A recent report from , a UK-based market-research group, revealed the 100 most visited cities in the world last year.��Major Asian hubs��such as Hong Kong, Bangkok, Macau, and Singapore dominated the list, taking seven of the top-ten��spots, while European and Middle Eastern metro areas��followed. Many travelers have used these cities as stopovers en route to��more adventure-filled final destinations, but we’re here to tell you that you don’t need to make onward connections to find what you’re looking for—these bustling urban centers have plenty of action-packed detours within an hour or two of downtown. Here’s a guide to extending that layover, packing in some time outdoors between major cultural sites, or simply making the most of these dynamic places.��

Hong Kong

Visitor count: 26.7 million��

Hong Kong has been the most visited city in the world since 2010. The ongoing anti-government protests��resulted in��2.5 million fewer visitors compared to 2018, but they haven’t��stopped most people��from going. U.S.����have recommended extra caution but haven’t discouraged taking trips there, and reports on the ground point to . However,��to��minimize��risk,��keep an eye on local��media reports to gauge which areas are most .

What many visitors don’t realize is that close to has been designated as parks or protected lands. A fifth of the city is also covered with steep slopes, making for��some of the best granite crags in Asia. Within an hour from the airport, you can go on a moderate canyoneering��day trip along the Ping Nam stream.��Or head 40 minutes south to��hit crags like Lion Rock and Beacon Hill��in Lion Rock Country Park; they��offer a variety of single- and multi-pitch climbs, from 5.6 to 5.13, and there’s nothing like the payoff—the skyline views from the top are some of the best in the city. For details on hiking trails in Hong Kong’s 24 national��parks and its��140 miles of cycling tracks, the ��is a good resource.

Bangkok

Visitor count: 25.8 million

This��capital city��has made��the list’s top five��for several years, securing second place in 2017 and 2018. Most visitors spend a few days in the��center, stopping by its decorated Buddhist temples and bustling street markets, before heading off to Thailand’s more than 1,000��islands, including��Phuket and Ko��Chang.

But Bangkok is surrounded by river- and lake-based adventures that make adding an extra day or two in the area worth it. Head 50��minutes east to , a wake park where water-skiers and wakeboarders hold onto��handle attached toa rope that’s pulled along by overhead cables near��the periphery of the lake, or use the park’s��ramps to practice your turnovers and other tricks (from $13).

Macau

Visitor count: 20.6 million

Macau, an��autonomous region on the south coast of China,��is known among globe-trotters as the Las Vegas of Asia,��due its giant casinos (gambling is illegal in Hong Kong and China) and malls along the Cotai Strip. But the former Portuguese colony is more than just roulettes and slot machines.

For extreme urban adventure, team up with guiding company����to scale 1,100-foot Macau Tower (from $299), where you can walk along the building’s outer rim for sight lines that reach as far as Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta in��China on a clear day. Half an hour south of��downtown, or 20 minutes from the airport, is Coloane Island, which has a ten-mile trail system that’s a go-to spot for local hikers and trail runners. Don’t miss the 1.3-mile , with views of��the azure South China Sea.

Singapore

Visitor count: 19.8 million

To escape the hustle and bustle of this tiny, dynamic city, go to��, an island just��12 miles from the downtown. It��can be reached in less than an hour via��a free bus from Changi International Airport and then a short ferry ride (from $3).

Hop on tandem kayaks from (from $58) and paddle around the mangrove, with hornbills and herons flying above. On the western edge of the island, Ketam Mountain Bike Park has a world-class ten-mile trail system that��hosts��the city’s major biking events.

You’re also likely to bump into wildlife photographers and birders��who come to catch sight of more than 200 species of birds, 700 types of plants, and 40 varieties of reptiles.

London

Visitor count: 19.6 million

Green spaces in London��are a dime a dozen,��but��the adventure offerings indoors and just beyond the city limits and are as innovative as they are varied.

A ten-minute drive from Big Ben is , an ice-climbing gym. The facility��keeps its internal temperature between 10 and 23 degrees year-round to maintain its 26-foot-tall ice wall, which features beginner slabs, dramatic overhangs, and everything in between (from $33).

Or��head an hour north of downtown to Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, and the��, a rafting and canoeing destination used in the 2012 Olympics. The venue hosts two options for rafting—a 1,000-foot Olympic course with a stunning 19-foot��drop, and a 525-foot loop with a milder five-foot��drop—and��offers Class II-IV whitewater��(from $65). New to the sport? You can also take kayaking ��there (from $78).

Paris

Visitor count: 19.1 million

An hour north of��the Eiffel Tower, or 40 minutes from Charles de Gaulle International Airport, is the��. The area has over 870 miles of trails that take hikers through 2,000 years of history.��Châteaus, churches, castles, old towns, and megalithic sites dating back to the Roman era dot routes lined��by chestnut trees.

If you don’t have time to leave the city, explore its��urban running��and biking opportunities.��Located along the western outskirts Paris,����(where the French Open is played every May) has two lakes,��nine miles of cycling routes, and countless trails in its 2,100 acres, which is more than twice the size of Central Park. And don’t forget about , with its��four-mile waterfront walkway from Pont d’Austerlitz to Pont d’Iéna, which passes the Louvre Museum, the Musée d’Orsay, Palais Bourbon, and the Eiffel Tower.

Dubai

Visitor count: 16.3 million

Hotel-bar hopping by luxury limo and extravagant desert safaris may overshadow the city’s biking and surfing scenes, but there’s plenty of ways to play outside if you know where to look.��In the cooler months, check out , a 50-mile loop that stretches from the southeast tip of downtown into the desert, where you’ll catch sightings of local wildlife such as oryx and ride alongside training athletes from the United Arab Emirates national team. Rent your ride at ��(from $15) off of the main highway, Sheikh Zayed Road.

If you prefer the water, you’re��not alone in a city home to . , just east of the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel, is your spot for kitesurfing, wakeboarding, and surfing. It’s known as the last bastion��for natural waves, as more man-made islands dot the coast and interrupt western swells. Or head to the�� (from $18) in Al Ain, a 90-minute��drive south of Dubai, which creates an 11-foot��wave—the largest artificial break��in the world—every 90 seconds.

Delhi

Visitor count: 15.2 million

Due to rapid development of its tourism infrastructure, Delhi witnessed a 20 percent visitor jump from 2018. This increase is only set to grow, as Indira Gandhi International Airport is set to����by June 2022, enabling��the hub to handle 100 million passengers every year. New direct routes to Delhi include Air India’s flight from��Toronto��and United Airlines’ flight from San Francisco. Its connectivity to locations across northern India, such as Kashmir and the foothills of the Himalayas, has also boosted inbound arrivals.

With wellness tourism on the rise globally, the city��has attracted visitors��who come for its yoga and meditation training institutes.��,��,��and����are good places to start. If you’re��a birder, a wildlife photographer, or just looking for some nature, head 18 miles south of the city center to , which��has close to 200 types of birds, more than 80 species of butterflies, and populations of nilgai, the largest Asian antelope that’s native to the Indian subcontinent. The , near��the entrance, organizes wildlife�� (from $2).

Visa restrictions: For��stays shorter than 60 days, U.S. visitors can apply for an at least four days prior to their arrival in lieu of applying for a tourist visa at an Indian embassy or consulate.

Istanbul

Visitor count: 14.7 million

After political and security issues in 2016 caused a drop in visitors, Istanbul��has rebounded. Its downtown sites are enough to fill a weeklong itinerary (navigating the Grand Bazaar will take at least a day), but it’s worth doing as the Turks do and taking a day or two to escape the city’s crowds and congestion.

Head over to Belgrad Forest, just ten��miles north of Istanbul. In an area encompassing more than 13,000 acres of oak, beech, and chestnut trees, runners can choose from plenty of unmarked trails. One of the most popular is a four-mile loop around the southern lake of Neset Suyu. For mountain bikers, there’s ��that spans from the south to the center of the forest.

Visa restrictions:��U.S. citizens who plan to stay��less than 90 days can obtain an .

Kuala Lumpur

Visitor count: 14.1 million

One of ���ϳԹ���’s 20 most affordable places to go in 2020, the Malaysian capital is no longer a stopover for visitors on the way��to its surrounding islands.

For serious rock climbers, Batu Caves, a 90-minute��drive north of��the city, has more than 170 routes across eight limestone crags. If you left your gear at home, offers half- and full-day tours with equipment rental (from $51). For hikers,��the 8.7-mile-long, 660-foot-wide , the longest quartz formation in the world, is a challenging trail just 12 miles north of the city. Trek up through muddy jungle terrain from either of the two trailheads, . You’ll need the help of a wire rope to get to the very top, where Kuala Lumpur’s famous skyline is visible on one side and a reservoir on the other. Looking for something less rigorous? Drive 25 miles south from downtown to for an hourlong hike with scenic jungle views. Go early in the morning or at dusk to catch the sunrise or sunset views over the city.

