsolete bellmen into “anachronistic hunters” who “roam the plains of lobbies across the world, starving for a kill.”

At his best, Tomsky is at once fratty and industry-specific: An occupational hazard of hotel work is “getting a Samsonite to the balls.” But he can also be unexpectedly literary, as when he compares hotel hallways to ghost towns, “doors wedged open by abandoned carts, not a houseman to be found.” Mostly though, he’s the guy who saddles up next to you at the hotel bar and doesn’t stop talking.

Though almost cartoonishly obscene, Tomsky is not particularly prurient. He speculates that one frequent guest is a prostitute and talks about finding “bondage gear still attached to a towel holder that had been ripped out of the wall.” He mentions purposeful robe slips and “guests who must have heard me knock, guests who seemed to climax at my embarrassment.” But otherwise, he’s less excited by imagining guests’ sexual appetites than he is enraged by their rudeness. It’s possible Tomsky is just desensitized, having spent his entire adult life proximate to people who are aroused, if only circumstantially. But it’s a shame that the book isn’t sexier.

Tomsky’s freewheeling swagger—“Kidnap me, duct tape my face, drop me out of a plane, and I promise you I will land in a parking lot adjacent to a hotel and in less than a day I’ll be wearing a suit, assisting guests, earning a nice check, and making friends at the local bar”— can feel, at times, like overcompensation for the fact that his life has not much changed. He still works at a hotel, and as in any tragicomedy, escape seems impossible.Heads in Beds is not a redemptive tale, nor is it told with much distance. Mostly—though tacitly and maybe unintentionally—it’s about the degree to which youthful inertia can determine a whole life.

Author Jacob Tomsky.

Courtesy of the author.

For a brief moment, Tomsky considers quitting the racket and getting a job in publishing. But no luck: “I had been like some prostitute trying to get a secretarial position, only to have the interviewer come around the desk, get uncomfortably close, maybe lay an inappropriate hand on my knee, and say, ‘Look. You’re a whore. You’re a good whore. Why don’t you stop messing around and get back to working the corner, huh? Come on, baby, it can’t be that bad, can it?’ ”

Tomsky abridges his book at the end, offering a series of explanatory “appendixes” (sic?): “Things a Guest Should Never Say,” “Things a Guest Should Never Do,” “Standard LIES That Spew from the Mouth of a Front Desk Agent,” etc. And while the précis is fun, it’s arguably self-defeating: It’s like getting all the good bits from Tomsky’s surely-hoped-for Today show appearance, while rendering the previous 234 pages a bit moot. But the duration—and the abrasiveness—is necessary. All of the incremental injuries that Tomsky suffers are accrued on account of our pleasure. Heads in Beds is a humane book, if not in its motivation, then in its effect. Read it, and you will never not tip again.

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Why Are Hotel Rooms So Expensive?

Slate asked our readers to assign us stories, and more than 1,000 of you wanted me to explain why hotels are so expensive. As a reader noted, “The cheapest hotel room in my city’s downtown is $90/night, while apartments run about $700-1000/month—closer to $30/night,” a huge difference.

There’s not a single reason why hotel rooms are so much more expensive on a per night basis than ordinary housing. But one place to start is taxes. Local tax codes tend to treat homeowners relatively favorably. There are some ideological and substantive reasons for this, and also crass politics. Homeowners, as a class, are more likely to be stable long-term members of their community who vote in city council elections. A hotel guest is just the reverse—a transient who can’t vote. So in addition to the underlying commercial real estate taxes that are probably higher than what’s levied on residences, hotel guests need to pay sales taxes and special excise taxes.

In New York City, for example, a hotel room is subject to 8.875 percent worth of state and local sales taxes, plus a Hotel Occupancy Tax that runs to 5.875 percent plus an extra $3.50 in most cases.

