Grand Tour
The term "Grand Tour" refers to the 17th- and 18th-century custom of a traditional trip of Europe undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank when they had come of age. Young women of sufficient means, or those of either gender of a more humble origin who could find a sponsor, could partake; the custom—which flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transport in the 1840s and was associated with a standard itinerary—served as an educational rite of passage. Though the Grand Tour was associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men of other Protestant Northern European nations, from the second half of the 18th century, by some South and North Americans. By the mid 18th century, the Grand Tour had become a regular feature of aristocratic education in Central Europe, as well, although it was restricted to the higher nobility; the tradition declined as enthusiasm for neo-classical culture waned, with the advent of accessible rail and steamship travel—an era in which Thomas Cook made the "Cook's Tour" of early mass tourism a byword.
The New York Times in 2008 described the Grand Tour in this way: Three hundred years ago, wealthy young Englishmen began taking a post-Oxbridge trek through France and Italy in search of art and the roots of Western civilization. With nearly unlimited funds, aristocratic connections and months to roam, they commissioned paintings, perfected their language skills and mingled with the upper crust of the Continent; the primary value of the Grand Tour lay in its exposure to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent. In addition, it provided the only opportunity to view specific works of art, the only chance to hear certain music. A Grand Tour could last anywhere from several months to several years, it was undertaken in the company of a Cicerone, a knowledgeable guide or tutor. The Grand Tour had more than superficial cultural importance; the legacy of the Grand Tour lives on to the modern day and is still evident in works of travel and literature.
From its aristocratic origins and the permutations of sentimental and romantic travel to the age of tourism and globalization, the Grand Tour still influences the destinations tourists choose and shapes the ideas of culture and sophistication that surround the act of travel. In essence, the Grand Tour was neither a scholarly pilgrimage nor a religious one, though a pleasurable stay in Venice and a residence in Rome were essential. Catholic Grand Tourists followed the same routes as Protestant Whigs. Since the 17th century, a tour to such places was considered essential for budding artists to understand proper painting and sculpture techniques, though the trappings of the Grand Tour—valets and coachmen a cook a "bear-leader" or scholarly guide—were beyond their reach; the advent of popular guides, such as the book An Account of Some of the Statues, Bas-Reliefs and Pictures in Italy published in 1722 by Jonathan Richardson and his son Jonathan Richardson the Younger, did much to popularise such trips, following the artists themselves, the elite considered travel to such centres as necessary rites of passage.
For gentlemen, some works of art were essential to demonstrate the breadth and polish they had received from their tour. In Rome, antiquaries like Thomas Jenkins were dealers and were able to sell and advise on the purchase of marbles. Coins and medals, which formed more portable souvenirs and a respected gentleman's guide to ancient history were popular. Pompeo Batoni made a career of painting the English milordi posed with graceful ease among Roman antiquities. Many continued on to Naples, where they viewed Herculaneum and Pompeii, but few ventured far into Southern Italy, fewer still to Greece still under Turkish rule. Rome for many centuries had been the goal of pilgrims during Jubilee when they visited the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome. In Britain, Thomas Coryat's travel book Coryat's Crudities, published during the Twelve Years' Truce, was an early influence on the Grand Tour but it was the far more extensive tour through Italy as far as Naples undertaken by the'Collector' Earl of Arundel, with his wife and children in 1613–14 that established the most significant precedent.
