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Off-limits for 15 years, Burma is now back on the tourist map since the National League for Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party) announced in early November that the boycott on tourism should be lifted. With the general message from the Burmese people also encouraging outside visitors, we were quick to make the arrangements for the first ever KE Adventure holiday in Burma, which will check out all the unmissable highlights, Rangoon, Inle Lake, Mandalay, Bagan, whilst also getting off-the-beaten-track on a 4-day upland trek amongst colorful hill-tribes. Our Temples and Trails of Burma holiday will answer all your questions about this largest and most colorful of SE Asian countries. The first departures will take place in November 2011, with further departures available in January and March of 2012. With prices from $2465 for the land only package including alls services and all meals, this trip represents great value for money. leadersummit (1)Meet Over 50 Travel Experts From Around The World at Mountain Travel Sobek’s 45th Anniversary Leader Summit Adventure Travel Industry Remembers River-Running Conservationist Martin Litton In 2005, I quit my job as a newspaper archivist in Spokane, Washington, to float the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in a wooden dory. Martin LittonYou can’t float the Colorado through the Grand Canyon in a wooden dory without knowing about Martin Litton. The Grand Canyon, wooden dories and Martin Litton are an inseparable trio. Martin Litton was a conservationist and an adventurer, who is credited with audacious feats of environmental salvation like preventing the Grand Canyon from becoming a series of mild cascading reservoirs. Litton died, at the age of 97, on November 30th of this year. And as I started reading remembrances of his life, I realized I never took the opportunity to thank Litton for keeping the Colorado undammed through Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon. And I had the chance to thank him in person years ago — one of the closest brushes with greatness of my life. Martin Litton not only saved the Grand Canyon from environmental destruction, but he also created an outfitting company that would allow the stretch of river to have an appreciative audience. His Grand Canyon Dories company gave the gift of transformative adventure and the gift of the Grand Canyon to many lucky visitors (Grand Canyon Dories survives as part of the O.A.R.S. family). Dories are flat-bottomed drift boats that Martin Litton iterated into what he thought was the perfect shape for the whitewater of the Grand Canyon. Dories are graceful but unforgiving. I saw a boat with its bow cracked clean off on a beach in the Grand Canyon. A note said “R.I.P. The Pima” and detailed her last hours pinned between a cliff wall at the bottom of Horn Creek rapid and the surge of the Colorado current. The oranges that fell out of her busted open hatches could be found floating in eddies below most rapids for miles and miles downstream. We were halfway through the trip and it was one of the more sobering moments of my life. This was Litton’s chosen mode of transportation down the river. Sleek, fast, cSequoiaurvaceous, gorgeous. The shape of his fleet was bespoke for the whitewater of the Grand Canyon. Dories ride high on the tops of waves. They turn on a dime. They are the racecar to the rubber rafts’ bulldozer. To understand the appeal of the boat of Litton’s choice is to understand a bit about the man himself. He was a firecracker of a conservationist. He was a relentless advocate for wilderness. He was a daredevil with a cause. “Martin Litton made a difference in this world and what he accomplished in his life will remain for thousands of years to come,” says O.A.R.S.’s Steve Markle. “He was a giant—a man before his time and one of the first to use adventure travel for good. He realized early on that the best way to protect a place is to help people really get to know it.”READ MORE...http://www.adventuretravelnews.com