The Global Business Travel Association rates New York’s as the most burdensome hotel tax situation in the country, but one interesting finding of theirs is that there’s actually relatively little variation. My assignment seems to have come from a reader in St. Louis. In that city, you’ll pay 8.491 percent state and city sales taxes and 7.25 percent in earmarked hotel taxes. And commercial real estate in general pays a 32 percent tax rate, far higher than the 19 percent levied on residential property.

Another reason for the high cost of hotels is their location. Mainstream hotels offer premium locations in central business districts or near key attractions, and they tend to invest in what you’d ordinarily consider an unreasonably high level of service. The typical hotel guest doesn’t have a maid cleaning his bedroom at home on a daily basis, or the services of a downstairs concierge. But these are typical add-ons at a standard hotel. 

Hotel customers tolerate these marked-up amenities because they generally aren’t very interested in driving a hard bargain. The business traveler is likely to feel that he “needs” appropriately located accommodations and isn’t going to be interested in exhaustive research about the costs and benefits of staying someplace cheaper and more remote. What’s more, he’s generally not paying out of pocket. A responsible employee will of course try to be reasonably frugal, but even so frugality is benchmarked to local costs. That encourages a market that’s biased toward higher price points. The existence of premium business travelers who can fully pass costs on to clients (think fancy lawyers and consultants) further pushes the market up. What’s more, even when people do pay for their own work travel, the cost is tax deductible. If a journalist travels for a freelance assignment or speaking engagement, it makes sense to take extra consumption in the form of staying in a nicer hotel with pre-tax dollars than to spend after-tax dollars at home.

Tourists may be more frugal. But even so, for many vacationers (especially in America) time is in shorter supply than money, so it makes sense to invest extra money in ensuring that the time is well spent.

Last but by no means least, hotels can market unsold inventory without cutting the price of every room. Say I have 85 out of 100 rooms booked at $100 a night. Cutting the price of every room by $5 will cost me $425 and then I have to hope that I get at least five extra bookings for my trouble. It makes more sense to take my 15 spare rooms and directly market them to price-sensitive customers by using a specialized reseller like Hotwire. Hotwire sells bargain hotel rooms, but “opaquely”: You only get to know the hotel’s neighborhood and star rating, not its name, when you book. That annoyance screens for price-sensitive customers and offers a better strategy than broad discounts. Alternatively, unsold inventory can be offered as free upgrades to members of your hotel’s loyalty program. In effect you’re giving a targeted discount to a high-volume customer—smarter, again, than flat rate cuts.

In the ordinary housing market, everyone is in effect a high-volume customer booking long-term leases. And the vast majority of customers are knowledgeable about the city, moderately patient, and thus in a position to drive a reasonably hard bargain. Consequently, the apartment market targets a broader spectrum of customers. Very expensive luxury units are available, but so are cheap ones (except in cities where zoning is blocking new construction).

One fascinating recent development is the rise of companies such as Airbnb that essentially turn spare apartments or rooms into hotel beds. This offers new opportunities for price-sensitive travelers and undermines hotels. Airbnb doesn’t eliminate the market dynamics that tend to push hotel prices up, but it does at least create countervailing pressure. One possibility is that hotels will get cheaper in response. Another is that the share of the market held by formal hotels will simply shrink somewhat. In that scenario, traditional urban hotels would come to specialize even more narrowly in business travelers and high-end tourists, and average prices would go even higher.

The Growth of Cosmic Dust Grains

Rocky planets are thought to form through the random collision and sticking together of what are initially microscopic particles in the disc of material around a star. These tiny grains, known as cosmic dust, are similar to very fine soot or sand. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have for the first time found that the outer region of a dusty disc encircling a brown dwarf — a star-like object, but one too small to shine brightly like a star — also contains millimetre-sized solid grains like those found in denser discs around newborn stars. The surprising finding challenges theories of how rocky, Earth-scale planets form, and suggests that rocky planets may be even more common in the Universe than expected.