This is because he asked Inigo Jones, not yet established as an architect but known as a'great traveller' and masque designer, to act as his cicerone. Larger numbers of tourists began their tours after the Peace of Münster in 1648. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the term was by Richard Lassels, an expatriate Roman Catholic priest, in his book The Voyage of Italy, published posthumously in Paris in 1670 and in London. Lassels's introduction listed four areas in which travel furnished "an accomplished, consummate Traveller": the intellectual, the social, the ethical, the political; the idea of travelling for the sake of curiosity and learning was a developing idea in the 17th century. With John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, it was argued, accepted, that knowledge comes entire
Cologne
Cologne is the largest city of Germany's most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, its 1 million+ inhabitants make it the fourth most populous city in Germany after Berlin and Munich. The largest city on the Rhine, it is the most populous city both of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region, Germany's largest and one of Europe's major metropolitan areas, of the Rhineland. Centred on the left bank of the Rhine, Cologne is about 45 kilometres southeast of North Rhine-Westphalia's capital of Düsseldorf and 25 kilometres northwest of Bonn, it is the largest city in the Central Ripuarian dialect areas. The city's famous Cologne Cathedral is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Cologne. There are many institutions of higher education in the city, most notably the University of Cologne, one of Europe's oldest and largest universities, the Technical University of Cologne, Germany's largest university of applied sciences, the German Sport University Cologne, Germany's only sport university.
Cologne Bonn Airport lies in the southeast of the city. The main airport for the Rhine-Ruhr region is Düsseldorf Airport. Cologne was founded and established in Ubii territory in the 1st century AD as the Roman Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, the first word of, the origin of its name. An alternative Latin name of the settlement is Augusta Ubiorum, after the Ubii. "Cologne", the French version of the city's name, has become standard in English as well. The city functioned as the capital of the Roman province of Germania Inferior and as the headquarters of the Roman military in the region until occupied by the Franks in 462. During the Middle Ages it flourished on one of the most important major trade routes between east and west in Europe. Cologne was one of the leading members of the Hanseatic League and one of the largest cities north of the Alps in medieval and Renaissance times. Prior to World War II the city had undergone several occupations by the French and by the British. Cologne was one of the most bombed cities in Germany during World War II, with the Royal Air Force dropping 34,711 long tons of bombs on the city.
The bombing reduced the population by 95% due to evacuation, destroyed the entire city. With the intention of restoring as many historic buildings as possible, the successful postwar rebuilding has resulted in a mixed and unique cityscape. Cologne is a major cultural centre for the Rhineland. Exhibitions range from local ancient Roman archeological sites to contemporary graphics and sculpture; the Cologne Trade Fair hosts a number of trade shows such as Art Cologne, imm Cologne and the Photokina. The first urban settlement on the grounds of modern-day Cologne was Oppidum Ubiorum, founded in 38 BC by the Ubii, a Cisrhenian Germanic tribe. In 50 AD, the Romans founded Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium on the river Rhine and the city became the provincial capital of Germania Inferior in 85 AD. Considerable Roman remains can be found in present-day Cologne near the wharf area, where a 1,900-year-old Roman boat was discovered in late 2007. From 260 to 271 Cologne was the capital of the Gallic Empire under Postumus and Victorinus.
In 310 under emperor Constantine I a bridge was built over the Rhine at Cologne. Roman imperial governors resided in the city and it became one of the most important trade and production centres in the Roman Empire north of the Alps. Cologne is shown on the 4th century Peutinger Map. Maternus, elected as bishop in 313, was the first known bishop of Cologne; the city was the capital of a Roman province until it was occupied by the Ripuarian Franks in 462. Parts of the original Roman sewers are preserved underneath the city, with the new sewerage system having opened in 1890. Early medieval Cologne was part of Austrasia within the Frankish Empire. In 716, Charles Martel commanded an army for the first time and suffered the only defeat of his life when Chilperic II, King of Neustria, invaded Austrasia and the city fell to him in the Battle of Cologne. Charles fled to the Eifel mountains, rallied supporters, took the city back that same year after defeating Chilperic in the Battle of Amblève. Cologne had been the seat of a bishop since the Roman period.