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The Janda Baik forest in Malaysia is a great place to be active, with its backpacking trails and mild climate. But it’s an even better place to be inactive, especially if you can hole up inside this tree house.

Architects faced plenty of challenges when they designed the Deck House, a spacious 4,000-square-foot getaway that sits above the sloped site. But by distributing the three bedrooms and the three baths over two levels and anchoring the house on concrete foundations, they made the steel and glass structure appear light and (relatively) unobtrusive.

A bridge crosses over to the upper floor where there’s a large entrance and a master sleeping suite with its own tree-top balcony. Open the room completely to the forest by pushing the glass doors aside.

The top of the staircase gives way to high ceilings with filtered light coming through two levels of glass. There are operable windows on all sides, while aluminum louvers under the roof overhang let hot air escape. A wood floor extends to the infinity deck, which is nearly as large as the home’s interior and open on three sides.��

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What, no on-board rock climbing walls and ice skating for you? No all-you-can-eat buffets? No nightcaps on the Lido Deck with Captain Stubing and Julie? I’ve got you covered, Mike. These four cozy cruising options (two in the South Pacific, two in other wildlife hot spots) are more about letting you experience what’s around the ship than what’s on it. Just one tip on the snorkeling: bring your own gear.

The underwater world of Papua new Guinea

The underwater world of Papua new Guinea

, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
This 90-passenger, 237-foot-long ship takes blue-footed booby-gazing amateur wildlife watchers on three-, four-, and seven-night cruises through the Galapagos Islands. Along the way, there are Zodiac cruises, hiking, swimming, and of course, snorkeling. The Santa Cruz participates in Ecuador’s sustainable Smart Voyage program, aimed at protecting the pristine delicate environment of the area that inspired Charles Darwin to come up with that whole evolution thing. Starts at $1500 per person for three nights.

Oceanic Discoverer, Papua New Guinea
A 16-day cruise on the edge of one of the world’s most exotic places on this 68-passenger, 207-foot-long ship (complete with hot tub) is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—mostly because you’d never be able to afford to do it twice. But the trip, organized by and National Geographic provides an authentic cultural and natural experience. You’ll swim and snorkel among coral reefs, be greeted by locals paddling outrigger canoes, explore hidden rivers, hike to quiet mountain villages, visit remote volcanic islands—and be accompanied by a biologist and naturalist. Starts at $17,690 per person.

MV Orion, Thailand and Malaysia
You want snorkeling? How about kicking your flippers through the crystal waters of the South China Sea, which brims with exotic aquatic life? The Gulf of Siam Explorer cruise aboard the 337-foot, 106-passenger MV Orion takes you to a greatest hits list of paradisiacal outposts off the coast of Thailand and Malaysia like Ko Samui, Ko Kut, and Tioman Island. The seven-night trip is organized by the boutique adventure outfit Orion . Starts at $4,850.

, Tahiti and Society Islands
Take sea safari snorkeling tours in Bora Bora, a lagoon and beach exploration on the island of Moorea next to Tahiti, and on your final day, a remote reef swim on the tiny Taha’a atoll. These are a tiny sample of the many excursions offered aboard the MS Paul Gauguin on its seven-night Tahiti and Society Islands trip. At 513 feet long, and with a capacity of 330 guests, the ship feels more like a small, traditional luxury liner—down to the on-board WiFi access—but its cruises are aimed specifically at active travelers, not buffet-eating shuffleboard players. Starts at $4,147 per person.

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[Editors’ Note: On June 8, 2018, Anthony Bourdain of suicide in France. Bourdain was adventurous, fearless, charismatic, and inspiring. Perhaps most important, though, he was deeply empathetic to the places and people he encountered, which is exactly what made him such a good writer, chef, traveler, and human being. If you are having suicidal thoughts, please contact the : 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).]

It was due to a career change that New York chef Anthony Bourdain found himself sitting on a rock at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, waiting for the Bushmen to bring him the warthog rectum. It was May 2006, and Tony, as he’s known, had left the Manhattan restaurant business to reinvent himself as a television gastro-explorer—a man who would travel anywhere and eat anything for his Travel Channel show, , which completed its third season in September. The warthog had been slathered in dirt and charcoal, then slow-cooked to moist perfection. The creature’s rectum——the “poop chute,”��Tony would later call it——was an elongated, translucent tube that looked, if one were being optimistic, a bit like the manicotti you can procure in Little Italy. “The chief of the tribe is offering it to me, the fruit from three days of hunting,”��Tony would later say. “The whole tribe is watching, his status is based on being a gatherer of meat, and here he’s giving me the best part. What am I going to do?”��Tony was going to choke it down, his eyes glazing over. In typically wry narration recorded for the show after he returned home, he described his appetizer as “barely cleaned,… lightly charred”��and dubbed it——with all due respect to the Bushmen— “the worst meal of my life.”

Not exactly , eh?

The exotic lump of flesh currently before Tony has been extracted from behind the gills of a yellowtail. This savory portion—called the “collar”��would be trashed at most American restaurants, but here at , the Japanese den in Midtown Manhattan that Tony and I have squeezed into this August evening, it’s a delicacy. In the spirit of culinary adventure, Tony brought me through a barely marked door, down a flight of stairs, and into this retreat of Japanese businessmen to sample a variety of challenging entrées. He is 51 years old and six foot five, a stork-like creature with salt-and-pepper hair and an ability to remain unnervingly lucid in almost any situation, like when he'll later go Colonel Kurtz on me and confess that No Reservations has so tweaked his outlook that he's ready to abandon America altogether.

Right now, though, he is craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the chef. “I still see the world from his perspective, the guy who’s standing back there through that window,”��he says.

This is a fair distillation of Tony’s method of world exploration. In a rebuke to the lightweight hosts who populate travel and food TV, Tony has developed a more vigorous approach, one that dares you to stick with him for an hour as he learns about a people by . No Reservations might be best summarized as Paul Theroux with more cigarettes. There is no set format, just a location——frequently exotic (Namibia, Uzbekistan, Polynesia), sometimes not (New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina)——and Tony’s intrepid stomach. Mostly avoiding four-star restaurants, he turns up at market stalls, family weddings, and more primitive food stations to sample whatever’s being served. Each episode plays out like a digressive, impressionistic essay that can veer off in all manner of unusual directions. At times, Tony will be deliriously happy, as when munching on puffin meat in Iceland; at others, he can be inconsolably morose, as when receiving a full-body massage from a sparsely clothed Uzbek man, an experience he called “sexual humiliation.”��The show draws the highest ratings on the Travel Channel, perhaps because it retains the giddy flavor of real traveling and eating. Thanks to heavy doses of alcohol and profanity, it’s also the only show on the network preceded by a parental warning.

“I have the luxury of being honest,”��Tony says, holding a piece of yellowtail between his chopsticks. “I don't know many travel- or food-show hosts that could say that something sucks, that they never want to come back.”

Or, for that matter, decide to say nothing. During an episode in Belfast that aired in January, Tony had prepared for a standup in front of one of the city’s “peace walls,”��which for years separated warring Catholics and Protestants. But when the tape started rolling, he looked uncertainly at the camera for a moment and said, “Anything I say on the subject is going to sound uninformed and idiotic.”��Then he walked away.

Professional globetrotter is Tony’s second act. A native of New York City, he spent 28 years pinballing between restaurants on the East Coast, becoming a heroin addict and living hand to mouth before ascending to the position of executive chef at Les Halles, a French brasserie on Park Avenue South. In 2000, he published , a joyous undressing of the restaurant business. (He had previously written two novels.) In it, Bourdain explained why you should never order fish on Mondays and why that hollandaise sauce drizzled over your eggs Benedict probably spent a frightening amount of its life at room temperature. The book dynamited more genteel notions of food writing and became a bestseller, earning Tony writing assignments from Gourmet, The New York Times, and others.

At 44, Tony was married, newly famous, and looking for a change of scenery. So he decided to accrue some frequent-flier miles and write (2001). He also let a camera crew tag along to film a companion series that aired on the Food Network. In 2003, he hopped to the Travel Channel to make No Reservations.

