Where the real Dracula lived; saving the world’s oldest mummies; a troll to adore; non-binary passports; mountain biking boom prompts milder trails
|  | Friday, October 29, 2021 | | | | |
| In today’s newsletter: a mountain biking boom prompts milder trails; non-binary passports; a troll to adore; where the real Dracula lived … and saving the world’s oldest mummies. | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPHS BY RONAN O'CONNELL | |
| By George Stone, TRAVEL Executive Editor
The road to hell is lined with candy corn. Turns out our sugar-coated costume party is a portal to something far more sinister: the Celtic New Year festival of Samhain, and the devil-invested “hell cave” where Halloween was born.
If that’s the trick, here’s the treat: Travelers are welcome.
Considered by the ancient Celts to be a passage to the otherworld, Ireland’s Oweynagat cave (pictured above) was seen as the demon-filled jetway to the “murky, subterranean dimension, also known as Tír na nÓg, which was inhabited by Celtic devils, fairies, and leprechauns,” writes Ronan O’Connell.
Back when paganism was the dominant religion among Ireland’s majority Celtic people, the unassuming entrance to Oweynagat cave sat near Rathcroghan (illustrated below), hub of the ancient Irish kingdom of Connaught and a monumental temple mound where animals were sacrificed on the eve of October 31.
| | | |
|
| “Samhain was when the invisible wall between the living world and the otherworld disappeared,” says Mike McCarthy, a Rathcroghan tour guide and researcher. “A whole host of fearsome otherworldly beasts emerged to ravage the surrounding landscape and make it ready for winter.”
To pagans who felt dispossessed of any form of supernatural possession, Samhain was a seasonal ceremony that marked when one pastoral year ended and another began. In the 1800s, the tradition was brought by Irish immigrants to the U.S., where it morphed into our nightmarishly kitschy fright fest.
Now Ireland is pushing for UNESCO World Heritage status for the site, which could bring more visitors to these haunted hollows. “But we want sustainable tourism, not a rush of gimmicky Halloween tourism,” says archaeologist Daniel Curley, an expert on Rathcroghan, who hopes the inscription could lead to funding for research and preservation.
For travelers, the gate to hell remains elusive. “It is barely signposted and hidden beneath trees in a waterlogged paddock at the end of a one-way, dead-end road, about a thousand yards south of the much more accessible temple mound,” writes O’Connell.
But what kind of globetrotting ghoul has ever been so easily scared off?
Do you get this daily? If not, sign up here or forward this to a friend.
| | | |
| A troll to adore: Photographer Michael George spent much of his childhood in nearby woods, but then grew wary as he heard stories of legendary beings, like the blood-sucking chupacabra. Both delight and fear emerged on a trip with his boyfriend to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens—and Thomas Danko’s giant trolls (one, pictured above). “They have a presence, like they erupted out of the ground they’re standing on. I noticed visitors kept their distance, as if to approach them too closely would somehow disturb them,” George wrote two weeks ago in a Nat Geo Instagram post, which has nearly 400,000 likes. Nat Geo’s Jennifer Barger caught up last year with Danko, a self-described “recycle art activist” from Denmark, whose trolls are made of salvaged or trashed wood.
| | | |
| Non-binary U.S. passports: The State Department has issued its first passport denoted with an “X”—for non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming U.S. citizens. In an announcement Wednesday, the department said the option would be widely available for passports and other documents, such as the consular report of birth abroad, by early next year. Here’s how to apply. Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, and Canada are among the handful of countries already allowing citizens to designate a gender other than male or female on passports, the AP reports.
Traveling for a change: Fifteen years after it was first proposed, Austria’s new Klimaticket, or climate ticket, has gone live. For a pass that averages 3 euro a day (about $3.50) for unlimited rides, train travelers can take in some of the most scenic landscapes in central Europe, CNN reports. The unlimited pass, which costs much than a similar all-country pass in neighboring Switzerland, is an attempt to cut fossil fuel use from individual vehicles.
That’s a 70th birthday party: It’s never too late to try something new, says Dierdre Wolownick, who took up swimming in her 40s, running in her 50s, and rock climbing in her 60s. To usher in her eighth decade, she took a two-day hike up and down Yosemite’s challenging El Capitan with a few friends. (Her first climbing instructor was Free Solo climber Alex Honnold—her son.) How’d she stop the little voices in her head saying she couldn’t do it? “You first have to figure out why you think you can’t do something,” Wolownick tells the New York Times, “and ask yourself if that’s a valid point.” Readers, do you agree? Have you surprised others by doing something that seemed beyond you? Let us know!
The real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler wasn’t 100 percent bad. The brutal and sadistic 15th-century ruler of part of present-day Romania liberated peasants and artisans as well as rebuffed Turkish soldiers and German merchants. And his Easter banquet for noblemen—which turned into kind of a Red Wedding—came after those elites killed his dad and older brother, Nat Geo’s History magazine reports.
Related: Inside ‘Dracula’s Castle’
| | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY KURT SCHACHNER | | Mild, not wild: Bike sales up. Mountain biking exploding. The new bikers—including kids with families—don’t want the gnarly, dangerous trails. So mountainous West Virginia, getting less snow because of climate change, is designing broader “flow” trails with smoother surfaces and banked edges, Nat Geo reports. (Pictured above, a mountain biker on a flow trail at West Virginia’s Snowshoe Mountain Resort.)
| | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARTHA SAXTON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION | | Saving the world’s oldest mummies: In the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the bodies from a dozen hunter-gatherers have been preserved since their discovery more than a century ago. The Chinchorro mummified their dead 2,000 years before ancient Egyptians began wrapping pharaohs in bandages. A new museum and UNESCO recognition of a World Heritage site may save them from changing climate conditions, Nat Geo reports. (Above left, the mummy of a young boy lays on a reed burial hut; above right, clay masks and wood were used to decorate the mummies.)
| | | |
| This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. We’d love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. | | | |
| PREVIOUSLY ON NAT GEO DAILY … | |
| SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS | | We'd like to hear from you! Tell us what you think of our emails by sharing your feedback in this short survey.
| | | |
Clicking on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and National Geographic Channel links will take you away from our National Geographic Partners site where different terms of use and privacy policy apply.
This email was sent to: tiendasfrikiscineseriestvcomicsjuegos@barcelonafriki.com. Please do not reply to this email as this address is not monitored.
This email contains an advertisement from:
National Geographic | 1145 17th Street, N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036
Stop all types of future commercial email from National Geographic regarding its products, services, or experiences.
Manage all email preferences with the Walt Disney Family of Companies.
© 2021 National Geographic Partners, LLC, All rights reserved. | | |
{LITMUS TRACKING PIXEL}
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.