On Saturday 8 October this year (2005) a powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck the region bordering Pakistan, northern India, and Afghanistan. This quake is estimated to be responsible for at least 20,000 deaths in southern Asia, and the death toll may be as high as 30,000 according to local officials. Everybody can do something to help those affected by the earthquake! People who have passion for travelling care about other people. If you would like to donate to the relief effort, there are several organisations who offer both immediate and long term assistance as Care, Red Cross, Save the Children, UNICEF and others.

Some of the ethnic groups in Iran are Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Azaris, Gilakis & Mazandaranis, Baluchis, Turkmens, Bakhtiaris and Ghashghais. In July 2004 I took my way high up in the Zagros Mountains. Here I met a group from the Lor nomads. When I approached their camp I heard someone fired a gun, but it was nothing to worry about. The men in the camp were just preparing a wedding, and wanted to great me in their own way. I was welcomed with open arms and soon I was in the middle of a big event. The music started. So the men become in mood for real action, and they challenged me in a dance I never have experienced before, the ferocious Choopy dance…..

Take a virtual sightseeing tour around the world. By using the Google Earth-tool you have the whole globe inside your PC. You can point and zoom to any place on the planet that you want to explore. For example you can find the easiest way in Grand Canyon and the best route up to the top of Kilimanjaro before you go, and you can consider the efforts by studying the terrain. And the best of all: Google Earth is free for personal use.

Cato Zahl Pedersen (46) and his team reached the top of the sixth highest mountain in the world, Cho Oyo in Himalaya. The other six persons in the Norwegian team are: Stian Voldmo (29), Einar Osland (51), Brit Volden (44) Øyvin Thon, (46), Rune Snaprud (36) and Casper Ravnsbaek (26). Cato has just one arm and to make this arm working, he uses a prosthesis on the right arm. The team gives credit to the four sherpaes Tenzing, Tapa Kilo, Dawa Chiiri, who assisted them whole the way to the top, and also the cook Lat Sang, who waited for them in the Base Camp - all with Sherpa as surname.

After three years actively searching for squids - huge octopuses, the Japanese research team finally manage to capture one on film. The squid was 8.5 meters long and had 10 arms. This was the first time the species Architeuthis of squids became filmed by a robot camera. The research team, who was leaded by Tsunemi Kubodera from the Japanese National Research Institute in Tokyo, filmed the squid when it attacked a prey on 1000 metres deep outside the coast for the Japanese Bonin Islands in the Pacific.

What is going to happen in the future of leisure travel? What kind of adventures will the travellers demand? How will products, ways of communication, prices and information systems develop? The report "Tourism of Tomorrow, Travel Trends & Forces of Change" from May this year (2005), is worked out by Sara Nordin. She works as a researcher by the European Tourism Research Institute (ETOUR) in Sweden. Her specialising is innovation in the travel industry with emphasis on clusters and innovation systems.

This report is useful for tour operators, agents and other travel organisations for understanding the need in travel market and for being able to take advantage of it.

From Liverpool this beautiful song has spreaded around the world - even to the harsh deserts in Jordan. This song brings joy and happiness, and its joins people across nations, oceans, mountains and also deserts. I told the Bedouins about the fantastic football club Liverpool F.C. and the people from Liverpool. They stay together in good and bad times. Bedouins and people from Liverpool have very different lifestyle and culture, but one thing they have in common is unique hospitality and good guts.

Computer programmer Luca Mori discovered the remains of an ancient Roman villa when he browsed Google Earth maps showing satellite images of his local area. In the beginning he thought it was just a spot on the map, but when he studied it more thoroughly he suspected it could be something else.

Based on a content-based website, Travel Explorations has over 5 years published travel related information. Fresh content is our key to success. We attract traffic from people looking for information about explorations, expeditions and discoveries for unique adventures.

Our journalists and photographers provide us with articles on topics as tribes, mysteries, wildlife, society and more. The content on our website increases our traffic continuously, and gives us more attention. And of course it increases our statistics too both regarding Unique Visitors and Page Views.

A proverb says: smile to the world and the world will smile to you! It's good to bear in mind when you travel around the world meeting people with different culture and lifestyle. It's not always easy to understand the expressions from faces. The body language accounts for circa 70 % of the communication. One of the most important things is to understand is the signals from the face, especially the smile: it's genuine or false? How can you understand the difference?

Take BBC`s "smile"-test and see how good you are to interpret a smile.

In 1947 some Bedouins searched the cliffs along the Dead Sea for a lost goat, and stumbled over jars filled with manuscripts in a cave, the so called Dead Sea Scrolls. This discovery become a world sensation, but it was just a start for more discoveries in the caves along the Dead Sea. One of the biggest mysteries is who made these scrolls. Another question is the preservers of the Dead Sea Scrolls hiding the truth about the content because some parts of it are different from the Bible? And will there be more to find on the shores along the Dead Sea?

In Iceland, not only the sun stays up late, but pub crawls start when punters in England are already being thrown on to the street after last orders.

They live in a large textile home, protected from the heat, cold and wind by handwoven walls and ceilings. The tents are divided in two parts: one for men and one for women. Jordan's Bedouins live in the vast wasteland. All throughout the south and east of the country, they live in characteristic black goat-hair tents. These are known as beit al-sha'ar, or "house of hair." I had the great pleasure to stay with Bedouins in these tents many places.....

We were deep in the jungle in Papua New Guinea. Silently danced the Mud Men warriors towards us with cat soft moves. Suddenly they pull their bows and aimed at us with the arrows. Our hearts beat, and for a while we stopped breathing......

Between weird and beautiful lunar rock formations, I could admire the sunset in one of the world`s most amazing landscapes (July 2005).

The colours on the rock around me shifted continueosly. It was definitely no neon lights as it is in Las Vegas, but mother nature`s own wonder that showed its best side.

One of the most impressig rock formations is called Noah`s Ark. Was it such Noah`s ship looked when he and his people set sail around 4300 years ago as told about in the Bible. I really wondered how Lawrence of Arabia felt it when he stayed here for a long time preparing the famous attack in Aqaba. Wadi Rum has a long tradition for ancient caravan passageway. Today there are Bedouins living in the area. The best times to enjoy Wadi Rum are early morning and late afternoon, and especially at sunset and night when the desert sky dazzle you.