The running joke of the show is that Tony is trying to blend in with indigenous people, but his Gumby physique and innate surliness make this all but impossible. At the beginning, we typically see him roaming the streets and proposing some general theories about his destination. Then he embarks on a series of trials that inspire pithy punchlines. (After receiving a mud bath in Iceland: “I feel like drinking just out of spite.”) There are no breakthrough moments in which our protagonist announces he is one with an alien culture. (During a jungle hike on the island of Borneo with a former counterinsurgent: “My job is to keep the leftist rhetoric to a minimum and not to fall too far behind.”)

What Tony seems to spend most of his time doing is boozing with locals, throwing back shots of rice liquor, jungle moonshine, vodka, and all manner of beer. “It’s important that not just me but the whole crew drinks with them a lot prior to, during, and after the shooting period,”��he says. “Otherwise, they freeze up. Everybody’s like ‘Welcome to our longhouse, freakish American.’”��While everyone gets loose, Tony is often mapping out the show’s narration.

“I would never refer to him as the ‘host’��of the show,”��says Chris Collins, who produces No Reservations with his wife, Lydia Tenaglia, and Myleeta Aga. “He’s a guy writing essays that we’re filming.”

Chicken skin, our second course at Hagi, has been cooked over charcoal until it is crispy, then wound around wooden skewers. Tony picks his clean almost instantly, refills his glass of Sapporo from the pitcher, and starts telling me that he has fallen in love with Asia. So far, he’s filmed eight episodes of No Reservations on the other side of the Pacific, on top of about ten he did for A Cook’s Tour. His newest book, No Reservations, a photocentric chronicle of the making of the show that will hit shelves at the end of October, contains the official declaration that he has “gone bamboo.”

“To be honest, when Chris, Lydia, and I went out to shoot the first episodes of A Cook’s Tour in Vietnam, that was it for me,”��he says. “I didn’t care what it cost me. I would do anything to keep doing that, to keep feeling that, to keep seeing those colors. My expectations of life changed so much. My previous life was not enough anymore.”

Your previous life as a cook in America? “Even somebody else's life, somebody more successful and secure than I’d ever been. A nice house in Connecticut with savings and enough money to go on a nice vacation—that’s not enough! When you’ve been to the places I’ve been in Asia, that’s it. You want more.

“It's deeply traumatic,”��he continues. “It’s like dropping acid. It really is. Your mind expands.”

Letting Tony loose on the world was easy. Reining him in—not so much. “I wouldn't pretend that there aren’t times when I hear something Tony says and I have a deep inhalation of breath,”��says Pat Younge, president and general manager of the Travel Channel. On the rare occasion that Younge wants to tinker with an episode—to prune a bit of barnyard language, say, or lose some quip that's caused an uproar down in legal—there ensues a long and gladiatorial e-mail debate. “Once I wanted to change the title sequence,”��Younge says, “and Tony sent me an e-mail saying he could feel the blood draining from his veins.”

The Travel Channel knew what they were getting. Tony has never shied away from verbal fisticuffs, and he seems to take particular joy in sniping at the rogue’s gallery of celebrity “chefs.”��In Kitchen Confidential, he calls Emeril Lagasse “Ewok-like”��and says that four-star gourmands like André Soltner would never invite Tony, a chef of minor repute, to go skiing. (As it happened, after Soltner read the book he did invite Tony to the slopes; Tony has also since developed a grudging respect for Lagasse, or at least his cooking.)

Tonight, he’ll take aim at Rachael Ray. “She’s got a magazine, a television empire, all these bestselling books—I'm guessing she’s not hurting for money,”��Tony will say, his voice rising. “She’s hugely influential, particularly with children.

“And she’s .”

A pause.

“It’s like endorsing crack for kids! I’m not a very ethical guy. I don’t have a lot of principles. But somehow that seems to me over the line. Juvenile diabetes has exploded. Half of Americans don’t have necks. And she’s up there saying, ‘Eat some fuckin’��Dunkin’��Donuts. You look great in that swimsuit—eat another donut!’��That’s evil.”

The Sake Den has somehow grown more crowded, and the courses are coming one on top of another. Succulent, snow-white pork bellies lightly seasoned with salt. Thin slices of beef tongue. Liver on skewers. A second?—third? fourth?—pitcher of Sapporo. Now Tony is arguing that manning a sauce station in a restaurant like this, the career that left him broke and strung out, is more emotionally satisfying than writing books or making travel television, the career that has made him famous.

How can that possibly be true?

“Because you know exactly how well you did after 300 meals,”��he says. “You know absolutely, positively.”

And you don’t know when you write a bestseller? When your show is a hit? You don’t get the same sense of approval?

“You don’t need approval after a busy week in the kitchen,”��he says. “We all have a bunch of beers and tell each other how great we are. The waiters come over and say, ‘Big tips. Everybody loved it!’��The owner comes over and says, ‘Yeah, big take at the register today!’��You know. You sold all your specials. That’s it. Top of the world.”

If you really want to understand how much travel—and especially travel in Asia—has changed Anthony Bourdain, you need to watch the episode of No Reservations called “,”��which was filmed in Malaysia and aired in August 2005. Tony goes through the typical motions, huffing and puffing his way up hundreds of stairs to receive a blessing from a Hindu high priest, later washing down spicy bull-penis stew with a coffee concoction that's supposed to work like natural Viagra. But something is off. He appears uncertain, as if his usual life spark has been snuffed. Some days later (a few minutes in TV time), he makes his way upriver to a longhouse. He kills a pig with a spear and gulps down rice liquor with local villagers. But he still doesn’t seem to be fully Tony. The episode closes with a wistful monologue in which he asks if one can be “enriched and hollowed out at the same time.”

“Oooh, Malaysia,”��he says when I bring it up, sitting back in his chair. “I was generally in a really dark place. I was really sad.”

What was going on?

“A lot of personal stuff had been going on. I was coming out of a marriage and I had other relationships out there,”��he says. “And I had a lot of history in that part of the world by this point. My expectations for the day—my expectations of life—had been so altered that it happened to come home during the show. I looked around and realized that there’s no going home 100 percent anymore. I was never really going to go back and be a citizen of the USA the way I had been. It was a problem.”

Now he’s telling me that he and his second wife, Ottavia, an Italian whom he married in April and until recently the general manager of Manhattan Japanese-fusion restaurant Geisha, and their four-month-old daughter, Ariane, are moving to Southeast Asia in the next few years. He’s going to write a book about the experience. This is not a midlife crisis, exactly—more like an evolution. A catharsis. Once Tony was a creature that by his own reckoning could exist only in the closed ecosystem of a kitchen. Now he was seeing things—learning things—and Tony could see his own transformation right there in the jungle. The final shot of the Malaysia episode has Tony waving off the helicopter sent to fetch him back to civilization. It is about as close as No Reservations gets to a dramatic metaphor.

“No one will ever understand, or fully get, or be able to share—There’s no describing this,”��he tells me. “The only people who understand me now are the people in my crew. I stepped outside of my life and not all of me could come back. I’ve defected, I’ve betrayed, I’ve crossed some line. I can go back and fake it, but there’s always going to be a piece of me that expects that of life. Visuals that lush. It’s like the movies, only better.”

Tasted & Approved

Bourdain reviews five of his favorite eateries, from Bali to Brazil

Warung Babi Guling (at Jalang Tegal San #2)

Ubud, Bali

The best goddamn pig in the universe. Whole hog, stuffed with fresh herbs, then lovingly slow-roasted over a low flame and mopped with coconut milk. You will never be the same.

Katz's Deli

New York City

When visiting a strange city, eat what they do best. In New York, we do deli better than anyone. Katz’s is the top of the pile.

Au Pied de Cochon

Montreal

At Martin Picard’s casual, no-bullshit sugar-shack-meets-French-classic, it’s about foie gras, and pork, and sausage, and all good things, in get-the-defibrillator abundance. This is a meal you have to train for.

Salumi

Seattle

This temple to cured meats is one of my Happy Places, and should be a damned national monument. Anything cured or braised—hell, anything they do—is worth trying.

Bar do Mané (at the Mercado Municipal Paulistano)

São Paulo, Brazil

Get the mortadella sandwich: a steaming heap of thinly sliced mortadella and gooey melted cheese in a soft roll. This and a cold beer are the breakfast of choice for travelers in the know.

