Who do you follow for travel?

Nicola delighted about finding a Lonely Planet guide book in New Delhi, India

It’s Saturday so you know what that means….it’s time for Nicola Arnold’s weekly travel blog.

But first it’s time to congratulate her! Nicola will soon be leaving our 21-square-mile island for Canada. She’s got a job and she’ll be in Canada soon (at least for a while before she figures out how to travel again).

Have no fear, though, we’re not losing our blogger! She’ll continue with all of our important travel information every Saturday. And this week? This week Nicola’s helping us find travel information online:

If you made New Year’s resolutions specifically geared towards travel… what would they be?

Travel more? Stay longer? Revisit favourite places? Dare new destinations? Pack lighter? Leave behind technology?

Since I started writing columns for Robyn’s Wandering blog, I began to realize that I was really interested in fueling the fire of my travel passion.

I began to research fervently for ways to get a daily dose of travel writing, adventures and escapism. I did not

Funny ads at the airport that tell traveling like it is

really want to buy magazines, just to hoard them in my closet.

I did not want to spend all my time searching for websites, just to end up hours later having stumbled upon a string of videos on YouTube and emerging from behind my laptop 3 hours later. We all know how easily that can happen!

The Christmas season is over, although Christmas cards continue to trickle in. It is 2011 and perhaps this year will mean a backpacking adventure, a summer road trip, a family reunion in a faraway place, or just a weekend spent visiting a new city.

As a social network, Facebook helps to bring information together in one convenient place. I decided to use it as a tool to become a ‘fan’ of all sorts of travel pages – including Robyn’s Wanderings!! After browsing through travel pages on Facebook, I soon found out that they are designed to tantalize the tourists and travelers of the world.

And it worked on me.

What sort of pages did I add on Facebook to follow? A few examples include:

– Lonely Planet

– National Geographic Traveler

– Frommer’s

– Travel Channel

– Greek Islands (I have a weak spot for Santorini)

– Maldives (one day I hope to visit… and it shall be grand)

A sight in India that you will have to see to believe

These pages send updates on Facebook related to travel and adventures… and many of them are interesting and worth a glance when you have some free time to browse.

If you are interested in 7 Tips for Single Bag Travel (http://www.wisebread.com/vacation-hack-7-tips-for-single-bag-travel) then Wisebread has some hinters. If there is one thing I would still like to perfect this year in travel, it would be to pack lighter. Wise words I try to follow are that once you have laid out what you want to travel with, take half of the clothing and double the money… although it is usually easier said than done!

Ashes of corpses, bathing and dolphins in one River?

River Dolphins

It was far too early in the morning, but we persisted. We dodged the bodies being carried over our heads on bamboo carriers and we arrived at the Ganges River.

It’s Varanasi. One of the holiest and craziest places I have ever visited in my life. Sitting on the banks of the Ganges in India – a mere couple of hours from New Delhi by train – it is auspicious to die here and if you die somewhere else? You want to come here to be burned on one of the various piers here.

But that’s not what we were doing that morning. Nope. Instead we were trying to find a boat. Why? Well one of the other traditions here is to light little candles and send them floating down the river as an offering to Ganga, who is revered as the living goddess of Varanasi.

We found a row boat and three others – one photographer from National Geographic – to share our morning outing. He took us along the river where we saw people laying-out their laundry and bathing in water that was barely lighter than the colour of soil.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing Robyn, you’re still asleep.”

“No, I swear it’s a fin.”

“You’re right! It’s a dolphin.”

Of all things we would find on the Ganges with it’s pathway to the afterlife and apparent healing powers we also found a…..dolphin!

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed the Ganges Dolphin on the Red list of endangered animals and we were watching it glide through the water! It was an amazing sight with the sun rising behind its dorsal fin.

Laundry along the Ganges

But poor river dolphins. They don’t have much to swim in anymore. The pollution, lowering water levels and the nets are catching them in their prime.

Hence why on this day in 2006 the Chinese River Dolphin or the Baiji, was pronounced extinct! Yes, only four years ago was one of these aquatic animals gone from Rivers.

A 45-day search by leading experts found zero examples of the dolphin and lead to it being declared “functionally extinct.”

In fact the only verified sighting of the cetacean (dolphin family) had been in 2004. Listing the Baiji as extinct makes it the first aquatic animal to be listed so since the Japanese Sea Lion and the Caribbean Monk Seal in the  1950’s.

Good job humans! At least I was able to catch a glimpse of one of the, perhaps, last Ganges Dolphins. Have a conservative Monday and stay tuned for tomorrow and all your needs for your travels!