This video starts with a broad panorama of the spectacular central regions of the Milky Way seen in visible light. It zooms in to the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region, to the brown dwarf ISO-Oph 102, or Rho-Oph 102. Then, an artist’s impression shows the disc of material around the brown dwarf, and zooms in to show how tiny grains collide and stick together, to form large grains.

Flickering Stars: Could Aliens Be Sending Us Signals?

When scientists go out looking for research funding, it helps if their projects aren’t all that exciting. Excitement usually goes with the most speculative, cutting-edge science, but funding agencies usually prefer to put their money on projects that seem likely to bear fruit. “You pretty much have to demonstrate that you’ve already done half the work to demonstrate it’s feasible,” says Lucianne Walkowicz, a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics based at Princeton University.

By that standard, Walkowicz’s latest project shouldn’t be getting any funding at all. She wants to conduct a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), not by doing anything so conventional as listening for radio transmissions á la Jodie Foster in Contact, or watching for flashes of laser light. Instead, she wants to see if ET’s are somehow manipulating the light coming from their stars so that they wink at us — a long shot if ever there was one, especially since she has no clue how they might go about it.

(More: How You — Or Anyone — Can Help Find ET)

But thanks to a program titled “New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology,” funded by the John Templeton foundation and administered by the University of Chicago, Walkowicz is getting her chance. Cutting-edge research is what this program is all about, and the question “Are We Alone in the Universe?” is one of the major areas it aims to address.

The odds of a discovery with Walkowicz’s project may be long, but the search technique is quite straightforward. “Our premise,” she says, “is that up until now, we’ve had a preconceived idea of what a SETI signal would look like.” It would basically be the sort of signal we know how to create, and understandably so, since searching for a signal from some entirely unknown technology would be kind of difficult.

If aliens were so advanced that they could cause their star to appear to flicker, however, it wouldn’t matter how they did it, and it would be easy enough to see with existing technology. In fact, says Walkowicz, “our premise was, ‘what if we’ve already detected a signal but missed it because of our preconceptions.’”

(More: Life on Billions of Planets? Could Be)

So she and her co-investigators (including Princeton’s Edwin Turner, who recently suggested looking for alien cities on Pluto), proposed to look through a potential trove of signals: the archives from the Kepler mission, which has been scanning space since 2009 for stars that are winking because of orbiting planets passing in front of them. Kepler also sees stars that are winking because they have sunspots, or because they’re eclipsed by other stars, or because they brighten and dim naturally, all on heir own.

What Walkowicz and company will do is use software algorithms to look for unusual patterns of variability. “We’ll get all sorts of things we understand,” she says, “but we’ll also be looking for things that aren’t matched by well-known physical processes.”

(More: Star Lite: You Don’t Need Heavy Metals To Build a Good Planet)

Naturally, they’ll try at first to explain these unusual variations with conventional physics — and in fact, the discovery of new, natural types of stellar variation could be a valuable side benefit of the project. Big, wide-field surveys of the sky with instruments such as the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will inevitably uncover all sorts of unexpected phenomena, so Walkowicz’s work could pre-explain at least some of them.

Once she and her team have ruled out all of the plausible natural explanations for strange flickerings, however, they’ll be forced to consider the possibility that it really is ET calling. “What would lead us to say it really is an alien signal?” she asks. “I don’t know, but in my book, finding things you can’t explain is interesting no matter what it is. If we see ‘SOS, send water,’ in Morse code, that would be great.”

There will probably be a bit more ambiguity than that, she admits, and we may never know for certain that  we’re seeing a deliberate signal. “You don’t want to invoke the strangest thing first,” says Walkowicz, “but we should think a little bit more outlandishly. If we’re always succeeding all the time, maybe we’re not trying hard enough.”

LCD Projection Clock - Dehiwala, Sri Lanka - Andaberaya.com

LCD Projection Clock - Dehiwala, Sri Lanka - Andaberaya.com

KHL GIRLS!

Russia’s KHL (Kontinental Hockey League) features girls at every game!