Adapted from No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach, out in late October from Bloomsbury USA

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Knoydart Peninsula, Scotland
The Knoydart Peninsula pokes out from Scotland's west coast, flanked by Loch Nevis (Gaelic for “Heaven Lake”) and Loch Hourn (“Hell Lake”) . . . which would appear to place the Old Forge in purgatory. In fact, it's a sublime spot, a revamped blacksmith's forge and inn that's perched on the coast seven miles by boat from the tiny fishing village of Mallaig, where crucial pub supplies arrive three times a week. You can get there by boat, but the classic way is an 18-mile east-west trek over 3,500-foot mountains. 011-44-16-87-46-22-67,

SUGARLOAF KIOSK
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
To reach the summit of 1,296-foot Pão de Açúcar (“Sugarloaf”), you can go the easy way (riding a 75-passenger cable car) or the hard way (multipitch rock climbing). Either way, you'll be rewarded at the top with a tall caipirinha—a blend of ice, sugar, lime, and cachaça, a Brazilian alcohol made from distilled sugarcane. Impress the tourists by climbing Italianos, a bolted 5.9 route that rises 810 feet along the monolith's west face. 011-55-21-2235-3716, english

ZULUNKHUNI RIVER LODGE
Lake Malawi, Malawi
On the northern shore of Africa's vast and forest-rimmed Lake Malawi, there's an unusual lodge: four thatched huts next to a bar and restaurant built into a rock cave near a waterfall. Getting to the so-called Where Are We? Lodge requires a five-hour trek from Usisya, the closest road-accessible village, or a five-hour ferry ride north from Nkhata Bay. There's no electricity, so the bar's vodka-filled watermelons are kept chilled in a kerosene icebox.

LABAN RATA RESTHOUSE
Mount Kinabalu, Borneo, Malaysia
At 13,455 feet, Mount Kinabalu is the highest peak on the Malaysian island of Borneo. To reach the top, you'll hike for two days among orchids and 290 species of birds. Halfway up, stop for an overnight respite at Laban Rata, a 60-bunk hostel with electricity, showers, heated rooms, and a restaurant that serves hot noodles and cold beer. 011-60-88-243629,

ALBATROSS BAR
Tristan da Cunha Island, South Atlantic Ocean
There's no airport on the British-controlled island of Tristan da Cunha, 1,750 miles west of Cape Town, South Africa, so pretty much the only way to get there is via a seven-day ride aboard a crawfish trawler. A 2001 hurricane ripped the roof off the Albatross—the island's lone bar—but the village's 280 locals banded together to repair it. By September 2004, the no-frills establishment had reopened for business, complete with a snooker table, locally made crisps, and pints of beer.

PHANTOM RANCH
Grand Canyon, Arizona
Descend 5,000 feet and 9.5 miles on the South Rim's Bright Angel Trail and you'll arrive at a wooden oasis that isn't a mirage—it's the famous Phantom Ranch, since 1922 the only lodge operating below the canyon rim. In the rustic dining room, you'll be treated to cold Tecate (hauled in by trusty mules) and spicy beef stew. Afterwards, retreat to a private cabin or camp nearby; same-day hiking down and up with a bellyful of beer is not advised. 888-297-2757, 704.html

LA PAELLA
Tapana Island, Kingdom of Tonga
Rent a sailboat in the South Pacific town of Neiafu—in Tonga's Vavau island group—and follow the winds three hours to Tapana, a remote, four-square-mile island. Besides one native Tongan, the only residents are Eduardo and Maria Mejias, two Spanish expatriates who run a restaurant they built from driftwood. Call ahead to let them know you're coming, and they'll serve paella cooked over a fire, Spanish tapas, and all the sangria you can drink. 011-676-12310,

BOB MARLEY RASTA RESTAURANT & REGGAE BAR
Muktinath, Nepal
Buddhists and Hindus make the pilgrimage to Muktinath, in the Nepalese Himalayas, to bathe in the 108 fountains that are believed to bring salvation after death. Everyone else goes for the beer and music. Welcome to the Bob Marley Rasta Restaurant & Reggae Bar, elevation 12,470 feet. From Kathmandu, you'll trek six days to the town of Jomsom and then spend a day acclimatizing before climbing 3,500 feet up to Muktinath. A Jamaican flag hangs next to Tibetan prayer flags, and the owner's son plays “Get Up, Stand Up” on his guitar. If you're tired, it's OK to stay seated.

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FALL: FRANCE//PROVENCE
Act out your cassoulet-and-chardonnay fantasies at Château Routas, a 17th-century family-owned winery and manor encircled by 110 acres of vineyards and 740 acres of woodlands. Adorned with the blues, yellows, and reds of classic Provence, the luxe manor house and farmhouse—rented to groups for a weeklong stay—are a stone’s throw from the Riviera and the foothills of the Alps. Cooking classes cover local specialties like sea bass stuffed with wild fennel and honey-lavender crè;me brûlé;e. Hiking, scouting for truffles in the oak-choked hills, and trout fishing in the Argens River quickly soak up your free time. Rates start at $8,883 per week for up to 12 adults and four children, which works out to about $90 per person per day, with cooking classes $200 extra per session for the group. Château Routas, 011-33-498-05-25-80,

WINTER: MALAYSIA AND THAILAND//SINGAPORE TO BANGKOK
From streetside stalls in bustling markets to frenetic kitchens in small-town restaurants, you’ll get a veritable tasting menu of Asian cuisines on this 19-day eating expedition stretching 1,780 miles from Singapore to Chiang Mai to Bangkok. Journey through the spice-scented countryside via taxi, boat, trishaw, and songtaew (open-air cab). In southern Malaysia, where pungent flavorings like cardamom and cloves rule, learn to make Malay specialties like dry-curry chicken kapitan. In Chiang Mai, study the intricacies of Thai produce and spices while perfecting your pad Thai. There’s time for trekking in the Cameron Highlands, north of Kuala Lumpur, and visits to Buddhist temples in Thailand. Accommodations include hotels, bungalows, and one homestay. $1,397; Intrepid Travel, 866-847-8192,

SPRING: ITALY//TUSCANY
This six-day giro combines top-shelf cooking classes with glorious hikes through the Tuscan hills—spiked with red poppies and wild asparagus in spring. Base camp numero uno is Badia a Coltibuono, tucked into 2,000 acres of forest and Chianti vines. The former abbey is a famous winery and home to cookbook maven Lorenza de’ Medici’s legendary scuola di cucina, where you’ll master lemon risotto and chocolate-pear tart. Second stop: Villa Vignamaggio, a luscious wine estate that specializes in regional fare such as panzanella (bread-and-tomato salad) and bruschetta. $3,898; Backroads, 800-462-2848,

SUMMER: CANADA//GEORGIAN BAY
Canadian cookbook authors and chefs Anne Connell and Mary Hunt are at the helm of this three-day Ontario sea-kayaking foray into Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. Start with a night at pine-paneled Killarney Mountain Lodge and load up on home-style Canadian cuisine—think fresh trout and wild blueberries. Come morning, you’ll paddle three hours to your island campsite, kitted out with an impressive alfresco kitchen. You’ll get kayaking instruction and observe the chef duo’s tricks as the two prepare healthy camp fare like chicken curry and tofu fruit dip. $750; Killarney Mountain Lodge & Outfitters, 800-461-1117,

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Since 1972, UNESCO has bestowed 690 spots in 122 countries with the title “World Heritage Site,” which translates to “a property of outstanding universal value.” While 529 of these sites are culturally significant, 161 are “natural” properties—more endowed with endangered species, magnificent scenery, and fragile ecosystems than your average hunk of terra firma. Here, the best of the ten most recently designated “natural” sites:

Fjord follies: the coast Höga Kusten, Sweden

GUNUNG MULU NATIONAL PARK
Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia
Size: 204 square miles
Outstanding Universal Value: The world's largest limestone cavern, Deer Cave—at 1,968 feet long and 262 feet high—could house eight 747s nose to tail.
Why go: Serious spelunking. Also: Hike 7,799-foot Mulu mountain, trek the seven-mile Headhunter Trail to Terikan River hot springs, or watch a half-mile-long stream of bats exit Deer Cave in search of dinner.
Phone: 011-60-82-423600
Web:
UKHAHLAMBA DRAKENSBERG PARK
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Size: 938 square miles
Outstanding Universal Value: 3,110-foot Thukela Falls, the world's second-highest waterfall; 11,355-foot Makheka mountain, southern Africa s second-highest peak.
Why go: Summit Makheka, 10,822-foot Mont Aux Sources, or countless other unclimbed (and unnamed) peaks.
Phone: 011-27-31-304-7144
Web:

GREATER BLUE MOUNTAINS AREA
New South Wales, Australia
Size: 3,977 square miles
Outstanding Universal Value: Home to the recently discovered Wollemi pine, which dates back to the dinosaur age, this site includes Blue Mountains National Park and seven other protected areas.
Why go: Canyoneer, climb, rappel, hike, and swim in 328-foot-deep Grand Canyon; take a moonlit mountain-bike ride along miles of fire roads lit by thousands of luminescent glowworm larvae.
Phone: 011-61-2-4787-8877
Web:

