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Adventure, natural wonders and a dreamer’s paradise are some of the words that can best describe a tour of Latin America. Spending a few weeks travelling in the South American continent was not only thrilling but a rewarding experience for me. My idea of a Latin American tour never really comprised of visits to the popular tourist spots – it was all about delving deeper into the culture, language and people of the countries I visited. Argentina, Chile, Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Brazil – tours to every country was an enriching experience. Of all the Latin American countries, the one that I probably can never forget is Brazil.

My Brazil tour was nothing short of an enigma, with surprises in store at every place of my visit. Brasil or Brazil is the largest South American country that has everything from football to Carnaval on the offing. The colorful city life of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Recife and Olinda, all the highlights of a classic tour of Brazil, made me fall in love with the country. The rich cultural heritage of Pernambuco and Bahia, the unexplored Amazon rainforest and natural extravaganza of Iguaçu Falls left an indelible imprint on my soul.

The charm of the Brazilian cities is accentuated by the presence of vast coastline. The golden beaches present a breathtaking view of the sea. A major part of my time during the stay in the cities like Rio De Janerio and Sao Paulo was spent either enjoying a lazy stroll on the beach or playing beach volley ball. A visit to the Floresta da Tijuca or Tijuca Forest was an amazing experience as I was really interested to know how skyscrapers and a forest can co-exist in an urban setting! The three overwhelming sights at Rio are of the Sugarloaf Mountain, the Corcovado, and the sweaping panorama of the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, with the peak of Dois Irmaos as backdrop on the south and the sparkling lights of Niteroi on the far side of Guanabara Bay to the norht. Above all the towering statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado simply captured one’s senses!

In the north, along the coast, the bright and colorful colonial architecture of Brazil and heritage of Salvador thrive. The state of Bahia, located perfectly on the mouth of the huge bay of Todos os Santos, needs to be sampled for its Afro-Brazilian rituals, customs and traditions. With vibrant culture, exquisite colonial architecture and last but not the least the mouth watering cuisine of Bahia, the cobblestone streets of Salvador just deepened my love for Brazil.

A visit to Manaus, the chief port and heart of the Amazon basin, marked the close of my Brazil tour but not before I had got a taste of the monumental river. Visiting Manaus, one gets to experience one of the major attractions of a tour to Brazil-  a visit to the amazing Amazon rainforests that stretches over six countries. I got as close as possible to nature by taking small boat tours to the interiors of the forest. The outings leave one spellbound by the beauty and biodiversity of the Amazonia.

Samba, Carnival, lip-smacking Brazilian seafood, Christ the Redeemer, Amazing Amazon, great beaches… Do you really need more reasons to include Brazil in your next trip to Latin America?

Southern Bohemia offers scores of wonderful cycling trips. Cesky Krumlov, one of highlights on the Vienna to Prague Greenway route, is also a great spots where to base yourself and spend a few days riding in different directions. In order to include short rides into northern Austria it’s however best to make your base further south from Cesky Krumlov. Ideal and very scenic base is Rozmberk nad Vltavou (Rozmberk above Vlatava River). Rozmberk is located on the Salzburg to Prague Greenway route.

A fine day ride of about 100 kilometers (about 70 miles) leads through sleepy small village of Horni Dvoriste to yet sleepier village of Cesky Herslak where a footpath-wide border crossing marked by an insignificant sign leads into an Austrian border village of Deutch Horschlag.

From Deutch Horschlag continue in direction of Kerschbaum, large village right on E55, major highway connecting Linz with Ceske Budejovice and Prague. While one can ride a shoulder of the E55 highway, there are far too many 18-wheelers zipping by making the journey very unpleasant if not downright dangerous.

It is best to stay west of the major highway and find smaller unpaved roads, some old field and forest roads, that once connected the local villages. Most of these roads are without traffic and nowadays hardly used and easy to get lost on as many once lead through dense forests where some seem to these days vanish. If at all possible try to keep E55 at least in sight while navigating north taking any road or path you can find. Seeing a local here to ask directions is a slim chance.

After about 10 km riding amidst fields and pastures you will pass a few houses of a small hamlet of Edlbruck. You could take a small road to the highway here but best avoid having to paddle on E55. Continue north couple kilometers more then turn east to head back to the main road. If necessary you may have to walk the bike along some fields, even a patch of a forest, but it should not be more than two kilometers and you will start hearing the traffic on E55.

Once you locate the turn off for Leopoldschlag you do don’t have to worry about traffic any more. The two lane road leading to Leopoldschlag is in perfect condition, scenic and devoid of cars. The ride will take you first through Leopoldschlag Dorf and a kilometer later into Leopoldschlag, a large village with immaculately kept village park with a late baroque water fountain and a church, all houses seemingly freshly whitewashed, blooming flowers in the windows, a sheer joy to ride through, feeling as if riding in a fairytale.

Past Leopoldschlag the road follows River Malse, which constitutes the border with Czech Republic. Some 8 km later there is a small bridge, pedestrians and bicycles only, leading back into Czech Republic. The border crossing once again is unmanned.