In 843, Cologne became a city within the Treaty of Verdun-created East Francia. In 953, the archbishops of Cologne first gained noteworthy secular power, when bishop Bruno was appointed as duke by his brother Otto I, King of Germany. In order to weaken the secular nobility, who threatened his power, Otto endowed Bruno and his successors on the bishop's see with the prerogatives of secular princes, thus establishing the Electorate of Cologne, formed by the temporal possessions of the archbishopric and included in the end a strip of territory along the left Bank of the Rhine east of Jülich, as well as the Duchy of Westphalia on the other side of the Rhine, beyond Berg and Mark. By the end of the 12th century, the Archbishop of Cologne was one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. Besides being prince elector, he was Arch-chancellor of Italy as well, technically from 1238 and permanently from 1263 until 1803. Following the Battle of Worringen in 1288, Cologne gained its independence from the archbishops and became a Free City.
Archbishop Sigfried II von Westerburg was forced to reside in Bonn. The archbishop preserv
Xu Xiake
Xu Xiake, born Xu Hongzu, courtesy name Zhenzhi, was a Chinese travel writer and geographer of the Ming dynasty, known best for his famous geographical treatise, noted for his bravery and humility. He traveled throughout China for more than 30 years; the records of his travels were compiled posthumously in The Travel Diaries Xu Xiake, his work translated by Ding Wenjiang. Xu's writing falls under the old Chinese literary category of'travel record literature', which used narrative and prose styles of writing to portray one's travel experiences; the People's Liberation Army Navy barracks ship. With ancestors from Jiangxi province, Xu Xiake was born in what is today Jiangyin as Xu Hongzu, as the second son of Xu Yu'an and Wang Ruren, it was said his mother encouraged him to travel and this shaped Xu's predilections. His sobriquet is Zhenzhi. Xiake was an alternate sobriquet given to him by his friend Chen Jiru and it means "one, in the sunset clouds", his other friend, Huang Daozhou gave Xu an alternate sobriquet: Xiayi, meaning "untrammelled in the sunset clouds."
On his journeys throughout China he travelled with a servant called Gu Xing. He faced many hardships along the way, as he was dependent on the patronage of local scholars who would help him after he had been robbed of all his belongings. Local Buddhist abbots of the various places he visited would pay him money as well, for the small service of recording the history of their local monastery. From the snowy passes of Sichuan, to the subtropical jungles of Guangxi and Yunnan, to the mountains of Tibet, Xu Xiake wrote of all his experiences and provided enormous amounts of written detail from his observations; the written work of Xu Xiake's travel records and diaries contained some 404,000 Chinese characters, an enormous work for a single author of his time. Xu traveled throughout the provinces of China on foot, to write his enormous geographical and topographical treatise, documenting various details of his travels, such as the locations of small gorges, or mineral beds such as mica schists. Xu's work was quite systematic, providing accurate details of measurement, his work translated into modern Chinese by Ding Wenjiang, reads more like the accounts of a 20th-century field surveyor than an early 17th-century scholar.
In Guizhou, he made the discovery of the true source of the West River. He discovered the Mekong and Salween rivers were, in fact, separate drainages with separate watersheds. Xu made the important realization that the Jinsha river network – and not the Min or Yalong – formed the true headwaters of the Yangtze River, correcting a mistake in Chinese geography as old as the "Tribute of Yu" compiled by Confucius in the Classic of History. Hargett, James M. "Some Preliminary Remarks on the Travel Records of the Song Dynasty," Chinese Literature: Essays, Reviews: 67–93. Ward and Hongzu Xu. 2001. Xu Xiake: the art of travel writing. Richmond: Curzon. ISBN 0-7007-1319-0. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China: Mathematics and the Sciences of Heaven and Earth. Vol III. Xu Xiake bio at Chinaculture.org "Travel Diary of Xu Xiake". Open-lit.com. Retrieved January 11, 2014
Geography
Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features and phenomena of the Earth and planets. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography is defined in terms of two branches: human geography and physical geography. Human geography deals with the study of people and their communities, cultures and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Physical geography deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere; the four historical traditions in geographical research are: spatial analyses of natural and the human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies of human-land relationships, the Earth sciences. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences".