HÖGA KUSTEN
on the Gulf of Bothnia, Västernorrland, Sweden
Size: 550 square miles
Outstanding Universal Value: Hundreds of miles of wild, fjord-riddled coastline.
Why go: Kayak the waters of Gaviks fjord, hike the 80-mile Höga Kusten trail, camp in spruce forests, and rock climb in Skuleskogen National Park.
Phone: 011-46-611-55-77-50
Web: ;

CENTRAL SURINAME NATURE RESERVE
District Sipaliwini, Suriname
Size: 6,178 square miles
Outstanding Universal Value: Fifteen people and 400 bird species inhabit this New Jersey-size site lying between the Amazon and Orinoco River Basins.
Why go: Boat into remote Foengoe Island on the Coppename River; then hike four miles to the 787-foot granite Voltzberg Dome for a rainforest view. Observe the world's largest lek for Guianan cock-of-the-rock birds.
Phone: 011-597-427-102
Web:

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ONE MORNING in late August, about 70 gravity addicts will take elevators to the 73rd floors of the Petronas Towers—identical skyscrapers soaring 1,483 feet above downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. There, they will step out a window onto a five-foot-wide platform and take in the view from the tallest office buildings on earth. Then, one after another, they’ll chuck themselves off.

Might as well jump: Californian BASE jumpers Brian Chopin and Henry Boger step off the Menara Kuala Lumpur tower, February 2001.

The Malaysia International Championship of Skydiving, scheduled for August 27 through September 2, is only the latest high-profile event in a string of state-sanctioned group BASE jumps from the Malaysian capital’s landmarks (which also include 1,381-foot Menara Kuala Lumpur, the world’s fourth-tallest communications tower). Last January during the Malaysia SkyVenture World Record Xtreme Skydive, 15 parachutists celebrated New Year’s by simultaneously jumping from the Petronas Towers and landing gently in a downtown park, where they were presented with medals for “bravery” by Mahathir bin Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister. His message: Malaysia, a nation best known for its Buddhist temples, is setting up shop as the global mecca of BASE jumping, a deadly offshoot of skydiving that is vilified in the United States and many other countries because its 2,000-odd practitioners commonly trespass on, and then leap off—frequently with tragic results—rooftops, bridges, radio towers, and cliffs. Devotees insist that with proper equipment and training, the risks of BASE can be made manageable, but since the late seventies it has killed at least 50 people—including Carl Boenish, who in 1978 first popularized the sport when he pitched himself off Yosemite’s 3,604-foot El Capitan (he perished six years later during a leap off a 5,400-foot cliff in Norway).
So how did an activity that first caught headlines in California’s High Sierra find its way across the Pacific to become a Southeast Asian monarchy’s extreme sport du jour? Credit Canadian mechanical engineer and skydiving instructor Martin Dumas, 32, who relocated to Kuala Lumpur in November 1998 to help build a rapid-transit system, but soon found himself planning the country’s first organized BASE jump with two Malaysians, sales and marketing exec Aziz Ahmad, 44, and Rahmat Omar Tunhanif, 34, who owns a furniture factory. Since then, more than 70 of the sport’s disciples—hailing from as far afield as Iceland and Saudi Arabia—have merrily, and legally, flung themselves off Kuala Lumpur buildings.


Of course, it’s a different story in the States, where BASE is infamous for clandestine rooftop sorties and sensational screwups. In the past year, more than a dozen jumpers have been arrested, including Harry Caylor, who last fall leaped off the top of downtown Denver’s Embassy Suites Hotel, only to catch a gust and crash through a window into an unoccupied room. (Bleeding profusely, he walked out of the lobby and called an ambulance, but the cops arrived first and arrested him.) In October 1999, professional stuntwoman Jan Davis perished before 150 spectators when her borrowed chute failed to deploy in an illegal leap off El Cap (BASE jumping is still against the law in America’s national parks). Ironically, Davis’s jump had been intended to memorialize Frank Gambalie III, who only four months before had drowned in the Merced River while fleeing park rangers after his own illicit leap from El Cap (see “,” October 1999).


While short on 3,000-foot cliffs, Kuala Lumpur does not lack for lofty launchpads—the city has 14 buildings over 500 feet high. Further, Malaysia aggressively courts extreme sporting events, and has hosted the Asian X-Games and the World Hang Gliding Championships. “If we didn’t take risks, we’d still be in caves,” says Ahmad, who, with 14 launches under his belt, is the nation’s most experienced BASE jumper.


To a country like Malaysia, where tourism is the third-largest source of domestic revenue, the specter of deaths like those in the U.S. is apparently outshoneby the dazzle of dollar signs. As of early summer, the management of the Menara Kuala Lumpur tower was jockeying with SkyVenture Productions—the promoters of the events at the Petronas Towers. Both want to ink lucrative broadcast contracts with America’s cable networks. But to one veteran jumper, this is a sport that will never, by its very nature, neatly lend itself to prime time. “The accident rate is a natural deterrent,” says Oklahoma geologist Mark Herndon, 40, who logged 100 leaps in the 1980s but packed away his parachute after his son was born. Plus, he says, “Illegal is nice because it keeps the riffraff away.”

Search and Revenue

Injured mountaineers find themselves in the crosshairs of cost-cutting lawmakers

SIXTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Georgian climber Lev Sarkisov was not thinking of his pocketbook last June as he cradled his broken ribs. Having taken a 20-foot fall on Mount McKinley’s West Buttress route, he watched the approaching U.S. Army Chinook helicopter sent to pluck him from a camp at 14,200 feet. Like the 13 other climbing parties that had to be rescued from McKinley that season, Sarkisov was more concerned with getting the hell off the mountain than with the $13,294 the National Park Service and U.S. Army were spending to save him. But a report commissioned by Congress and scheduled for release this August may have future McKinley climbers checking their credit lines before strapping on their crampons.


Since 1998, when two Brits were choppered off the summit to the tune of $221,818, Alaska Republican Senator Frank Murkowski has argued that evacuating injured climbers from the slopes of McKinley is an unfair burden to taxpayers. Public Law 106-486, authored by Murkowski and signed into law last November, requires the Park Service to suggest ways to recover the costs of emergency evacuations. The new congressional report may recommend that climbers be forced to carry insurance and agree to foot the cost of potential bailouts–which could serve as a precedent for adopting similar practices in other rescue hot spots such as Washington’s Mount Rainier and Northern California’s Mount Shasta.
Mike Gauthier, chief climbing ranger for Mount Rainier National Park, contends that alpinists on McKinley are being unfairly picked on. Of the 1,200 people who attempt McKinley each year, an average of 11 require assistance, a small percentage of the 5,000 or so recreationists the Park Service extracts from the wilderness every year. “As a group, mountain climbers aren’t the most expensive to rescue,” says Gauthier, who points out that more money is spent on tracking down lost hikers. Not surprisingly, the idea that climbers should have to foot the bill for their helicopter ride home doesn’t sit well with the American Alpine Club. “If people think they’re paying for their rescue,” says executive director Charley Shimanski, “they tend to delay calling for help.”

Andrew McEwan

Meet the ruler of the nation’s gnarliest paddle sport

Wild thing: McEwan at the Potomac River near Seneca, Maryland, May 2001

Age: 21.
Hometown: Germantown, Maryland.
Years kayaking: 15.
Years “wildwater” racing, a sport that involves steep 20-mile runs down Class III+ rivers: six.
Odds someone will beat McEwan when he defends his title in the National Wildwater Championships on the Pigeon River in eastern Tennessee this month: near-zilch.
Reason McEwan keeps winning, according to teammate Chris Hipgrave: “He’s got a paddling gene the rest of us don’t.”
Length, in feet, of McEwan’s wildwater kayak, the Esox: 14.9.
Length, in feet, of the ’87 VW Golf he uses to cart it around: 13.5.
Width, in inches, of Crack in the Rock, the fastest channel on the Class V Upper Youghiogheny racecourse, where McEwan took first last year: 24.
Width, in inches, of the Esox: 23.6.
McEwan’s prerace nutritional regimen: a large Butterfinger and medium Heath Blizzard from Dairy Queen.
Why dominant European wildwater racers have it made, according to Middy Tilghman, 2nd ranked U.S. wildwater kayaker: “They’re sponsored, so they don’t have to work. They can lift weights, paddle, then just sit around playing video games.” Why McEwan can’t afford to sit around: “American paddlers get very little outside financing. We work to support ourselves.”
Why the work is worth it: “Wildwater is so dynamic. It’s kind of like downhill mountain biking, only the mountain is moving too.”

