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AVFCLaura

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You can't go into Bhutan independently ... You pay a fee of $250 a day to the government and it includes all your hotels , meals and guides ... You just pay for beer and souvenirs etc

Bhutan is probably the most beautiful country on the planet , tigers nest just gets the most coverage as its a picturesque shot through the clouds on the side of the mountain like that :-) but there is def a whole lot more to it

 

Sounds intriguing - would love to go there on a twin centre with Nepal. I had pencilled the latter in for my travelling adventure next year, but when the budget tightened it was, unfortunately, the first to go (largely due to me reading too many rapey & plane crash stories about the place).

 

I flew to KTM from Bhutan

You spend 10 - 15 mins looking at Mt Everest as you fly alongside it ... My third time flying alongside and up close to it but still awesome

The flight to Lukla in Nepal is the scary one as you land on the side of a mountain... Taking off from there you don't even want to think about :)

KTM isn't so bad ... Bhutan involves a lot of steep banking as you come in and out but the pilot warns you it's coming so nothing to worry about :)

 

 

You are a brave man Tony, and I doff my cap to you.

 

It is a trip that I'd love to do, particularly Lukla, but I feel that I should atleast sow my seed beforehand.

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I don't know - I kind of feel that the raping would atleast take my mind away from the impending doom of the plane crash.

I meant it being done in the wreckage, but let's not dwell on it :lol:
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CarewsEyebrowDesigner, on 12 Sept 2013 - 1:10 PM, said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not that their crappy hotels and bloody big clock matters to us non-Muslims if we can't set foot in the place.

 

 

 

technically the prophet Mohammed  said nothing to ban non-muslims from entering mecca so if someone challenged this rule on theological grounds the Saudis will find themselves on slippery grounds.

 

 

good luck with that one though :)

 

 

 

do they actually stop non-muslims from entering?

how would they know? 

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Part of the Ottoman empire, wasn't it? Not sure if it was 'officially' called Arabia. The Arabs revolted against Ottoman rule during WWI. Some English bloke instigated things.

 

Someone will give a better answer I'm sure.

 

Most of central Arabia was just nomadic tribes, with the coasts being controlled by the Ottomans. What is now known as Saudi Arabia was unified by Abdul Aziz bin Saud, shortly after the fall of the Ottomans, by essentially just conquering the various regions in Arabia. Said regions being; Nejd, Hezaj and Yemen.

 

Don't take that as 100% fact though, it's just what I could gather from a quick skim online (aka Wikipedia ;))

Edited by MessiWillSignForVilla
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Part of the Ottoman empire, wasn't it? Not sure if it was 'officially' called Arabia. The Arabs revolted against Ottoman rule during WWI. Some English bloke instigated things.

 

Someone will give a better answer I'm sure.

 

Arabia_1914.png

 

 

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to control or have a suzerainty over most of the peninsula. Subject to this suzerainty, Arabia was ruled by a patchwork of tribal rulers, with the Sharif of Mecca having pre-eminence and ruling the Hejaz. In 1902, Ibn Saud took control of Riyadh in Nejd and brought the Al Saud back to Nejd. Ibn Saud gained the support of the Ikhwan, a tribal army inspired by Wahhabism and led by Sultan ibn Bijad and Faisal Al-Dawish, and which had grown quickly after its foundation in 1912. With the aid of the Ikhwan, Ibn Saud captured Hasa from the Ottomans in 1913.

In 1916, with the encouragement and support of Britain (which was fighting the Ottomans in World War I), the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, led a pan-Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire to create a united Arab state. Although the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918 failed in its objective, the Allied victory in World War I resulted in the end of Ottoman suzerainty and control in Arabia

Ibn Saud avoided involvement in the Arab Revolt, and instead continued his struggle with the Al Rashid. Following the latter's final defeat, he took the title Sultan of Nejd in 1921. With the help of the Ikhwan, the Hejaz was conquered in 1924-25 and on 10 January 1926, Ibn Saud declared himself King of the Hejaz. A year later, he added the title of King of Nejd.

After the conquest of the Hejaz, the Ikhwan leadership's objective switched to expansion of the Wahhabist realm into the British protectorates of Transjordan, Iraq and Kuwait, and began raiding those territories. This met with Ibn Saud's opposition, as he recognized the danger of a direct conflict with the British. At the same time, the Ikhwan became disenchanted with Ibn Saud's domestic policies which appeared to favor modernization and the increase in the number of non-Muslim foreigners in the country. As a result, they turned against Ibn Saud and, after a two-year struggle, were defeated in 1930 at the Battle of Sabilla, where their leaders were massacred. In 1932 the two kingdoms of the Hejaz and Nejd were united as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Wiki

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radar was an accidental discovery whilst attempting to invent the death ray

 

wasn't it by melting someones chocolate bar? or is that Microwaves?

 

 

The bastards. I'd have death ray'ed 'em for that.

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Lovely little programme on BBC R4 yesterday about science and invention after the Great War. Essentially, lots of the science fiction of the day (Flash Gordon etc) was suggesting alien baddies using death rays. The big players of the day, USA, France, UK, Germany wanted to ensure that if a death ray could be invented they would be ahead of the curve. The Brits threw a load of money at inventing an electro magnetic wave beam gun type thing for melting and killing foreign pilots in mid air.

Initial results looked unpromising with scientists reporting the best they could manage was to warm a pilot up by a couple of degrees. One of the problems was the ray hit the aircraft and just bounced back.....then somebody thought that itself might prove useful!

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Tesla claimed to have invented a death ray in the 1930's  ... though the initial work was done as early as the 1890's

 

As the greatest human being to have ever walked the planet , if he said he invented one , then I believe him

Edited by tonyh29
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Tesla claimed to have invented a death ray in the 1930's  ... though the initial work was done as early as the 1890's

 

As the greatest human being to have ever walked the planet , if he said he did , then I believe him

Thankfully there are no existing plans of how he did it! It's amazing to think of what we've known in the past as a species and lost over time. Some things still unexplained(1), some things only recently discovered (2) and then the stuff we've yet to know and may never know.
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That ancient Roman concrete thing is fascinating. 

 

If you read up on Pompeii, it was initially a posh resort for the Roman rich - and some guy made a killing by inventing the heated swimming pool, and building a load of big villas with them as standard. After the eruption, other venture capitalists bought up the remaining villas cheap, split them into smaller apartments and sold them off to the less well off (but upwardly mobile) wannabes. 

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