We in Travel Explorations wish you all a Merry Christmas. Christmas is celebrated in different ways around the world. The Christmas Day is a time for relaxing and fun. Merry Christmas is expressed different around the world. Some examples are: Afrikaans: Gesëende Kersfees, Arabic: Milad Majid, Argentine: Feliz Navidad, Brazilian: Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo, Chinese Cantonese: Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun, Chinese Mandarin: Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan, Columbia: Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo, Czech: Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok, Danish: Glædelig Jul, Eskimo: (inupik) Jutdlime pivdluarit ukiortame pivdluaritlo, Farsi: Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad, Finnish: Hyvaa joulua, French: Joyeux Noel, German: Froehliche Weihnachten, Icelandic: Gledileg Jol, Norwegian: God Jul, or Gledelig Jul, Peru: Feliz Navidad y un Venturoso Año Nuevo, Sami: Buorrit Juovllat, Spanish: Feliz Navidad, Swedish: God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt År! Independent of how "Merry Christmas" it`s said, it means happiness. So in this way we hope Christmas can bring people closer together, and be helpful for those people who need it most.

Finally the snow has come and the Christmas atmosphere in the Norwegian capital Oslo raise to great heights. What would a Christmas be in Oslo without snow? Few capitals have longer winter than Oslo. It's surrounded by forest, mountains and the fjord. Some of Norway's great winter sites are Voss, Beitostølen, Gålå, Wadahl, Geilo, Hemsedal, Kvitfjell, Hafjell, Lillehammer, Lofoten and Tromsø, but in the outskirts of Oslo city centre there are great opportunities for skiing too. Our photos today show the winter wonderland of Oslo in the Christmas preseason. Famous sites and building as Akershus Fortress, Aker Brygge waterfront, the City Council, the main street Karl Johans Gate, the Nobel Peace Prize Institute and the Royal Palace, look all mysterious in the magic sun light.

After marching for nearly a month the Team Rolf-Cecilie finally reached the Geographical South Pole! The wellknown Norwegian tour operator Hvitserk is organising this expedition. Nobody has ever gone to the South Pole using this route and the area is totally unexplored. There are no maps and no good satellite pictures of this area. The Norwegian lady climber Cecilie Skog has now reached another milestone in her life: reaching the South Pole, but this is not the end of her journey. Cecilie`s aim is also to reach the top of Mount Vinson before she returns to Norway in the end of January. This mountain is one of the Seven Summits. It's the tallest in Antarctic and for Cecilie it will be her sixth of the 7 Summits.

The World Tourism Organization forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 percent. By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 percent in 1995 to 46 percent. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18 percent in 1995 to 24 percent.

Kerala in India is the land of red flags and neat school uniforms! Out of the mountain mist march tea workers, one waving a red flag, like a 1960s Chinese poster, except they are dressed in dhobis and head scarves and this is India 2005. Here in the highlands of Kerala, where neatly manicured tea bushes cover the hillsides in brilliant green, the hammer and sickle can be seen everywhere.

Reported by National Geographic, archaeologists uncovered 13 December 2005 the final section of the earliest known Maya mural ever found. The painting on the wall dates to 100 B.C. In addition to the mural, they found the oldest known Maya royal burial, dating to 150 B.C. The leader of this excavation project called San Bartolo is William Saturno. He is an archaeologist with the University of New Hampshire and the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The research has been supported by the National Geographic Society and is conducted with the Guatemalan Institute of Anthropology and History. What new brings the find to the Maya Indian`s history?

Hwo are the best national parks in USA and Canada? How are the famous national parks rated as Denali National Park & Preserve, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Redwood National and State Parks, Rocky Mountains National park and Grand Canyon National Park? As National Geographic writes on it`s website: If you visit a national park, you'll often spend plenty of time just outside the park, too—eating, sleeping, parking, shopping, sightseeing—in the town or region that geographers call the gateway. A park and its gateway are really a single destination, with similar history, scenery, and climate. The way park and gateway interact can make all the difference in the quality of your trip and in the sustainability of the destination. Read about the rating at National Geographic Traveller`s scoreboard! The winner is.....

