Story Travel — Travel stories

What it takes for a place to earn a World Heritage listing

How Norway's mountain huts still run on a stranger's honesty

Across Norway's high country, thousands of hikers let themselves into unstaffed cabins, cook from an unattended pantry, and pay for what they used before moving on — a trust-based system the Norwegian Trekking Association has run since its founding chapter formed in 1868.

On Shikoku, a thousand-year circuit still moves at walking speed

The eighty-eight-temple pilgrimage around Japan's smallest main island has outlasted the century of highways built around it, kept alive less by ritual than by the strangers who feed and house the walkers who attempt it.

What Spain's drove roads still hold open

More than 125,000 kilometres of public ground, guaranteed by law for animals walking twice a year, and the seeds, plant genes and medieval tolls that travel with them.

What a UNESCO listing actually promises a living tradition

Inscription under the 2003 intangible heritage convention is a procedure, not a verdict — and the difference is visible on every banner that shortens it to one word.

What visitors now pay to spend a day in Venice

UFO Over Pyramids in Mexico on Birthday of Victoria Unikel