Gadling

Thomas Tomczyk is serious about motorcycles. He's done three motorcycle trips across India, from the steamy southern tip all the way up to the frozen highlands of Ladakh. Now he's starting his childhood dream--an epic trip 12,500 miles (20,000 km) across Africa.

His zigzag tour will take in 22 African nations including South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, the Saharawi Republic, and Morocco. . .

. . .before he ends up skinny, exhausted, and happy at my house in Spain, where my wife will fatten him up with her excellent paella.

Full disclosure: Thomas is a friend of mine. We covered the massive Hindu pilgrimage of Kumbh Mela together in 2001 and barely managed not to get trampled to death by hordes of naked holy men. But even if I didn't know him, this trip is so thoroughly cool I would have reported on it anyway.

Thomas isn't just going on vacation; he'll be visiting innovative grassroots projects that are making life better for the average African. Through his website Africa Heart Beat he'll be telling us about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, such as creating a job center for landmine victims in Mozambique, an AIDS theater group in Botswana, and a Muslim-Christian vocational center in Mali that's bringing the two communities together.

"The idea of crossing Africa came to me when I was 10," Thomas says. "A large map of the world hung above my bed in a small Warsaw apartment. I would study the geography of each continent, its road and railroad network. The most prominent continent would be Africa, placed in the middle of the map, right above where my head would rest on the pillow. The idea stayed in my mind for years. I would eventually learn to ride motorcycles in India and cover the Horn of Africa for publications in Poland and US. In January 2009 my grandmother passed away and I decided it was time to do the trek I've been thinking about for so long. Traveling for travel's sake was past me, and I decided I needed to find a purpose as I travel, something that would give meaning to the journey and benefit others."

While 20,000 km is a long way to ride, he's done it before in India. His longest journey there was 20,000 km on a 1950s technology 350cc Royal Enfield Bullet. I've ridden that bike and it's a monster-- heavy and tough enough for the task. This time he'll be probably picking up a KTM 640 LC Adventure, a lighter but rugged off-road bike from a dealer in South Africa when he flies there Thanksgiving Day.

He'll be crossing some very remote areas but will keep in touch as much as possible with an array of communications equipment. There will be regular updates on his blog, Facebook page, and YouTube channel. On the day after Thanksgiving, when Thomas is safely in Johannesburg and on the first day of his eight-month journey I'll be writing about some of the gear he's bringing along and share some advice he has for covering your own journeys as you do them.

Know of a project Thomas should cover? Tell us about it in the comments section!

Hinduism is generally thought of as a vegetarian religion, one that respects animals because in the cycle of death and rebirth, we've all been animals at one point or another. But Hinduism is an ancient and complex faith with almost a billion adherents, and there's such a diversity that virtually no common thread can be found in all methods of Hindu worship.

Nothing proves that more true than Gadhimai Mela, a fair that takes places once every five years in southern Nepal to honor the goddess Gadhimai. Tens of thousands of pilgrims from Nepal and India have gathered to offer animal sacrifices to the goddess in return for blessings. One man who prayed for a son at the last festival had his wish granted, and this year reportedly sacrificed 105 buffaloes.

Animal rights campaigners protesting the festival have had no success. The Indian pilgrims came all the way to Nepal because animal sacrifice is illegal in India, and they're not going to be stopped. The BBC estimates that a quarter of a million animals, from pigeons to lambs to buffaloes, will be sacrificed. Local tanners and butchers are doing a brisk trade, as are the illicit stills set up to entertain the pilgrims. Six people have already died from drinking illegal home brew.

This isn't the only animal sacrifice in Hinduism. It's been popular in various times and places in the Hindu world and there are numerous references to it in holy texts, including a horse sacrifice in the famous epic the Ramayana, shown here.

Timbuktu and northern Mali have long been attractive to adventure travelers, but now the United Kingdom is warning Westerners not to go there for fear of terror attacks.

The travel advisory, which you can read here, states that the provinces north of the River Niger, including Timbuktu, are the operating grounds for the terror group Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Magreb. On January 22 of this year they kidnapped a group of Western tourists near the Mali-Niger border and later murdered a British national. The advisory also warns that two popular festivals, The Festival in the Desert and Sahara Nights, are in the danger zone and should be avoided.

This is such a shame, as Timbuktu, shown here, is a World Heritage Site and the Festival in the Desert is one of Africa's best music gatherings. Mali is a poor nation and people need the hard currency that tourism brings. It seems that once again the actions of a few criminals are ruining it for the decent folk.

Have you been to Mali? Did you feel safe? Tell us about your experiences in the comments section.

Okamoni Fa flies a lot, and says that despite weighing 400 pounds he's never had to buy a second seat like some overweight passengers.

Until, that is, he really needed to get somewhere fast.

The San Jose man bought a last-minute ticket from Southwest Airlines to attend his uncle's funeral, but when he arrived at the ticket counter the agent looked at him and told him he needed to buy a second seat. The problem was, the flight was fully booked, and apparently there were no alternative flights. That left Mr. Fa stranded and he missed the funeral.