The Kontinental Hockey League was founded in 2008 and is considered the top hockey league in Europe and second only to the NHL in the world. The KHL is comprised of 26 teams across 7 countries, 20 of which are based in Russia. The KHL is a top destination for many NHLers during the lockout for it’s skill-level and proximity to home for European NHL players. As this lockout continues on you’ll be seeing and hearing a lot more about the KHL with some of the NHL’s biggest stars competing in the rival league.

Each team in the KHL plays a 56 game season with 4 games against teams in their division and and two games against non-divisional teams. Teams are divided into two conferences and  then divided into four divisions named after Russian legends: Bobrov Division, Tarasov Division, Kharlamov Division, and Chernyshev Divison. The playoffs run pretty similar to the NHL’s in that the top 8 teams in each conference qualify and play best-of-seven series until the two conference champions face off to be the Champion of Russia.

And here’s a little gallery of the girls that are at every KHL game. Do you have a favorite?

 

CYBER SPECIAL!

Weekly World News is throwing a Cyber Monday Party at the WWN Store!   Aliens will be in attendance!

Cyber Monday 2012 is officially underway and the best Cyber Party, the best deals, the best Bat Boy paraphernalia can ONLY  be found at:

THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS CYBER MONDAY STORE!

Free Shipping on all orders of  $20 or more!!!  Forget Call of Duty, Black Ops, forget Squinkies, forget iPhones or iPads or IPORN – what that special someone in life REALLY wants is to be part of Bat Boy Nation!

Here’s just SOME great gift ideas for the holidays:

1) The Bat Boy Bobblehead

2)  Bat Boy T-Shirt

3)  GOING MUTANT- Bat Boy Exposed

4)  Custom Framed WWN Covers

*FREE SHIPPING on all orders over 20$!  So, come join the party!

Here’s the Today Show talking about Cyber Monday madness.  Matt will be attending the WWN Cyber Monday party in cyberspace:

Hotel Review: Andaz Napa in Napa, Calif.

A much needed alternative to Napa’s cutesy bed-and-breakfasts and wine-centric resorts, from $199 to $339.

BASICS

Opened in September in the shell of a former Avia hotel, the 141-room Andaz Napa is the first in Hyatt’s stylish Andaz chain in the Bay Area. Tech-savvy touches (guests are checked in by roaming staff members carrying iPads) and Napa-focused features (from the artful map on the lobby wall to the locally produced toiletries) make this Andaz seem surprisingly at home in Northern California.

LOCATION

While the area’s allure — hills lined with vineyards, celebrated restaurants and rural beauty — lies in its small towns and countryside, there’s much to be said for a downtown hotel. Minutes off Highway 29, the main artery through the valley, Andaz Napa is also within several blocks of a dozen or so tasting rooms, the Oxbow Public Market and Napa’s revitalized riverfront.

THE ROOM

The hotel’s common areas evoke an arty, youthful, cosmopolitan sensibility, but rooms are more subdued and rooted in Northern California cool. There are greens, browns and creams, marble and wood-grain, maroon and gray. They range from my Andaz King, which was only somewhat larger (though several notches more luxurious) than a standard motel room, to the 945-square-foot Vintner Suite with a double-sided fireplace and balcony.

On a recent visit, local Fatted Calf beef jerky, a seasonal tomato salad and sourdough crostini were delivered as a free snack upon check-in. It made up for the dirty, half-empty mini-fridge, which included Fentimans fermented soda and craft beer from North Coast brewery and Anderson Valley Brewing Company. The countertop mini-bar had a modest selection of artisanal liquors, like gin from Alameda’s St. George Spirits.

THE BATHROOM

Spacious and austere, the marble and glass room had a large walk-in shower with a waterfall head and a small teak bench. True to its all-things-local approach, bath products are Lydia Mondavi’s 29, named for the Napa highway.