Geography is a systematic study of its features. Traditionally, geography has been associated with place names. Although many geographers are trained in toponymy and cartology, this is not their main preoccupation. Geographers study the space and the temporal database distribution of phenomena and features as well as the interaction of humans and their environment; because space and place affect a variety of topics, such as economics, climate and animals, geography is interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinary nature of the geographical approach depends on an attentiveness to the relationship between physical and human phenomena and its spatial patterns. Names of places...are not geography...know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena, to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes, and, in doing so, to trace out the laws of nature and to mark their influences upon man.
This is ` a description of the world' --. In a word Geography is a Science—a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause and effect. Just as all phenomena exist in time and thus have a history, they exist in space and have a geography. Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main subsidiary fields: human geography and physical geography; the former focuses on the built environment and how humans create, view and influence space. The latter examines the natural environment, how organisms, soil and landforms produce and interact; the difference between these approaches led to a third field, environmental geography, which combines physical and human geography and concerns the interactions between the environment and humans. Physical geography focuses on geography as an Earth science, it aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, atmosphere and global flora and fauna patterns. Physical geography can be divided into many broad categories, including: Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape the human society.
It encompasses the human, cultural and economic aspects. Human geography can be divided into many broad categories, such as: Various approaches to the study of human geography have arisen through time and include: Behavioral geography Feminist geography Culture theory Geosophy Environmental geography is concerned with the description of the spatial interactions between humans and the natural world, it requires an understanding of the traditional aspects of physical and human geography, as well as the ways that human societies conceptualize the environment. Environmental geography has emerged as a bridge between the human and the physical geography, as a result of the increasing specialisation of the two sub-fields. Furthermore, as human relationship with the environment has changed as a result of globalization and technological change, a new approach was needed to understand the changing and dynamic relationship. Examples of areas of research in the environmental geography include: emergency management, environmental management and political ecology.
Geomatics is concerned with the application of computers to the traditional spatial techniques used in cartography and topography. Geomatics emerged from the quantitative revolution in geography in the mid-1950s. Today, geomatics methods include spatial analysis, geographic information systems, remote sensing, global positioning systems. Geomatics has led to a revitalization of some geography departments in Northern America where the subject had a declining status during the 1950s. Regional geography is concerned with the description of the unique characteristics of a particular region such as its natural or human elements; the main aim is to understand, or define the uniqueness, or character of a particular region that consists of natural as well as human elements. Attention is paid to regionalization, which covers the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions. Urban planning, regional planning, spatial planning: Use the science of geography to assist in determining how to develop the land to meet particular criteria, such as safety, economic opportunities, the preservation of the built or natural heritage, so on.
The planning of towns, c
Europe
Europe is a continent located in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, it comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Since around 1850, Europe is most considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Although the term "continent" implies physical geography, the land border is somewhat arbitrary and has been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity; the division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East-West cultural and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border does not follow political boundaries, with Turkey and Kazakhstan being transcontinental countries. A strict application of the Caucasus Mountains boundary places two comparatively small countries and Georgia, in both continents.
Europe covers 2 % of the Earth's surface. Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 741 million as of 2016; the European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast. Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization; the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia.
The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic and social change in Western Europe and the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals, it includes all European states except for Belarus and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.
The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most used among Europeans. In classical Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess; the word Europe is derived from her name. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, "wide, broad" and ὤψ "eye, countenance", hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for "west", this being either Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" or Phoenician'ereb "evening, west", at the origin of Arabic Maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, finds the mention of the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night, sunset", in opposition to Asu " sunrise", i.e. Asia.