There's been a lot of debate about the policy of charging overweight passengers for a second seat. Southwest says that if a passenger can't put down the armrests without encroaching on their neighbors' space then they need to buy another seat. If the flight isn't oversold, Southwest says they refund the extra charge.

In this case, Southwest has said they will refund Mr. Fa for the one seat he did buy, but wasn't allowed to use.

That's cold comfort for him. He wasn't able to join his family in their time of mourning and must now be wondering what the ticket agent will say the next time he tries to board a plane.

The Archaeological Survey of India has been struggling to control water damage to ancient Buddhist paintings in the Ajanta Caves in the state of Maharashtra.

The 29 caves in this UNESCO World Heritage Site are decorated with sculptures and paintings dating back as far as the second century B.C. They depict Buddhist tales and images of the Buddha and various Bodhisattvas.

The addition of new drainage systems has stopped some of the leakage of water through tiny cracks in the stone, but recent heavy rains have made the caves develop new leaks.

Archaeological Survey officials are monitoring the situation and trying to decide what to do next. Memories of a another Buddhist cave complex, the Bagh Caves, is making them tread lightly. Bad conservation methods at that site led to their almost complete destruction by seepage in the 1950s and 60s.

India is putting new emphasis on conservation as it tries to add more sites to the World Heritage List. Hopefully the folks at the Archaeological Survey of India will win the battle to preserve India's heritage. I met some of their archaeologists the last couple of times I went to India and they're a dedicated bunch, despite having to struggle with bureaucracy, insufficient funds, and the sheer vastness of their task.

For a while now most news out of Zimbabwe has been bad. Gross mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe led the country to financial ruin and hyperinflation, with people using gasoline as currency because nobody wanted the government's $50 million dollar bills.

But with the return of relative stability thanks to the new unity government, tourists are coming back to Zimbabwe. The nation's Council of Tourism reports that 362,000 people visited Zimbabwe by August 2009, up from 100,000 in the same period in 2008. It wasn't clear if this figure only counted tourists or all foreign visitors. A decade ago, Zimbabwe raked in $250 million annually in tourism revenue. That dipped to just $40 million in 2005, but has risen to $100 million since the unity government came into power in 2008.

However the numbers are created, it's still good news. With the country's economy in shambles, an influx of foreign currency is sure to help. The government has been offering tax incentives for companies wanting to invest in Zimbabwe tourism. And with attractions such as Victoria Falls (pictured here) and abundant wildlife, if you're looking for good deals on an African trip you may want to consider Zimbabwe. They'll certainly be glad to see you.

Remember the coffee revolution of the Nineties, when what used to cost 25 cents at some crappy diner suddenly cost $3 at a snooty cafe? Well, at least instead of drinking what looked and tasted like dishwater you now got something that tasted like actual coffee. Ah yes, I was in graduate school then and the coffee revolution came along just at the right time! But coffee has been around a lot longer than that, as a new/old coffeehouse at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia shows.

Americans have been drinking coffee since before they've been called Americans. A local wigmaker and caffeine junkie named Richard Charlton opened a coffeehouse at Williamsburg more than 240 years ago, when Virginia was still a colony. Today Colonial Williamsburg, an interesting and authentic recreation of a Colonial town, has reopened this coffeeshop on the same site. You can sit in 18th century style while sipping a coffee, chocolate, or tea. You're not allowed to dump the tea into the sea, that was in Boston, but Charlton's coffeeshop was the scene of angry colonists confronting the British-appointed governor of Virginia colony to protest the Stamp Act in 1765.

This wasn't surprising. Coffeeshops were places to meet and discuss politics. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson drank coffee at Charlton's shop. There's no record of what they talked about over a good cup of Joe, but we can imagine. Did hepped-up caffeine addicts create the superpower we know today? Stranger things have happened. . .

EasyJet has apologized to everyone who will listen over a fashion shoot that appeared in its inflight magazine.

Did the models wear too little? Did they look like fourteen year-old cokeheads? No, none of the usual stuff; they happened to be posing at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

Yes, some fashion photographer decided the concrete blocks known as the "Field of Stelae", properly called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, would be a cool place for slinky women to show off designer duds. The editor of the magazine at INK Publishing thought it was a pretty neat idea too, and easyJet didn't notice until too late.

Now they've yanked the issue from all their planes and are "reviewing their relationship" with the publisher.

This was probably an honest oversight by easyJet, who acted quickly and appropriately when the issue came to their notice, but what about the magazine's editors? Or the photographer? Or the models? Didn't anyone stop and say , "Hey, millions of Jews died in the concentration camps. Perhaps we should take these photos somewhere else?"

Nope, apparently not.

It's World Heritage Week from November 19-25 and countries around the globe are celebrating the priceless treasures that UNESCO, which runs the list, is helping to preserve.