Loot

���ϳԹ��� Essentials, To Go

Gear: The Kestrel 4000 Pocket Weather Tracker from Nielsen-Kellerman keeps you dialed in to ten meteorological must-knows, including temperature, wind speed and windchill, barometric pressure, humidity, and heat index. It’s like having Willard Scott in your pocket–minus all the babble. $329;

Video: From the boys who brought you the outrageous Kranked series comes the latest fat-tire masterpiece, Search for the Holey Trail. Watch as ballsy mountain bikers huck their way off buildings and cliffs in Morocco, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, Spain, France, and Canada. $25;
Book: Alpinist Ed Webster chronicles his five-year tangle with the Goddess Mother in Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest. The self-published book includes an account of his oxygenless, unsupported ascent of the Kangshung Face in 1988. $30;

Web site: Readers of the newly minted Mtb Journal nominate for coverage news and gossip tidbits from across the singletrack universe. Though “reader-generated content”is a dotcom cliche, in this case it actually works.

Reverse Corps

A dam-happy federal agency begins undoing its own legacy

Just add concrete; Washington State’s Green River, circa 1915

“THIS IS STILL a viable river. It isn’t worth throwing away, really.” A few hundred yards from a Boeing factory and the truck-clogged Port of Seattle, Army Corps of Engineers biologist Patrick Cagney gazes over a stretch of the Green River. He’s admiring a newly constructed side channel full of woody snags that the Corps has installed next to a meat-processing plant in a $113 million effort to “rewild” the river. Cagney hopes the calm, debris-filled channel will provide a resting area for the fall salmon run. Like many urban waterways, the Green has been carefully sculpted over the years–the river has been straightened, diked, riprapped, and made into a well-behaved, navigable ditch. In short, the life has been engineered right out of it. But this summer, a century after the river was first overhauled, the agency that brought you the Snake River dams is attempting to breathe life back into an ecosystem it spent generations subduing.


And that’s just one example. Over the past two years Congress has authorized 50 restoration projects in 25 states, including funds to revive wetlands along the Ohio River and $1.4 billion to resuscitate the hydrology of the Everglades, putting the Corps, known primarily for building large-scale public-works projects, in the business of ecosystem rehabilitation. But enviros are cautious about entrusting habitat remediation to an agency often seen as an environmental bogeyman, especially after last year’s debacle in which the Corps cooked its books to gain support from lawmakers for a dubious $1 billion lock-widening project on the fragile upper Mississippi River. To Melissa Samet, senior director of a Corps-reform campaign at the conservation group American Rivers, some of what the agency labels restoration is plain old engineering. Nevertheless, she hopes that with guidance the Corps can create naturally self-sustaining ecosystems: “We’re making sure that what the Corps does with its restoration is real restoration.”

The Sweet Music of the Line

Saying good-bye to one of the nation’s greatest ski mountaineers

Saari in Peru, June 2000

ON THE MORNING OF May 8, ski mountaineer Hans Saari and photographer Kristoffer Erickson, Saari’s ski partner, hiked to the top of the Mont Blanc du Tacul for an attempt on the Gervasutti—a 3,000-foot couloir near Chamonix, France. Keen to put a new twist on the run, the two bypassed the usual entrance to the chute in favor of a steeper and more challenging route. A few turns down, Saari, in the lead, slipped on a hidden patch of ice, and then tumbled an estimated 1,500 feet.Despite the quick response of a rescue crew, he died of head trauma. He was 30.


A year before the accident, Saari and Erickson had skied another chute—this one in Montana. They’d dubbed it the Patriarch, in honor of the late Alex Lowe, their climbing partner and mentor, who had perished in an October 1999 avalanche on Tibet’s Mount Shishapangma. One of the nation’s premier ski mountaineers, Saari, a key player in ���ϳԹ���’s feature on the commercial and peer pressures of his sport, was also a talented writer. His lyrical account of that Montana descent could well serve as his epitaph. “To carve turns deliberately and skillfully down the throat of the peak from summit to base creates the line,” he wrote several months later. “The vibrancy of the line means everything. Like a cello, there is no sound until the string is taut. The more you struggle, the tighter the string, the greater the music.”

Smokey’s New Wheels

As another drought-fueled wildfire season looms over the West, a new 27-ton Tonka truck is set to roll into the flames

Inferno machine: the Proteus Fire Master

YOU’RE A FIRE boss, right? Well, step on over here and feast your eyes on this baby—the Proteus FireMaster, built right here in Missoula and ready for action anywhere you need ‘er. She’ll grab a burning pine, cut it down, give it a good soaking, and drop that bad boy on the safe side of your firebreak—all on a 35-degree slope! She’s also got a helicopter-refillable, 3,000-plus-gallon water tank, a telescoping water cannon, an eight-foot dozer blade, and a boom-mounted grapple claw and 18-inch bar saw.


Not sold yet? Hell, this puppy’s got—all standard features, y’understand—an onboard weather-radio system, outboard video cameras, CD player, air-conditioning, three escape hatches, GPS, and a fire-suppression system that’ll flood the engine compartment and hydraulics with halon gas at the touch of a button on the dash.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Wildfire fighting is about tactics,” you’re telling yourself. “That thing between my ears is called a brain, and that’s the most important tool out on the line—not some 27-ton, $350,000 behemoth.” But what you’ve got here is a mechanical army. Last summer, we rolled a Proteus prototype into the Lost Trail Fire, a resort operation right here in the Bitterroots. That burn was sure enough marching down the ski hill. A team went after it with Proteus and a fleet of helicopters, and we stopped it in its tracks.


Now, we both know things are gonna be bad this summer. Last year more than seven million acres went up across the country, and with the drought still hanging on, things aren’t looking much better this season. Hotshots are in short supply. Proteus here is the answer. Just sign this leasing agreement, and we’ll get you set up for just $475 an hour. Wait… Did I tell you about the optional undercoating?

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�� �� FIRST CBS BROKE MY HEART. Then CBS pissed me off. On October 9, I opened my morning paper to discover an intriguing headline: “Survive This.” The story told how a producer named Mark Burnett was soliciting applicants for a “reality-based” entertainment about people cooperating, or not, in their quest to cope with the rigors of precivilized life on an uninhabited tropical island. The photo showed footprints on a gleaming beach, thatch-roofed huts on stilts, and palms leaning artfully toward a tranquil lagoon—most everyone’s idea of Eden. Although I hadn’t thought about it for 30 years, the searing imagery in Lord of the Flies swarmed across my brain. When I had read and read again William Golding’s novel as a freshman in high school, I didn’t see it as a statement that man’s institutions are evil because man is evil. All I knew was that the book had overwhelmed me with a sudden, aching need to be someone else, far away. My father was a furious redneck tyrant, my mother had died when I was seven, and we were living in a trailer court scraped from a sugar beet field in North Dakota. I began to identify with the characters. First I was Ralph, the reasonable social democrat who believed in the survival value of cooperation. Then I was Jack, the bloodthirsty hunter who bent others to his will just for the fun of it. Finally I decided I was most like Simon, the dreamy mystic who wandered fearlessly around the jungle communing with the spirit world. Although selfless and hardworking and brave, Simon nevertheless ended up tragically—killed by his peers—and romantically, I thought at the time, his battered body carried away by the tide. Before I finally put away the book, I saw that it was actually the splendid, primordial isolation of Golding’s good island itself that appealed to me most, this lush, nurturing playground free from the shackles of school and work and all those dreary adult expectations. I dropped the paper and loped to my computer to download a Survivor application. Here was a chance to verify whether my adolescent fantasy was something that could actually come true or was merely an illusion fabricated by desire. In the space where the application asked who my hero is, I wrote Muhammad Ali, of course. When it asked which of the Gilligan’s Island castaways I identified with, I replied that these were cartoon people and that a better question would be which character in Lord of the Flies was most like me (again, Simon). And I answered the query about why I thought I could be the ultimate survivor by bragging that I was wise enough to understand that the thing that tears apart groups faster than anything is sex. More important, I told them, I know how to make alcohol from fruit. Then I hired a team to film the three-minute videotape of myself CBS demanded. I put together a vignette in which I rode my mare around, showed off a footbridge I had built, and cut firewood with my chainsaw between bursts of monologue intended to portray me as an engaging dinner partner, even if dinner was, say, rat-on-a-stick. When I emerged from the post office after sending off my package to Beverly Hills, I was euphoric. I looked forward to the phone call arranging my first interview with the producers. It was a call that never came. When I read that the initial pool of 800 quarterfinalists had been culled from more than 6,000 applications, I was devastated. I fell into a deep and simmering funk. My wife, Kitty, avoided me. The dogs studied me from a distance. I sat outside and let snowstorms bury me. Finally I saw the light. There was another way to get to the island of my dreams. First, I landed a magazine assignment to write about the show. Next, I talked my way into the press corps that CBS was organizing for a two-day, canned tour of Pulau Tiga during filming. I got my shots and took the first of six weekly anti-malarial mefloquine pills. (Nightmares are one of the drug’s side effects, and I had a doozy straight out of Lord of the Flies. In it, I had indeed been accepted by the contestants as a player, but only because I kept my face hidden behind a deposed contestant’s head, which was impaled on a stick sharpened at both ends. When I woke up I decided I’d rather suffer malaria than another dream like that.) Then, in March, mere days before my trip, CBS threw me off the press bus. The publicity minion handling my arrangements, a Colleen Sullivan, said that I would have to be “bumped” because the media corps had grown too unwieldy and Mark Burnett was getting nervous about the distraction. I was floored again. Rejected both as a contestant and as a journalist covering the contestants—a double rejectee!—I issued a blood oath on the spot: I would storm the island on my own. But not as a fan—as a sworn enemy. ��

