OJM Travel Blog

Dog flies business class for $32,000
An Israeli woman identified as Rivkah paid $32,000 to allow her dog to travel in business class with her from Paris to Tel Aviv.

Rivkah, 60, paid for an entire compartment to carry her, her boxer “Orchuk” and a vet on the four-hour flight. Airline El Al had to remove several seats to make room for Or’s cage.

“I didn’t think for a minute to leave Or, my little Orchuk, with the cargo,” said Rivkah. “I’ve been raising him for eight years and four months in France. I also didn’t mind having other passengers sit next to us.

All that mattered to me was to have my baby with me during the flight so that I can take care of him.”

Rivkah preferred not to discuss her payment to El Al, because she believed any price would have been worth it. “He is my child, not a dog. And he deserves the best,” she said.

El Al told the Haaretz newspaper in Israel it had never had such a request before. “But after the lady explained her special relationship with her dog and expressed her willingness to pay extra in order to fly with him, we agreed.”

By Sasjkia Otto, www.telegraph.co.uk

London – A scientist reckons that long-distance space travel will leave us short, fat and bald.

Astrobiologist Dr Lewis Dartness revealed at the Cheltenham Science Festival that living without gravity would cause space travellers’ bones and muscles not to develop properly, leaving them stunted and weak.

Meanwhile, the lack of effort needed to move around in low gravity and a temperature-controlled environment would mean that “future spacemen and women are likely to become pretty chubby”.

And it gets worse. “Without gravity, fluid would float up to pool in the skull, which would cause the head to look permanently swollen out of proportion”, Dr Dartness added.

Warming to his subject, he continued: “Also, with no need for hair to insulate the head or eyelashes to flick dust from their eyes, future humans may become completely hairless.”

The Kepler space telescope, which was launched earlier this year, is expected to find a number of fertile Earth-like planets dotted around the cosmos.

However, while some of them may be capable of hosting complex life, the astronomical distances mean that boldly going where no man has gone before could take generations.

Ananova.com

Why go?

Where Edinburgh has elegance and urbanity, Glasgow has edginess and bravura. Modern, glass-fronted structures rub shoulders with grand Georgian and Victorian buildings. Art collections are eclectic and free; Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s architecture is soaring and sensual; shops are first class and the eating-out scene is creative. Smart, good-looking, wisecracking (and that’s just the locals), Glasgow has a distinctive beat.

By Helen Pickles, The Daily Telegraph.

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• Nepal opened its borders to the world in 1949.
• Mallory described Mount Everest from Rongbuk as, ‘a great white fang excrescent on the jawbone of the earth’.
• Why do men climb Everest ? Mallory said, “Because it is there.”
• Sir Edmund Hillary led an expedition to find the Yeti in 1958.
• According to Dr. George Schaller, the existence of Yeti unknown to science cannot be ruled out at high altitude.
• Reinhold Messner climbed Everest alone.
• Tenzing buried his daughter’s red and blue pencils on the top of Everest.
• Approximately 150 people have died in different expeditions of Mount Everest so far.
• Tenzing was known as ‘Himalayan Club Sherpa No 48′.

• Himalayan rivers are older than the Himalayan peaks.
• Kumbhakarna is the new name of mount Jannu (7,710 m).
• Gosainthan (8046 m) is the Nepali name for Shisha Pangma.
• Ninety-five percent of earthquakes occur in mountainous regions.
• Sir Andrew Waugh, Surveyor General of India wished to honour his predecessor, Sir George Everest. For this, Sir Andrew pretended that there was no local name for Everest and hence named the mountain as Mount Everest though there were two local names of the mountain, Sagarmatha in Nepal and Chomolungma in Tibet. Sir Andrew Waugh announced the name ‘Mount Everest’ in 1865.
• The ideal height gain per day for mountaineers is 1,000 ft above 10,000 ft.

• The word ‘Himalaya’ means the home or abode of snow.
• According to Hindu mythology, God Shiva resides in the Himalaya.
• There are eight peaks with a total of 19 points above 8000 metres in Nepal.
• Fourteen mountains in the Himalaya exceed 8000 metres.
• There are 25 points in all which exceed 8000 metres in the Himalaya.
• The geological age of the Himalaya is approximately 70 million years.

Furba Tamang of Lukla wins Everest marathon.

21 year old Furba Tamang of Lukla has won the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon 2009 completing the 42 km long marathon in 3 hours 40 minutes and 47 seconds.

30 year old Ram Kumar Tamang of Lukla finished second with a time of 4h 07m 02s while 23 year old Sudeep Kulung of Gudel Solukhumbu finished third with a time of 4h 9m 48s.

The event is organised every year on May 29 to pay tribute to late Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and late Sir Edmund Hillary-the first persons to summit Mt. Everest in May 29, 1953.

More than a hundred participants with 52 international runners from a dozen countries including India, Germany, USA, Austria, England and Canada are taking part in the event.

The 56th anniversary of the first successful ascent of Everest is being celebrated Friday. Adventure Sports Tourism Society started this event in 2003 on the occasion of 50th anniversary of the successful ascent of Everest.

Runners will be awarded in three categories. The first, second and third runners to finish from general category will get USD 1000, 500 and 300 respectively, while from the international category the first, second and third will get USD 500, 300 and 200 respectively.

The event is famous worldwide as a marathon that takes place in the highest altitude of the world. It starts from the Everest expedition base camp, just below Khumbu Ice-fall, which is above 5000m from the sea-level and finishes at Chor.

The 42 km long marathon route passes through glaciers, moraines, monasteries, monuments, chortens and suspension bridges all located at high elevations. The famous Tyangboche Monastery also lies on the route. The route is the same one used by pioneer mountaineers Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and Late Sir Edmund Hillary during their expedition in 1953. nepalnews.com May 29 09

Air transport is having a growing effect on the environment.

How can technological development and research programmes help make aviation greener?

Have any ideas? Let us know!

watch a clip – 9 min

Continental Airlines will test a fuel made from algae and jatropha, the latter a tropical shrub with an oil-bearing seed, in a Boeing 737 jetliner during a two hour flight beginning and ending in Houston, USA

read in full

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, an Oxford-educated 28-year-old who is a heartthrob throughout much of Asia, is now the youngest monarch in the world.

Women on the lookout for eligible royals, however, should keep in mind that Jigme is perhaps more eligible than they might wish: In Bhutan, kings sometimes have several wives at once. Jigme’s mother was one of four, all of them sisters.