But one country, India, is wondering why two of its most famous places aren't on the list. India has no shortage of World Heritage Sites, like the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, but the 3500 year-old holy city of Varanasi (Benares) isn't on the list and the Buddhist shrines at Sarnath are only on the tentative list.

This seems like an odd oversight. Varanasi is a beautiful, chaotic, ancient city on the banks of the Ganges. Nobody knows just how many temples there are here, from massive golden structures with elegant statues to little flagstones carved with a lotus flower and daubed with a bit of paint or an offering of a flower. It seems that when you are close to the river you cannot look anywhere without seeing a temple or shrine. In fact, it's hard not to see several of them! The riverbank is famous for its burning ghats, platforms where Hindus are cremated before their remains are tossed into the holy Ganges River. But like in Hinduism itself, death and life are two parts of the same process. While people are mourning along one section of the riverside, not far off the dhobis are washing clothes, spreading out colorful saris like terrestrial rainbows, while old men play chess and kids frolic in the water. The ghats are strange mixture of morbid reminders of mortality and the throbbing life that makes India so exciting.

Nearby Sarnath is where Buddha is said to have preached his first sermon, and there are numerous temples in the representing all the Buddhist countries in the world. It's interesting to see Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and other temples all together, attended by monks of all different nationalities.The peaceful, semi-rural surroundings make a stark contrast to noisy Varanasi.

So why aren't these two places, so popular with visitors and so important to world heritage, not on the list? Nobody seems to have a good answer, but the Indian press does have some complaints about how they are treated, not by UNESCO, but by the Indians themselves. An article in the Times of India complains that the temples of Varanasi aren't properly preserved. The stone temple of Kashi Vishwanath, shown here and built in 1777, was recently painted using enamel paint, which can seriously damage the stone. Now curators are facing a hefty preservation bill if they want to save one of the most important temples to Shiva. A recent study found about 2,000 temples in Varanasi that need help, but nobody is sure of the true extent of the problem.

Sarnath was submitted for consideration in 1998. Now it appears poised to get on the list. While the older temples and monuments have crumbled with time, the newer temples are in good condition and give the visitor or pilgrim a world tour of Buddhist practice. Here's hoping Sarnath makes it onto the list soon, and that India will increase its efforts to preserve Varanasi and get it on the World Heritage List too.

Gallery: Varanasi and Sarnath

Civil War battlefields are some of the most popular tourist destinations in the U.S. The most famous battlefields, such as Gettysburg and Shiloh, attract hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. But there are many other battlefields that are just as interesting but little-known outside their local area. Here are four that any history buff will enjoy. You'll notice all of them are west of the Mississippi River. After the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg fell on July 4, 1863, the Union gained control of the Mississippi, cutting the Confederacy in half. From then on the fight in the West was practically a separate war. It gets little press in comparison to the war in the East, but it's just as interesting.

Lexington (September 13-20, 1861): September 1861 was a hopeful time for the Confederacy. General Sterling Price had defeated a large Union force at Wilson's Creek in southwest Missouri and now marched through central Missouri gathering recruits. At the river town of Lexington he found a Union force under Col. James Mulligan defending the stone building of the Masonic College on a hill overlooking town. Mulligan had built earthworks all around the hill. Price's inexperienced troops had trouble taking this tough position until they hit on the idea of lining up bales of hemp, the local cash crop, and rolling them uphill as a mobile wall. Bales of weed are apparently bulletproof and as the fort became hemmed in Mulligan had no choice but to surrender. This early rebel victory proved short lived, and soon Price had to retreat to Arkansas in the face of superior forces.

The Battle of Lexington State Historic Site has a good museum and remnants of the original earthworks. The town has many interesting old buildings. The courthouse has a cannonball lodged in one of its pillars!

Fort Davidson (September 27, 1864): By the autumn of 1864 the war was going badly for the Confederacy, especially in the West. Other than some raids and constant guerrilla activity, the rebels had been pushed out of Missouri and northern Arkansas. General Sterling Price hit upon a bold plan to march north out of Arkansas and take St. Louis just before the presidential election. This, he hoped, would make Lincoln lose, or at least take pressure off the beleaguered Confederates east of the Mississippi.

His first stop was Fort Davidson in the Arcadia Valley in southern Missouri. While some of his officers recommended bypassing the fort, Price wanted to give his troops an early boost in morale and capture supplies. The rebels charged across an open plain into withering musket fire and blasts of grapeshot. By the end of the day almost a thousand men lay dead around the fort, and the Union troops still held their ground. That night the defenders snuck out under cover of darkness, blew up the fort's magazine, and slipped away into the night. This disastrous defeat so weakened and delayed Price's army that he gave up trying to take St. Louis. His invasion became just another raid as he made a long loop through the state, ending in defeat at the Battle of Westport near Kansas City. Price's invasion was the last major Confederate campaign west of the Mississippi.

Fort Davidson State Historic Site preserves the fort's earthen ramparts and has an excellent museum about Price's Raid.

Gallery: Four Forgotten Civil War Battlefields