Passengers enter the railway station, in China's southern city of Guangzhou on Feb. 4.

In a crush so tight it was difficult to breathe, Li Kuochun said he was ready to risk the danger to return home to his family for China’s biggest holiday of the year.
Like millions of others, he was caught up in the paralysis that has gripped China’s transport network amid the worst winter weather for half a century.
At Guangzhou, the danger was not so much from the weather--the sun came out Sunday, bringing relief and slightly warmer temperatures--as the chance of getting trapped in a stampede, according to Xinhua.
It happened with fatal consequences at the weekend, when police were unable to control a crowd surging forward toward a train. A woman fell to the ground and was trampled to death.
Now Li, one of more than 200,000 people massed outside the railway station in Guangzhou, a transport hub for the millions of migrant workers who toil all year in the factories of southern China, awaits his deliverance.
“I’m quite worried there will be a stampede,“ said Li, 28, trying to reach Hunan province.
“I just try to walk slowly but people keep pushing. You’re squeezed between people and can hardly move or breathe.“
“But I think it’s worth the danger and risking my safety to go home and see my family. They are all back there and I really miss them.“
After the woman’s death, China’s railway watchdog pleaded with passengers not to swarm into the nation’s desperately overcrowded train stations.
The winter weather has effectively blitzed much of China’s already creaky transport system. In many area, trains and buses are running again--but the problem is catching up with the huge backlog.
The Lunar New Year holiday is the biggest on the Chinese calendar, and an estimated 200 million people are expected to make trips home to see loved ones in what is reputed to be the biggest annual human migration in the world.

The world’s tourism industry could shrink this year if the United States falls into a deep recession and drags other economies with it, the World Tourism Organization said.
But Francesco Frangialli, secretary general of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), added he remained optimistic the number of tourists arriving in foreign countries would rise for the fifth consecutive year, albeit at a slower rate than last year, Reuters reported.
“The best prediction we can give today is that we do not predict negative growth for 2008, except if the American economy falls into a deep recession followed by the rest of the world,“ Frangialli told a news conference at the UN body’s Madrid headquarters.
Last October WTO experts were already warning that growth of tourist arrivals would slow to around 4 percent this year--the long-term average--from 6 percent in 2007 and 5.4 percent in 2006 on the back of economic uncertainties sparked by the US subprime mortgage crisis.
Frangialli said it was important to remember that the United States made up only 10 percent of tourist receipts despite accounting for a quarter of world GDP.
“We are cautiously optimistic for 2008, though we don’t think it will be as good a year as 2007,“ the Frenchman said.
Tourism receipts reached $733 billion in 2006, the WTO estimates, or about 1.5 percent of global GDP.
John Kester, the WTO’s head of analysis, said it was too early to say whether the organization would cut its forecast of a 4 percent increase in arrivals for this year: “We don’t really know how the (economic) situation will spill over into Asia. If things really turn sour, we will go to 2 or 3 percent.“

Middle East Mecca
WTO figures showed 52 million more tourist trips were taken last year, taking the total to 898 million--just over half of them to European destinations.
Tourist arrivals are expected to double from 2005 levels by 2020, Frangialli said.
Despite security problems in some countries, the Middle East was the fastest growing region (13.4 percent) but the most significant expansion was in the Asia-Pacific area which now accounts for a fifth of all arrivals after growing 10.2 percent.
Kester said countries that grew fastest last year--which included Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco--would continue to be the winners this year.
France was the world’s most popular tourist destination last year, followed by Spain, although in terms of tourist receipts, the United States took top spot with Spain again second.

Ganjnameh inscriptions in Hamedan. (Photo by Ali Hassanpour)

Hamedan (old Persian: Hagmatana, ancient Greek: Ecbatana) is the capital city of Iran’s Hamedan province.
Hamedan is believed to be amongst the oldest Iranian cities and one of the oldest in the world.
Hamedan is a green mountainous area on the foothills of the 3,574-meter Alvand Mountain, in the mid-west of Iran. The city is 1,850 meters above sea level.
The special nature of the old city and its historic sites attract tourists during the summer to this city, located approximately 400km southwest of Tehran. One of the must see places in Hamedan is Ganjnameh, which has an ancient inscription, 5 km southwest of Hamedan, on the slopes of Alvand Mountain.
The inscription, which has been carved in granite, is composed of two sections. One (on the left) ordered by Darius I (521-485 BC) and the other (on the right) ordered by Xerxes I (485-65 BC). Both sections, which have been carved in three ancient languages of Old Persian, Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Elamite, start with praise of god (Ahura Mazda) and describe the lineage and deeds of the mentioned kings.
The later generations who could not read the Cuneiform alphabets of the ancient Persian assumed that they contained the guide to an uncovered treasury; hence they called it Ganjnameh. The name literally means “treasure epistle“.
The translation of the text on the right plate, attributed to Xerxes, is:
“The great god [is] Ahuramazda, greatest of all the gods, who created the earth and the sky and the people; who made Xerxes king, and outstanding king as outstanding ruler among innumerable rulers; I [am] the great king Xerxes, king of kings, king of lands with numerous inhabitants, king of this vast kingdom with far-away territories, son of the Achaemenid monarch Darius.“
Today two new carved tablets have been placed in the site’s parking lot with Persian explanation and its English translation.