It`s so fantastic standing on the top of the world - Mount Everest. It`s also fantastic viewing the mountains around, but as written about in an earlier article on our website, it`s also a big risk climbing this mountain. In the previous years around 500 climbers yearly have challenged Everest, including high altitude sherpas, and of course those climbers and sherpas need oxygen. In the article Oxygen on Everest - The highest death lab in the world, website ExplorersWeb writes about "sudden deaths" caused by lack of Oxygen. ExplorersWeb warns about the risk and give advise how to take precautions.

On day 4 (06.11.2005) Rune finally started The Longest March as his expedition is called. So far the Norwegian Rune has been out for 37 days today. Wednesday 7th December he reported that it was almost no wind! Yesterday's distance (8th December) of 20 kilometres feeled short compared with the distances covered lately, but 20 kilometres is 20 kilometres closer to the goal, and Rune is very satisfied with his progress.

More aid is needed for Asian quake victims. Over two months has gone after the devastating quake on 8 October in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan! Emergency relief is still critical for the survivors. The winter is coming and aid organisations as Care, Red Cross, Save the Children, UNICEF and others continue their great efforts to help them. It's a big challenge for organisations operating in these areas to respond to the changing needs of the survivors, and for reaching them who live in remote areas. The quake, which measured 7.6 on the Richter Scale, has so far caused death of nearly 90,000 people and left circa 3.5 million people homeless. Everybody can do something to help! People who have passion for travelling care about other people!

The Norwegians have started their Christmas celebration with their fullest enjoyment. It`s very popular to take danskebåtene across the ocean from Norway to Denmark. Shop'o'hoi! For combining partying and shopping on tax free, the Norwegians go with the shiplines DFDS Seaways to Copenhagen, Color Line to Hirtshals, and Stena Line to Fredrikshavn.

Researchers from the organisation WWF - World Wide Fund For Nature, formerly called the World Wildlife Fund, may have discovered a new carnivore species in the dense, central forests of Borneo - The Heart of Borneo. The animal, a mammal slightly larger than a domestic cat with dark red fur and a long, bushy tail, was photographed twice by a camera trap at night. This could be the first time in more than a century that a new carnivore has been discovered on the island.

In Iceland Santa Claus has several nicknames. In addition to Santa - Santas, he or they are called Yulemen, Yule Lads or Christmas Boys. Nobody knows exactly the origin of these names, but anyway the Christmas celebration in Iceland goes on. In the middle of May 2002 I was lucky to the get a glimpse of some Santas at the Blue Lagoon. I thought the Icelandic Santas were seasonal too, but here I could observe him and she enjoyed themselves in the hot pool in the summertime. The Blue Lagoon looks "frosty blue", but it's really hot. The temperature is about 40 Celsius (104F), and the soothing, mineral-rich water is believed to have curative powers. It seemed to me that the Santas really got their extra power from the magic water, and it will make them in better shape for their hard work in Christmas!

Christmas is party time. For many Norwegians, celebrating Christmas is real rock`n roll, and the biggest rocker of them all is Santa Claus. Santa is the world's best traveller, but he is also the world's best dancer.

Find the most matching travel magazine for you, and travel your way. There are travel magazines for various kind of travelling as hiking, environmental tours - eco tourism, climbing, diving, cultural tours, backpacking, cruise, romantic holidays, safaris, expedition and adventure travelling. The main groups are mainstream travellers and adventure travellers. Some of the magazines which focus on inspiring travellers to go on adventure tours are Wanderlust, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic, Travel and Leisure Magazine, Geographical, and Conde Nast Traveler. For adventure travellers, who is Travel Explorations` main target group, it`s always a challenge to find sources for new inspirations, and especially when it`s come to travel magazines which usual tend to be very general and fact based.