AMENITIES

The hotel doesn’t have its own workout room, but has partnered with a full-service gym next door that offers yoga, Pilates mat, Zumba and other classes. There are also frequent wine tastings in the lobby, a hardwood roof deck with porch swings and a fire pit, free wireless Internet and free self-parking (valet is $17).

The Farmers Table restaurant has the obligatory locavore menu, complete with a list of purveyors and uninspired but appetizing dishes like herb-broiled California sea bass with roasted vegetables ($20) and a grass-fed beef burger ($15). While service was slow and indifferent, the homey dining room (think green velvet couches, communal tables and a glowing fireplace) is a pleasant place to wait.

ROOM SERVICE

An after-dinner order of chocolate cake and camomile tea arrived in 20 minutes, with friendly instructions on steeping time. A $3 delivery fee and an 18 percent tip were charged automatically to the room.

BOTTOM LINE

While the staff can seem a bit too laid-back, business travelers, wedding parties and urbanites will appreciate the hotel’s contemporary style, downtown location and bustling lobby bar.

A ‘Little Jerusalem’ in the Heart of Italy

Over the years, I have gently teased them about their custom. Who appointed them Chroniclers of the Jews Worldwide? And yet, the older I become, the more I find myself following in their path.
And so, when I was in Rome recently and heard about a tiny medieval village in Tuscany called Pitigliano (known as La Piccola Gerusalemme or Little Jerusalem) I wanted to see it. My plan was to spend a day in this walled town in the Maremma region in the province of Grosseto, about 105 miles northwest of Rome. Pitigliano is blessedly untouristy, with only about 25,000 visitors a year. Most want to explore the Jewish culture, although some are simply besotted with the idea of yet another impossibly magnificent Italian village.
And that it is. As I drove up the winding road to the hill town, 1,026 feet above sea level, I was reminded of the first time I saw Jerusalem. With its parapets, ceramic tile roofs and multitiered buildings perched on layers of red volcanic tufa stone, Pitigliano resembles a sparkling, pint-size Holy City. The village, which was originally settled by the Etruscans, was once home to a thriving Jewish population that had settled there in the early part of the 16th century. They came mainly from the nearby Lazio region, which bordered the anti-Semitic Roman Papal States that periodically drove out Jews.
In Pitigliano, I met with a local guide, Rafaella Agresti, whose English was impeccable. Together, we walked through the medieval gate into the old city, passing the Orsini Palace, a 14th-century fortress, now a museum, and the even older Church of San Rocco. The remnants of a 17th-century aqueduct built by the Medici family runs through town.
As we navigated the narrow streets, Ms. Agresti told me that the Jews and Christians of Pitigliano had led a peaceful coexistence. In the 16th century, Count Niccolo Orsini IV, a member of the feudal Orsini family, ruled Pitigliano, an independent fief whose inhabitants were mainly peasants. Although he was Catholic, he thought Jews, mostly bankers and artisans, could help revitalize Pitigliano’s lagging economy. So, while Jews in places like Umbria and Lazio were imprisoned or exiled, in Pitigliano they worked as moneylenders, carpenters, cobblers and tailors.
That good will changed somewhat after the Medici family, which was appointed by the Pope, came into power. In 1622, the Jews in Pitigliano were confined to a ghetto; men were required to wear red hats, and women red badges on their sleeves. Still, the relationship between Jews and non-Jews was friendly; in 1773, the liberal Catholic Grand Duke of Tuscany, Pietro Leopoldo, officially recognized the Jews of Pitigliano, which meant they could come and go as they wished. In 1799 the ghetto was desegregated, and by 1850 there were about 400 Jews in town, roughly 10 percent of the population. But 11 years later that population began to shrink when the Jews of a unified Italy were granted equal rights and allowed to move freely about the country. Many left for Florence, Rome and elsewhere.
By 1938, when the Fascist racial laws were applied, only about 60 Jews were living in Pitigliano, among them the family of Elena Servi.
Now 82, Ms. Servi, who was born in Pitigliano, has dedicated her life to preserving and restoring her hometown’s Jewish history. I was eager to meet her at the Little Jerusalem Association (lapiccolagerusalemme.it), a cultural organization comprising about 150 Jews and non-Jews from around the world. Ms. Servi founded the association in 1996 with her son, Enrico Spizzichino. It is situated inside a series of interconnected buildings, one of which houses the Jewish Museum of Culture.
Ms. Agresti and I walked beneath an arch with a half-moon-shaped sign emblazoned with the words “La Piccola Gerusalemme: Antico Quartiere Ebraico” (Old Jewish Quarter) and into the museum, where Ms. Servi was behind the counter. Since she does not speak English, we communicated in a mixture of Hebrew and my limited Italian.