A one-day photo exhibition and national tourism workshop was held at a hotel in Rawalpindi to promote Pakistan’s scenic beauty, archeology, culture and adventure.
The Tourism Ministry in collaboration with its component organizations organized the photo exhibition and workshop.
Caretaker Federal Minister for Minorities Raja Tri Dev Roy inaugurated the events attended by tourism experts from all over the world, reported Dailytimes.com.pk.
Some 100 photographs of the mountain ranges, deserts, plains and images of people were put on show. The natural scenes turned out to be a successful attempt to attract tourist to see the beauty of life in Pakistan.
The main objective of organizing the photo exhibition and national tourism workshop was to introduce and highlight the importance of tourism in the context of overall world tourism activity.
Another vital aspect was to project Pakistan as an ideal tourist destination endowed with splendid natural wealth and beauty. Addressing the gathering, Raja Tri Dev Roy said, “Pakistan is a beautiful country but it needs a lot for promotion of tourism.“
He said the government should encourage and help the private sector to attract more tourists in the country. He proposed that promotion of group tourism could bring more fruitful results than handling individual tourists.
Tourism Secretary Shahzad Qaiser said Pakistan had so much to offer to the domestic and foreign tourists but it had not succeeded in actualizing it great potential to its fullness.
“There are many internal and external factors hampering the growth of domestic and international tourism in our country,“ he said, adding that the main reason was inability of the government to provide dynamic incentives to the private sector on a continuous basis.
He said there had been some incentives for the private sector but they were limited and a few of them had also been withdrawn in the course of time.

Stars Valley on Iran's Qeshm Island, Hormuzgan province. (Photo by Ali Hassanpour)

Bengali tea pickers at work.

With an eye on attracting both domestic and foreign tourists, the state government has embarked on an ambitious project for the development of an integrated tea tourism circuit.
“The Center has sanctioned schemes worth Rs sixty million for the development of infrastructure and accommodation in North Bengal to promote tea tourism,“ Managing Director of West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation Ltd., T V N Rao told PTI.
Eight areas in North Bengal including Malbazar, Murti, Hilla, Mohua, Samsing, Nagrakata, Batabari have been selected under this scheme, he said.
“Tourists who visit Dooars areas had showed interest in staying in the tea gardens and see how tea leaves are plucked and processed. Tourists are also attracted to the lush green tea gardens and the scenic beauty. So why not promote the tea gardens as tourists spots,“ he said.
Rao said that the government was also trying to rope in private parties to commercially exploit the potential of tea tourism through public private partnership.
Rao said that major investment would be made at Murti near Indong tea garden and Malbazar where work has already started to create a tourism facilitation center and tourism amenities.
The Center has also requested the state government to amend the Land Ceiling Act to enable tea gardens to utilize 5 percent of their total land for tea tourism and horticulture. Currently only Assam had relaxed norms for use of 5 percent of the tea gardens for alternative use like tea tourism.
Officials in the tourism department say that North Bengal, especially the Dooars region which also houses the Gorumara National Park, the Chapramari wildlife sanctuary, the Buxa Tiger Reserve, attract hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.
The government would create a tea tourism circuit with an information centre and tourist amenities for which work was scheduled to begin by the middle of this year and was expected to be completed in stages from the end of 2008, Rao said.

Jamaica plans to tap into the thriving market for religious-oriented tourism to invigorate the island’s sagging economy, government officials and business leaders said.
A new convention center, to be built by 2009, will attract some of the millions of travelers who attend religious conferences outside of their home countries, said Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, AP repoprted.
“We are beginning to understand the dynamics of that marketplace and the power of religious tourism across the globe,’’ Bartlett said in a statement. “This is a huge market sector that remains essentially untapped by Jamaica.’’
The global religious tourism market is a $18 billion-a-year (12 billion euro a year) industry with some 300 million travelers, according to the Colorado-based World Religious Travel Association. The market is estimated at $10 billion (6.7 billion euro) in North America alone.
“There’s going to be a significant turnaround for Jamaica when this thing takes off,’’ said Tommy Cowan, organizer of an annual Christian music festival in the resort city of Ocho Rios.

The Taipei city government plans to acquire amphibious boats to attract more visitors to go sightseeing along the city’s Danshui River, officials at the city government’s Bureau of Transportation said.
The officials said the vessels will be procured in time to provide river cruises before the city hosts the 2010 International Garden and Horticulture Exhibition, known as the 2010 Taipei flower expo, reported Asia Pulse.
The city government is planning to spend over NT$3 billion ($93 million) to turn Taipei’s Yuanshan area into a showroom of blossoms in an attempt to attract more than 6 million visitors from around the world during the six-month exhibition.

Until now, a summer cottage three miles from the White House where Abraham Lincoln paced the floors, contemplating the end of slavery, was largely unknown to the public.
Few locals knew it was still standing on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, and tourists searching for Lincoln sites in the nation’s capital were far more likely to stop by the Lincoln Memorial or Ford’s Theater, where the 16th president was assassinated, AP wrote.
But in the late 1990s, the house was “rediscovered“ by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and, in 2000, declared a national monument by President Clinton.
Now, after a seven-year, $15 million restoration, President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home is set to open to the public for the first time--on Presidents Day, Feb. 18.