Exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville

As you travel northeast form Kas to the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, a worthwhile stopover is the city of Konya. In the 1200s, Konya was the capital of the Seljuk Empire and home to the whirling dervishes. Many important sites from this period remain, including the Mevlana Monastery, where the dervish leader, the great poet, Rumi, is buried. Overlooking the Monastery is the Hotel Rumi, where the $84 room rate includes a buffet breakfast. In addition to the dervishes, Konya is known for its food. Firnin kebab is roasted lamb. Etli ekmek is Turkish pizza topped with ground lamb. Both are delicious and can be sampled at Sifa Lokantasi (Mevlana Cadessi 30).
Today, I’m pleased to introduce my first guest blogger on ActiveTravels, my brother Jim Jermanok. I hope it will be the first of many guest writers!
Five years ago, following graduation from Yale, Ariane Kirtley went to West Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. Her career seemed assured. Almost overnight her life changed. Friends encouraged her to visit the Florida-sized Azawak Valley, the most abandoned region of Niger, the poorest country on Earth. In the Azawak, half the children die before reaching five years old, often of thirst. Ariane thought she’d seen everything in Africa, but she was so devastated by the conditions she found that she decided to dedicate her life to the people of the Azawak, and bring them water from unlimited supplies 600-1000 feet underground, much too deep for conventional wells to reach.
Since 2006, Ariane has worked against harrowing odds to save lives in the Azawak, among some of the most defenseless minorities in Africa – a half million Tuareg and Wodaabe nomads who have no water most of the year due to unremitting drought. Ariane set aside career goals and founded her own organization, Amman Imman: Water Is Life, to build permanent borehole wells for these nomads. Working far from civilization in suffocating Saharan heat, facing persistent health risks, Ariane and her team do major infrastructure work normally carried out by governments. In early 2010, persevering under the threat of Al-Qaida terrorists, she finished building her second borehole, the Kijigari “Well of Love.” This follows completion of Tangarwashane borehole in 2007-08. Each borehole serves 25,000 people and animals.
Ariane’s dream is to build fifty such “Oases of Life” to eliminate water scarcity for the half million forsaken people of the Azawak. During this Holiday Season, please think about helping this brave woman save the lives of children and nomads who are on the brink, by donating generously to her 501c3 organization, Amman Imman: Water Is Life.
A four-hour drive from Salt Lake City, Great Basin National Park is a little-known gem where mountains over 13,000 feet rise dramatically from the desert floor. Wheeler Peak (13,063 feet) is the highest mountain in the park, but if you want diversity of terrain, local rangers suggest trekking the 11-mile Hendrys Creek Trail to the summit of 12,067-foot Mt. Moriah. The 5,000-foot vertical climb takes you through thickets of pinon pine and vast glades of aspen forest. At 11,000 feet, you reach the Table, Moriah’s rolling sky-high plateau. On the Table’s rim are stands of twisted bristlecone pines, which, at 3,000 to 4,000 years old, are the oldest type of tree on the planet. From here, it’s just a scramble up rocks to the summit. If visibility is good, you can look across an uninterrupted carpet of sagebrush for a good 100 miles.
Near the Oregon border, the Sawtooth Mountains are 10,000 foot peaks that are just as majestic as the Tetons, but with 1/10th the traffic. Fly into Sun Valley (1-hour drive) or Boise (3-hour drive) and make your way to the Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch, a vacation retreat for close to eight decades. Then get ready to play. Immerse yourself in the stunning surroundings by climbing 1700 feet to shimmering Sawtooth Lake, the “crown jewel” of the Valley. In July, the wildflowers are at their peak, and you can find lupine, sego lilies, Indian paintbrush, shooting stars, blue penstemon and many others. The region is also known for epic mountain biking, hooking brookies, rainbow, and cutthroat trout, rafting on the nearby Salmon River, and this being a ranch, guided half-day and full-day horseback riding adventure. Afterwards, you can soak yourself in the hot spring-fed pool, before dinners of elk, salmon, and Dungeness crab from the Washington coast. At night, people gather on the outdoor patio to gaze at the sparkling sky and listen to foot-stomping live music. This is mountain living at its best.
We receive, on average, 500-plus press releases a day telling us about all the new hotel openings, adventures, tours, cruise ships, art exhibitions, and much, much more in the world of travel. That’s in addition to all the travel publications that arrive via snail mail. Believe it or not, we actually skim every one of those emails and magazines to see if anything excites us. If it meets our discerning eye, we pass it on to you. Every January, we highlight what’s new in the world of the travel in our newsletter. Obviously, this is the tip of the iceberg. Simply tell us where you’re headed and we’ll give you the scoop on what’s new. One slight addendum. We received word that the Ritz Paris had a fire in the building this week. This will no doubt push the reopening back once again.