“We had no problems with non-Jews,” she said. “We were friends, sharing our matzo from Passover and their chocolate from Easter.” She credits her survival during World War II to the Catholic farmers in the valley who protected her and her family from the Germans. She also hid in a cave with her family for three months while neighbors took food and water to them. When she emerged, only about 30 Jewish families were left in Pitigliano. Other than a decade in Israel, she has lived her whole life in Pitigliano.

I descended a steep staircase into cavern-like rooms to find the ritual bath, or mikvah; a forno delle azzime, or oven for baking leavened and unleavened bread (which was in use until 1939); a textile-dyeing room; a wine cellar; and a kosher butcher — all of which are dug into the tufa stone. Sunlight streamed through windows, which had been carved into the stone.
Although services are no longer held in the neighboring synagogue, it is open for viewing. The gold-and-white building, with its carved pews, wooden pulpit and Holy Ark, was restored to its 1598 splendor after the roof collapsed in 1961. From their gallery upstairs, women glimpsed the goings-on through an intricate wooden screen, as was customary in Orthodox Judaism. In the courtyard a plaque commemorates the 22 Jews born in Pitigliano who were killed in concentration camps.
While the Jewish community today consists of only Ms. Servi, her son, a nephew and three grandchildren, there is no mistaking the Jewish influence in Pitigliano. Sfratti — stick-shaped biscuits filled with ground walnuts, honey, nutmeg, orange peel and wrapped in dough — are a local delicacy. The word sfratti is derived from sfratto, meaning eviction in Italian. Legend has it that the police would hit Jews with rods to force them into the ghettos; the Jews subsequently transformed their pain into something edible. (A good place to try the sweet, crunchy treat is at Panificio del Ghetto at 167 Via Zuccarelli, near the synagogue.)
Hebrew words have also penetrated the local dialect. Gadol, Hebrew for big, has morphed into “Gadollo” in Pitigliano. Kasher,a variant of kosher, means loosely, nice or O.K. Many homes still have mezuzas.
Non-Jewish culture also influenced the Jews, most notably in the Jewish cemetery hidden in a cypress grove along State Road 74. One can make private arrangements to visit through the Little Jerusalem Association. Unlike traditional Jewish cemeteries, some of the graves there feature monuments of angels and a statue of a young girl — a nod to the Christian way of “giving grief a face,” as Ms. Servi put it.
THE Jewish quarter is only a block or so long, and the rest of Pitigliano is small. It took only about three hours to wander the ghetto and the labyrinth of streets, winding stairways, piazzas and shops in the historic district. After about five minutes I was hopelessly lost and enjoying every second of it. The locals are welcoming in that extraordinary Italian way, always ready with a smile and a wave. Men sat on benches sipping the wine they had made in their cellars. They happily offered a taste, and I happily accepted.
Each street and alleyway culminates in a spectacular view of rolling hills dotted with olive groves, chestnut, oak and pine trees. The region is punctuated with tunnels and caves etched into the tufa stone, called Vie Caves (Etruscan Pathways).
Exhausted after so much wandering, I found an outdoor table at the Hostaria del Ceccottino (Piazza San Gregorio VII, 64; ceccottino.com), a neighborhood spot near the ghetto. I ordered a mozzarella and tomato salad and a glass of Pitigliano’s crisp white wine, bianco de Pitigliano.
Before leaving, I did as my parents do when they travel, and made a small contribution to the Little Jerusalem Association. Ms. Servi’s words made sense to me. “Who knows what’s going to happen to this place in 20 years?” she said. “We must preserve the past as long as possible.”
IF YOU GO: WHERE TO STAYAlbergo Guastini (Piazza Petruccioli; albergoguastini.it) is the only hotel in the old town. Some of the inn’s rooms have magnificent views, and it has a terrific restaurant. Prices for a double range from 50 to 90 euros (about $62 to $112, at $1.25 to the euro) until Dec. 20.
Il Tufo Rosa (Piazza F. Petruccioli 97-101; iltuforosa.com) offers six rooms in a restored house in the old town. Each room is named for a countess who played an important role in Pitigliano’s history. The owners also produce extra virgin olive oil. Prices for a double room are 55 to 68 euros a night.
Terme di Saturnia Spa and Golf Resort (termedisaturnia.it). A 30-minute drive outside Pitigliano is the 15th-century town of Saturnia, famous for its mineral springs. This luxurious destination spa, built around a 3,000-year-old mineral pool, is the only hotel in the area to offer a “heritage tour” package of Jewish Pitigliano, which includes three nights in a deluxe room; a daily buffet breakfast; dinner in the restaurant Aqualuce; a massage; complimentary use of the thermal pools and Roman baths; and a guided tour of Pitigliano. Rates start at 2,014 euros (based on double occupancy).  

