Some traditions are a little stranger than others, and that’s certainly the case come October in Colorado’s Manitou Springs. The Emma Crawford Coffin Races and Parade attract 10,000 people who come to watch teams of four pushing a ‘corpse’ (really just another perfectly alive member of the team) along the street in a coffin. Why? Well, Emma, who was suffering with tuberculosis, moved to Manitou Springs in the late 1800s to take advantage of the healing waters of the local mineral springs. It didn’t work and Emma died, but not before she’d made her fiancé promise to bury her at the top of Red Mountain. In the years that followed erosion caused Emma’s coffin to become exposed and eventually it slid down the mountain. People in the town say you can sometimes see a young woman in Victorian garb looking lonely atop Red Mountain.
If one set of hands sliding over your oiled torso just doesn’t cut it, and an hour-long massage leaves you whimpering for more, check in for a session at Phuket’s Trisara Resort. You’re in for three masseuses, six hands and 90 minutes of bliss.
And if trekking to their open-air cabana is too much trouble, enjoy the Royal Trisara massage in a treatment room tucked inside your villa. Slathering you in lemongrass essential oil with a pinch of organic sea salt, the therapists start with your feet and shoulders, before pummelling every last knot of tension from your body.
Between hot herbal compresses and acupressure delivered by six Thai elbows, the hands sail across your skin in sync for the ultimate relaxation experience. To finish, they drizzle you with warm coconut oil before leaving you to float off to your private infinity pool with sweeping views of the Andaman Sea.
If your average tatt isn’t tough enough, wear your ego on your sleeve with a Sak Yant (traditional tattoo) from Thailand’s Wat Bang Phra temple. Bestowed by monks wielding 18-inch needles, these lucky charms are said to be strong enough to stop bullets, and come with some serious body art cred. Enter the temple and deposit your offering of flowers and cigarettes onto the pile and take a quick look at the banner on the temple wall, displaying a selection of animal designs, complete with embellished whorls for added pain. Choose your favourite beast or let an assigned monk brand you as he sees fit.
Before you’re poked and prodded, custom requires you to step into the role of assistant – a practice dividing the proud from the petrified. Clamp still the poor sap before you, so they can’t squirm as the double-pronged instrument plunders their skin. Each tattoo requires at least 3,000 jabs before the template gives way to a final bloody welt, giving you plenty of time to reassess your vanity. Once your buddy’s stamp is blessed, present your flesh and set your face to stoic. As the monk swills his used needle in a pot of alcohol, you better hope your new stamp protects you against more than just evil spirits.
A visit to Bangkok without seeing ladyboys is like a game of Uno without wildcards, but it doesn’t have to involve supporting the country’s sex industry. Calypso’s good, cleanish fun cabaret can be found in the south of the city. Bangkok’s evening traffic is at its gridlocked peak between 5pm and 7pm and takes a while to subside, so avoid the roads and travel by skytrain and then free water shuttle down the Chao Phraya River. Within a sea of tourists you’ll be shown to your comfy red seat in the pseudo-swanky theatre and given a free drink.
The show is cheesy, charming and fun, with everyone from a comic Carman Miranda to an absurdly luscious Marilyn Monroe. The stage is swimming with fishnets for ‘All That Jazz,’ while ‘Blossom’s Blues’ is performed solo with nipples- popping-from-bustier gusto. Book ahead to save any unnecessary hanging around in the touristy wastelands of Riverside.
As thanks for bringing good fortune, the town of Lopburi lavishes its local primates with a veritable food orgy. Check out the long-tailed macaques as they slurp cans of Coke, chow pyramids of fruit and fornicate on table tops.
While they delight from afar, you’ll want to keep your distance from these walking, scoffing critters. The macaques aren’t necessarily that adept at knowing what’s food and what isn’t, and we’re sure you don’t want to find yourself on the menu.
Nowhere is the fabled circle of life more extraordinary than when wildebeest give birth en masse in the southern reaches of Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. Every year between January and March, more than 400,000 of these big-game animals calve during a period of just a few weeks in a curtain-raiser to the annual great wildebeest migration, when around 1.5 million travel to the Maasai Mara in their perpetual search for food and water. The sight of thousands of wildebeest giving birth in the grassy plains is a breathtaking spectacle, but it can also be quite brutal.
There is some safety in numbers – the more young delivered at once, the greater their overall chance of survival – but predators are always lurking. Some newborns are delivered straight from the womb into the jaws of a waiting pack of hungry lions or hyenas, and those that aren’t have to find their feet quickly. Most are running with the herd within minutes and are able to outpace hyenas in just a few days. For the squeamish, this time of year signals the tail end of the birthing season when many of the predators are satiated and you can marvel at the creation of life, rather than wince as a wildlife slasher film plays out before your eyes.
Feel the wind beneath your wings as you scoot around Zurich Airport on a bike or a funky pair of inline skates. The airport hires out gear and helmets to travellers itching to escape outdoors and get the blood flowing back into their legs.
If a red-eye flight has sapped your sense of balance, hire a pair of Nordic walking poles instead and let your feet lead you exploring. If you’d prefer to stay airside, join one of the airport tours, or perhaps treat one of the kids to a birthday party. How many other kids get to have an A380 at their birthday bash, complete with real, live pilots?
The elephants came in two by two. Hurrah! Hurrah! Then a few more turned up and, in fact, many, many more wandered along as well. If you want to see pachyderms en masse there is one journey you have to take: a trip to the annual elephant gathering at Minneriya National Park. During Sri Lanka’s dry season (around October), the water levels of a centuries-old reservoir in the park, located in the country’s North Central Province, start to drop, resulting in the sprouting of luscious, green grasses.
Attracted by both the water and easily accessible food, the park’s elephants – sometimes up to 400 at a time – come here to bathe, eat and hang out with their thick-skinned friends. Visitors travel in open-top jeeps to see a most stunning sight – the largest congregation of wild elephants anywhere in the world.
Love coos through the air on the island of South Georgia. Each October and November, hundreds of thousands of king penguins carpet the valleys and plains of this crown jewel of the Antarctic – one of the world’s most remote and wildlife-dense islands – in a bid to woo a companion and pop out an egg. Become the object of curiosity at St Andrews Bay, where more than 150,000 couples coat the landscape, then head to Elshul to spot gentoo and macaroni penguins, with orange feathers splayed on their heads, and albatross flaunting their famous wings.
At this time of year there’s more to see on the island than birds pining for love – listen, too, for the roar of southern elephant seals and Antarctic fur seals rasping at the air. Watch them lounge around before peak breeding season takes hold and dangerous armies of males rage on shore with their testosterone pumping.
Teeter on a platform strapped to a suspension bridge and take in the views of South Africa’s famous Soweto neighbourhood before plummeting towards the concrete below. Forget a purpose-built steel tower; here jumpers bungee in one of the world’s most unusual settings – between the cooling towers of a former coal-fired power station.
Endorphin-seekers can clamber up the sides and free fall down the centre into a net, but opt for the bungee and you’ll think you’re leaping towards the apocalypse as you hurtle 100 metres with only a cord to save you.
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