�� �� EVER SINCE THE FOX Network’s Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? aired last February, the media have been atwitter over the ethics of reality TV. Professional handwringers began colliding in their stampede to condemn the artifice and Darwinian cruelty of shows like Survivor. “Has television lost its mind?” the Washington Post whined, adding another jewel to some pedant’s collection of oxymorons. “Why does so much mass-produced culture seem addicted to the lurid, the amoral or the just plain out there?” Rather than reflecting society’s norms, the Post sermonized, sleazy television may be lowering them. Blah, blah, blah. Let’s not forget that America’s norms included, for an era much longer than the brief lifespan of TV, entertainments dominated by blood sports like public torture and execution. I defend television because I am a true devotee; in our house it’s called teedle, and I spend at least four hours a day basking in teedle’s wan, consoling light. At the top of my personal “reality” curve would be two offerings from Comedy Central, Win Ben Stein’s Money and The Man Show. At the bottom is a viewing disaster called Eco-Challenge, an annual hard-core adventure race set in various rugged locales. This April’s Eco-Challenge Argentina, in which teams of four hardbodies raced by foot and horse and kayak for 12 days across 197 miles of Patagonia, was the worst. Because it was a matter of hours that separated the athletes at the finish line, rather than seconds, watching the little figures skitter around the scenery was like waiting for seawater to evaporate so you can get some salt. Coincidentally, the race director and the man who sold the Eco-Challenge idea to the Discovery Channel is none other than Mark Burnett. Let’s also not forget that this new wave of reality television swamping America came from Europe—Highbrow Heaven, home of your Wagners, your Prousts, your Klees. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was a British idea. Mark Burnett bought the concept of Survivor from the Swedes, who have been producing their Expedition Robinson for three years on an island off the West Malaysian state of Johor. (The winner of that contest gets a mere 65 grand.) One day, while searching obsessively through all the trash being written about the show, I opened my paper and found an Associated Press photo of the chosen ones. The women looked like marginally worthy opponents, but the men! You couldn’t find a less promising collection of gomers at any of those backwater beer joints frequented by poachers and shade-tree mechanics. OK, one, Rudy, 72, was an ex–Navy SEAL, and Sean, 30, claimed to be a neurologist, but looking at them, I knew I could outwit them blindfolded. How this dim and sneering bunch passed ten days of grilling by CBS and six hours of psychological testing was a mystery. My bitterness was now complete. Meanwhile the show moved on without me, and the contestants were shipped off to Pulau Tiga, where they were discovering that the island can be a formidably unhealthy place for campers. No Club Med, it swarms with evil vectors that bite and suck and cause malaria and Japanese encephalitis, mammals that harbor rabies, plus poisonous spiders and snakes and unrelenting heat and humidity. And even though CBS planted sugarcane and tapioca on the island to supplement their crude diet of fruit, fish, and vermin, the players were being scrutinized every waking moment by overfed helicopter and ground crews. Add to all of this the humiliation of a national audience watching as you walk the Walk of Shame off the island, and it’s no wonder CBS felt compelled to supply the losers with a shrink as they were whisked away via chopper. (The first ejectee from 1997’s Expedition Robinson, a Bosnian refugee who was reported to have been suffering from depression, killed himself shortly before the show aired.) No comforting shrinks were laid on by the suits at CBS for this unbalanced writer, however, after they rejected me not once, but twice. But, hey, that’s OK. I believe that doing something amusing with your rage is the best therapy of all. ��

�� �� SO IN THE FIRST MOMENTS of April Fool’s Day I boarded a Malaysian Air 747 in Los Angeles, popped three Xanax tablets, and woke up half a day later in Taiwan, my new khaki shirt soaked with drool. Five hours later I got off another jet in Kota Kinabalu, or KK as the locals call it, a hard-driving berg of 112,000 souls crammed into blocks of boxy high-rises painted colors not found in nature or squalid collections of tin-roofed shacks built on stilts in polluted tidal basins. I stepped outside into air that felt like the inside of a sweat lodge. Within seconds my hair was the temperature of broiled wire. My hotel, the Magellan Sutera Sabah, was a striking white-stucco complex with red-tile roofs sprawled on a sequestered landfill jutting into the South China Sea. Opulent and friendly at the same time, it was the ideal venue in which to conceal myself while I spied on media people and the CBS production teams rotating back and forth from Pulau Tiga, where filming had been going on for three weeks. I learned from my map that the island was two hours southwest by car and then a half-hour by boat. On the way to my room I spotted an American with a ponytail lugging a duffel bag bearing the CBS logo. I introduced myself with my nom de guerre, Richard Kraneum, fearless book designer, and found out that he was an American journalist named Julian who’d worked for CBS at one time but was in Borneo to write an article for a weekly magazine about a show called Survivor. “Survivor?” I mugged. “What’s that?” The next day, I struggled to conceal my glee when Julian surrendered the name of a Survivor ejectee, which a CBS crewman with more mouth than brain had let slip that morning. Julian, of course, had been forced to sign the network’s insanely restrictive “Embargo Agreement” forbidding him from publishing anything about the fate of the contestants. I am not under any such restraint. The loser’s name, as you may have learned by now if you’ve been tuning in, is Joel. “Jeez,” I said. “Think they put Joel up at the hotel?” Julian was watching a burly man with beard and sunburn make his way across the lobby. “That might be Joel right there.” “Let’s follow him,” I suggested. But beardo was moving as if on a mission, and we lost him. Julian headed off on errands just as a helicopter roared into view and landed on the jetty guarding the marina nearby. I hurried to investigate. A couple of louts disembarked into a waiting golf cart and zipped past me back toward the hotel. They were wearing T-shirts with the Survivor logo (outwit, outplay, outlast) on the front and the plea don’t vote me off on the back. Duh. I caught up with them just as they were making their way into the lobby. They were laughing about Joel, wondering how he was filling his lonely days. As I eavesdropped on their gossip about another loser, Ramona, I also learned that they’d been assigned to pick up pizza from Ferdinand’s, the Italian restaurant in the hotel. The pizza was going to be airlifted back to the island via the chopper, possibly as a reward for the winner of some silly swimming or fishing or blowdart contest that Mark Burnett had cooked up to keep the players at each other’s throats. More important than the treats, the winners of these contests would be immune for one episode from the Walk of Shame. Or maybe the pizza was a morale-builder for the crew. Not that they needed it. They were feasting like swine on deli snacks and cold beer at the Survivor Bar, a trough built for them on the island. I began to think that Mark Burnett was a lot like me, even though he was now my enemy. Well, yes, he was some sort of British expatriate raised in humble beginnings who claims to have been a British paratrooper, while I was a pinko raised in humble beginnings who had once made a modest career scorning my government from the pages of a leftist newspaper my cadre published called the Borrowed Times. Yet I believe that, like me, Burnett’s amusements as a boy included putting different sorts of insects into a jar to see which species would triumph. While Burnett originated the unfortunate Eco-Challenge notion and had his own production company, I spent five years organizing the Festival of Champions, an annual event staged in remote Missoula County, Montana, where players from all walks of life vied for lava lamps in contests like paintball wars and roadkill cook-offs. As far as I could tell the only thing he had over me was that in photos he looked OK in floppy hats, whereas I look like Ichabod Crane on mescaline. The next morning, with a growing James Bondian savoir faire, I happened to step into the hall outside my room right behind a crew guy in a Survivor T-shirt. “Don’t vote me off what?” I called in my hearty, American-touring-the-Orient voice. He explained the Survivor concept and I nodded with enthusiasm as we walked to the lobby, where a crowd of production people and journalists was gathering for buses that were going to transport them to some fishing village where the boats to Pulau Tiga awaited. “One guy totally freaked out,” my man volunteered when I asked him how the contestants were holding up. “Wow,” I said. “Who was this guy?” “Some guy named Bob. They shipped him back to the States.” I wondered if this was the self-destructive player I’d heard about who had been banished from the island by a united female vote after declaring that the only thing stupider than a woman was a cow. The women mooed as he left. A pair of white minibuses rolled up to the Magellan and the mob piled on board. As they pulled away I noticed an empty seat. This sucks, I thought. I have to get to Pulau Tiga, and pronto. �� ��

�� �� IN THE COUNTRY’S official language, Bahasa Malaysia, “Pulau Tiga” means “three islands.” This tiny archipelago is known to tourists as Pulau Tiga Park. The smallest island, Pulau Kalumpunian Besar, is sinking; at low tide only an S-shaped strip of sandbar pokes through the surf. The middle islet is a fang-shaped bit of wild terra 200 yards long known as Pulau Ular, or Snake Island. It’s home to gazillions of yellow-lipped sea kraits, striped, three-foot nasties with flattened tails and sealable nostrils enabling them to swim underwater every night while they feast on eels. By day they return to the beaches to lay eggs, suntan, and excrete salt. Not a bad gig for serpents, but their crib was certainly not a fit habitat for Richard Kraneum, mostly because the krait is one of the planet’s top ten poisonous snakes. The big island of Pulau Tiga itself, all 1,500 acres of it, is a can of Volcano Lite: Its main geographical features are three low hills formed from superheated mud that spews periodically from the earth’s bowels. The last major spewage occurred in 1941, and there are still vents here and there that fart gases and steam. The island is home to troops of long-tailed macaques that live on the mangosteens, rambutans, jambus, mata kucings, and other fruits thriving among the groves of palm and dense thickets of casuarina and barrington trees. Flying foxes also live here, plus sea turtles, monitor lizards, pythons, and bearded pigs. Then there’s the curious megapode, a big-footed bird that is built like a chicken and emits a cry they say sounds just like a cat’s. To the credit of the Malaysians, this peculiar little world of sea and jungle was designated a forest reserve way back in 1933, one of the many sanctuaries the government has put aside to save them from ruin. But Pulau Tiga Park is not, as CBS would like the world to believe, deserted. And it is certainly not undeveloped. There are groomed trails, park service buildings where rangers live, a guest house, and a hostel. Plus a diving operator named Douglas Primus has a small, new resort whose first guests have been Mark Burnett’s production crews. Last year a thousand tourists visited Pulau Tiga Park, up more than 10 percent from the year before, which was 10 percent more than the year before that. “But you cannot go there,” I was told by Francis Liew, the deputy director of the board of trustees of the Sabah Parks. I had taken a cab to his office in a slab of government buildings facing the central market. “Not until after April 20, when they’re done filming.” I asked him what sort of money CBS had put up for the use of Pulau Tiga. “Oh, none at all.” “Then what are you guys getting out of it?” “Americans will see the program and they’ll visit Sabah.” Yeah, right. At dawn the next morning I stood in my skivvies on the balcony of my room and surveyed the restless sea. Suddenly a pack of skinny Malaysian dogs shot onto the lawns below, chasing a feral cat. One of the dogs lunged and caught the tip of the cat’s tail. They played catch with the poor animal and then killed it in a murderous frenzy that left me nauseated. This was a dark omen for my assault on the island, but I packed my bag anyway, including two dozen units of booze-with-message, the 12-inch conch shell I’d also brought all the way from home, and a box of hotel matches in a Baggie. I hired a cab to take me the 60 miles south to Kuala Penyu, a fishing village clustered around an estuary. In his confusion about the mission, the Indonesian driver took me straight to a dock owned by the Sabah Park Service. As I surveyed the waterfront, a cabin cruiser pulled up and deposited a large Indian man with gleaming teeth before pulling away again. I told him I wanted to go to the island and could he arrange for that cabin cruiser to come back and get me? “Sir, that is certainly a fine boat,” he cried happily. “But it belongs to CBS, and since you are not CBS you cannot ride upon it. Were you CBS you would be on your way”—and here he brushed the palm of one hand against the other—”as we speak.” CBS can’t own all these stupid boats, I thought. Behind a grimy café called Kedai Ah Ann I found a row of wooden dories bobbing in the dirty brown water. A crowd emerged from the café, led by a boss man. They turned out to be fishermen who worked at night. “How much will you pay?” the boss man asked when I told him what I wanted. I withdrew a $100 bill. “These will take you,” he said, pointing to Robin Sabribummus and Saoler Koril. As we motored along the estuary and into the bay I scrunched down in the bow as far as I could so the bureaucrats at the Park Service office couldn’t spot me. Five minutes out to sea the squall hit and I thought I might die. My heart was pounding with fear and the acidic zeal of the rejected suitor. �� ��

�� �� A HALF HOUR later Mr. Koril was tying us to the pier at Pulau Tiga. At long last my revenge was at hand. I listened for the sound of generators or helicopters that would tell me where the set was. It was the 23rd day of filming, and I knew Mark Burnett was on this island, not very far away. Wait—was that the scent of exhaust from a generator? I filled my lungs with air. There it was again. I slung my pack over one shoulder, jumped from the boat, and strode down the pier. First things first. “I claim this island,” I announced as I stepped ashore, “for myself.” I made my way down the beach toward the source of this faint exhaust, mindful of monitors and kraits and pigs. Not to mention spycams. But by now I really didn’t care. The thought of that empty seat on the minibus was a very bad thing running round my brain. I began tossing zipper bags with notes and gin onto the coarse coral sand and up into the jungle. “Dear Survivor,” my messages said. “If I were on the island instead of these pathetic losers like Joel, you’d be having at least 3.8 times as much fun as you’re having right now, assuming you’re having any fun at all. Anyway, while this little offering brightens your day I hope you’ll wonder who I am.” The notes were signed, of course, “Richard Kraneum.” I reached into my pack and found my bag of matches from the Magellan. I saw again my vision of the island on fire, lustrous amber flames in the palm trees rising against the charcoal sky, a shuddering, cleansing inferno just like the one that roared across Golding’s island at the end of Lord of the Flies. You want reality, Mr. Burnett? You got it. Run, TV boy! Then I flung the bag away as if it were burning my hand. Mama, what was I thinking? Mark Burnett wasn’t the island’s fault! There wasn’t some twisted force haunting Pulau Tiga, compelling CBS to deny me my desires! And even if I were crazed enough to try and start a forest fire, the island wouldn’t let me. The jungle was so wet a flame thrower wouldn’t have a chance. Besides, I realized, why should I risk serious Malaysian pokey time for something as cooked and contrived as Survivor? I had my own adventure show at hand, a remake of Lord of the Flies starring me as any of the characters I chose to be, and here and now was the good island on which to act it out. I waded into the surf. The water was not warmer than my blood, as was the lagoon into which Ralph stepped at the beginning of the novel, but it was warm. I withdrew my conch, a gorgeous Triton’s Trumpet, and blew into it from deep in my belly as hard as I could, just as Ralph had done to summon his fellow castaways. The shell issued a harsh, raucous note. Seabirds fled. Far down the beach I saw the wavering images of people running in my direction. CBS goons, no doubt. I panicked—what a chicken, after all!—and scurried back to the boat, where I rewarded Speedo and Mr. Koril with bottles of gin. I was about to open one for myself when I was overcome by another compulsion. I ordered my crew to wait again, and I sprinted back down the pier, turned toward the figures now looming larger, dropped my trousers, and bent over. �� ��

�� �� A COUPLE OF DAYS later, just minutes into my flight home, I looked down and there were the islands of Pulau Tiga Park, surrounded by shallow seas precisely the same shade of blue as the bottles of Sapphire I’d left on those very beaches. “Tag,” I whispered. “You’re it.” Weary, but happy that I had finally flushed William Golding from my soul and was going home, I leaned back and opened my newspaper. Holy moly! Here was a squib about a new reality show that CBS intends to film this summer. It’s called Big Brother, and it centers around ten people confined for three months inside a house in Los Angeles, where they must bake their own bread, grow their own vegetables, and tend to a flock of chickens. The winner gets $500,000.���� Correspondent Bill Vaughn wrote about restoring his ice-skating pond in the January issue.

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