The same naming motive according to "cartographic convention" appears in Greek Ἀνατολή. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is poor." Next to these hypotheses there is a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning "darkness", which produced Greek Erebus. Most major world languages use words derived from Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu. In some Turkic languages the Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa; the prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Adventure travel
Adventure travel is a type of niche tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk, which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has grown in recent decades as tourists seek out-of-the-ordinary or "roads less traveled" vacations, but lack of a clear operational definition has hampered measurement of market size and growth. According to the U. S.-based Adventure Travel Trade Association, adventure travel may be any tourist activity that includes physical activity, a cultural exchange, connection with nature. Adventure tourists may have the motivation to achieve mental states characterized as rush or flow, resulting from stepping outside their comfort zone; this may be from experiencing culture shock or by performing acts requiring significant effort and involve some degree of risk, real or perceived, or physical danger. This may include activities such as mountaineering, bungee jumping, mountain biking, canoeing, scuba diving, kayaking, zip-lining, hiking, sandboarding and rock climbing.
Some obscure forms of adventure travel include ghetto tourism. Other rising forms of adventure travel include social and jungle tourism. Access to inexpensive consumer technology, with respect to Global Positioning Systems, social networking and photography, have increased the worldwide interest in adventure travel; the interest in independent adventure travel has increased as more specialist travel websites emerge offering niche locations and sports. There is a trend for developing tourism for the disabled. Adventure travel for the disabled has become a $13 billion USD a year industry in North America; some adventure travel destinations offer diverse programs and job opportunities developed for the disabled. Culinary tourism is defined as the pursuit of memorable eating and drinking experiences. Cultural tourism is the act of travelling to a place to see that location's culture, including the lifestyle of the people in that area, the history of those people, their art, architecture and other factors that shaped their way of life.
Disaster tourism is the act of traveling to a disaster area as a matter of curiosity. The behavior can be a nuisance if it hinders rescue and recovery operations. If not done because of pure curiosity, it can be cataloged as disaster learning. Ethno tourism refers to visiting a foreign location for the sake of observing the indigenous members of its society for the sake of non-scientific gain; some extreme forms of this include attempting to make first contact with tribes that are protected from outside visitors. Two controversial issues associated with ethno tourism include bringing natives into contact with diseases they do not have immunities for, the possible degradation or destruction of a unique culture and/or language. Extreme tourism involves travel to dangerous locations or participation in dangerous events or activities; this form of tourism can overlap with extreme sport. Jungle tourism is a rising subcategory of adventure travel defined by active multifaceted physical means of travel in the jungle regions of the earth.
Although similar in many respects to adventure travel, jungle tourism pertains to the context of region and activity. According to the Glossary of Tourism Terms, jungle tours have become a major component of green tourism in tropical destinations and are a recent phenomenon of Western international tourism. Overland travel or overlanding refers to an "overland journey" – originating with Marco Polo's first overland expedition in the 13th century from Venice to the Mongolian court of Kublai Khan. Today overlanding is a form of extended adventure holiday, embarking on a long journey in a group. Overland companies provide a converted truck or a bus plus a tour leader, the group travels together overland for a period of weeks or months. Since the 1960s overlanding has been a popular means of travel between destinations across Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia; the "Hippie trail" of the 60s and 70s saw thousands of young westerners travelling through the Middle East to India and Nepal. Many of the older traditional routes are still active, along with newer routes like Iceland to South Africa overland and Central Asian post soviet states.
Urban exploration is the examination of the unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities. Urban exploration is commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites, it may be referred to as "draining" "urban spelunking", "urban caving", or "building hacking". The nature of this activity presents various risks, including physical danger and the possibility of arrest, heavy fines, incarceration. Many, but not all, of the activities associated with urban exploration could be considered trespassing or other violations of local or regional laws; the Spiritual tourism refers to activities done for spiritual pursuits like pilgrimage, taking part in Yoga and meditation etc. Spiritual quest has become one of the major goal among many travelers; the programs like yoga treks, meditation tours are getting more popular day by day. Buckley, R.. Adventure Tourism. Wallingford, UK: CABI. OCLC 4802912392.
Media related to Adventure travel at Wikimedia Commons Scuba divers swim among the sharks, Fayetteville Observer
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