Interesting Tourist places and things

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Salmon Spawning at Kuril Lake in Kamchatka



The Kamchatka Peninsula is a 1,250-kilometer long peninsula in the Russian Far East. It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west.



Kamchatka contains probably the world's greatest diversity of salmonid fish, including all six species of anadromous Pacific salmon (chinook, chum, coho, seema, pink, and sockeye). Biologists estimate that a sixth to a quarter of all Pacific salmon originates in Kamchatka. Kuril Lake is recognized as the biggest spawning-ground for sockeye in Eurasia. In response to pressure from poaching and to worldwide decreases in salmon stocks, some 24,000 square kilometers (9,300 sq mi) along nine of the more productive salmon rivers are in the process of being set aside as a nature preserve.

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The Modern Ghost City of Ordos

The city of Ordos, in Inner Mongolia, China, was founded on February 26, 2001. It was designed to be home for one million people, yet, the Kangbashi district remains nearly empty five years after construction began.





Ordos means "palaces" in Mongolian, and it's richer than Beijing. In fact, with a $14,500 GDP per capita, it's one of the richest in the whole country. With 1,548,000 inhabitants, Ordos is not exactly empty. But much of its modern architecture, sometimes awesomely futuristic, sometimes nafftastically overdeveloped and underdesigned, remains completely empty. The density of this city is only 17.8 people per square kilometer. By comparison, New York City has 157.91 habitants per square kilometer, San Francisco has 6,688.4, and Madrid 5,293.69.




The Kangbashi district began as a public-works project in Ordos, a wealthy coal-mining town in Inner Mongolia. The area is filled with office towers, administrative centers, government buildings, museums, theaters and sports fields—not to mention acre on acre of subdivisions overflowing with middle-class duplexes and bungalows. The only problem: the district was originally designed to house, support and entertain 1 million people, yet hardly anyone lives there.



Though many of the properties in Kangbashi have been sold and a million people were projected to be living in Kangbashi by 2010, the city is still empty.



Mostly empty apartment buildings in Kangbashi, a half hour down the road is Dongsheng, where most of Ordos' 1.5 million resident call home.

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Zhangjiajie National Forest Park



The floating ‘Hallelujah Mountains’ you saw on the movie Avatar has been inspired by a real place on Earth – China.



The Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in the Chinese province of Hunan features gigantic pillar like rocks, the kind you see throughout the movie. Only difference is they aren’t floating. They are the result of many years of erosion. The weather is moist year round, and as a result, the foliage is very dense. Much of the erosion which forms these pillars are the result of expanding ice in the winter and the plants which grow on them. These formations are a distinct hallmark of Chinese landscape, and can be found in many ancient Chinese paintings.



The film's director and production designers said that they drew inspiration for the floating rocks from mountains from around the world, including those in the Hunan province.



One of the park's quartz-sandstone pillars, the 3,544-foot Southern Sky Column, had been officially renamed "Avatar Hallelujah Mountain" in honor of the eponymous film in January 2010.