Immediately beyond the frontier one enters a former small village of Cetviny. Cetviny apparently was noted in historical annals as far back as 13th century but the only thing that remains of it today is a gothic church of Birth of the Virgin Mary. While in the middle ages the village thrived on border trade, after communists took power in 1948 they depopulated the area, constructed “Iron Curtain”, the legendary barbed wire zone, and either destroyed or converted all local village houses into border guard barracks and storage facilities.

Novohradske mountains of Southern Bohemia, as this border region is known, are very pleasant to cycle through. The handful of small hamlets that you’ll pass do not exude the same upkeep perfection as the villages on the Austrian side – in fact quite the contrary, the local residents are still struggling to rejuvenate life in this area after forty years of being left to rot, destroyed and off-limits under the communists.

A great place to stop for refreshment on your way back to Rozmberk nad Vltavou is a hilltop hamlet of Svaty Kamen, meaning Holly Stone, dominated by the pilgrimage Church of Our Lady of the Snows, a 17th-century baroque church built over a large stone (actually two giant boulders), the site of the revelation of the Virgin Mary dating to 16th century when pilgrim first started to arrive visiting a small chapel that was initially built over the Holy Stone. Significantly destroyed by communist border guards during era of post-WWII communist Czechoslovakia and only reconstructed after 1989, Svaty Kamen has an idyllic setting with soothing views of pristine countryside of pastures and forests 360-degrees around.

K2, the second highest peak on the planet (28,268’) is a lonely place right now. It straddles the border between Pakistan and the Xinjian Uygur Autonomous Region in China, both fraught with riots, ethnic upheavals and terrorist attacks. Nonetheless it’s as beautiful from China as it was from Pakistan where I first saw it in ’98. I and my team of three Kyrgyz, one Uygur and three camels experienced bluebird conditions in base camp and not another soul the entire time. Our little family–Shiite, Sunni and kara bura (black camels)–celebrated the end of Ramadan, the Lunar New Year and the 60th Anniversary of Communism in China. Mostly we shared a common goal: to reach K2. A good time was had by all.Visit author’s website: Ruth Anne Kocour.

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Pemyangtse Monastery, West Sikkim

Sikkim’s original inhabitants, the Lepchas, call their land Nyemael , “Paradise.” Though one of the legendary “bayul” or Shangri-la valleys that refer to a handful of remote valleys of the Himalayas was said to be only behind the mighty Kanchenjunga, rather than implying the entire former Kingdom, Sikkim, now the 22nd state of India, has very much the same characteristics as the other fairy tale kingdoms of the Himalayas.

Lepcha girl

The Buddhist patron-saint of Sikkim is Guru Rinpoche who is said to have passed through the land in the 9th century and introduced Buddhism to Sikkim. As a result landscape is studded with many picturesque monasteries, much like Bhutan further to the east. Though most monasteries extol Padma Sambhawa and follow the Nyingmapa order, or Red Hat school of Buddhism, since 1959 when the 16th Karmapa arrived in Sikkim after Tibet was overrun by the Chinese, Rumtek, a large monastery near Gangtok, has become the seat of the Tibetan Karma Kagyu lineage.

Gompa near Yuksom

Same as its neighbors, Sikkim too was a monarchy, presumably since the 13th century though the first king, or Chogyal, of Sikkim was not consecrated until 1642 in Yuksom, in West Sikkim. The end of Sikkim’s monarchy came on April 6, 1975 when the Indian army subdued the palace guards, placed the king under house arrest and Sikkim ceased to exist as an independent kingdom, its sovereignty lost. It is said that Sikkim’s merger with India was necessary for India’s national security since India’s first cross border skirmishes with the Chinese in the 1960s. China claimed Sikkim to be part of Tibet, hence part of China and India feared vulnerable to an attack should Sikkim succumb to China. Though the eventual annexation of Sikkim to India was years in the making, perhaps as far as back as 1947 when India gained independence from the British, fact is also that India played dirty in the process, staging referendum vote whether the people wanted to become part of the union, all to pave the road to justification of the eventual annexation. Hailed as expression of democracy, those that remember the voting and events of those days well recall India hauling in masses of poor folks from the plains, some said to have been brought from as far south as Bihar to vote, all to show the wish of the majority was to join the Indian Union. No foreign press was allowed into Sikkim for a long time and even as late as 1980s number of those that used to be close the former Chogyal and agitated against India’s rule lingered off and on in Indinan prisons.

Preparing for a ceremony, Pemyangtse

Today, most Sikkimese know they lost their independence in 1975, and the plains-bound passengers from the hills still say they are “going to India” despite that indeed they are in India. The pride of the Lepchas and being Sikkimese carries on and it is good to see that the young generation has not lost their identity, quite the contrary. Although India has always been hailed as the largest democracy and praised for its practices, it seems the spirit of democracy it sowed in Sikkim is a far cry from its otherwise fine track record.

To learn more about the events of 1970s when India annexed Sikkim, read Smash and Grab: Annexation of Sikkim, by Sunanda K Datta-Ray.