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White water rafting and more in Kaudiyala

Every time you visit the Holy Ganges you experience something new and mind you the experience gets even enriching as you scale new heights and move beyond Haridwar and Rishikesh.

Purity of the Ganges, unmatched beauty and unfolding adventure at every step and level sets one's pulse racing. This area has something to offer for every age bracket and each personality type. Be it the spiritual set looking for peace and tranquility or hard core nature lovers to explore nature's bounty or the adventurous lot (like me) who are just looking for a life changing experience, the terrain has a lot to offer.

The area that is situated along the Ganges on the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway, has presence of large number of camps that offer nature, spiritual and adventure tours.

Situated on the banks of the mighty Ganga, these camps are themselves experience worth living for.

Located 270 kilometers from Delhi on the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway, Kaudiyala, has been a halt over for the pilgrims to the char dham yatra.

Approximately a 7 hour drive from Delhi, Kaudiyala is beyond conventional camping sites located in Rishikesh, Shivpuri and Byasi. Kaudiyala, is well connect by road, from Rishikesh and Haridwar, with the later being connected by rail from mall major cities.

The camp we chose to stay at Kaudiyala was the camp Ganga Riveria, located off Rishikesh-Badrinath highway, near Mahadev Chatti. The camp was 3 kilometer or 15 minutes walk from the highway, through natural surroundings and a quaint jhoola pul (suspended bridge), that was the old pilgrim's path to Badrinath. Located in peaceful setting and serene ambience, the camp provided an ideal setting for every human need.

The next level of adventure came in the form of rappelling or abseiling, waterfall climbing and an experience to get through from a 40ft waterfall.

But what was still awaiting us was in true sense was the rapid-fire round in the form of a rafting expedition. The stretch from Devprayag and Rishikesh has been on rafting and adventure tourism map of the country for decades now! There is nothing quite like the 'pure energy high' one gets from riding foaming white water rapids. The rafting stretch between Kaudiyala and Rishikesh, offers some of the fast action white water rapids. With opportunities for plenty of bodysurfing and bird watching, the rafting stretch offers an opportunity to enjoy the natural surrounding.

Starting from Daniel's Dip at Kaudiyala to begin with and then the biggest rapid on the Ganga - The Wall, Marine Drive, Three Blind Mice, Roller Coaster, Golf Course, Club House and Initiation are some of the rapids that can let one overcome the fear of life and death.