Ferry Candra is a local guide who has benefited from the tourist trade. "We need more visitors in order to show the government that this area could one day be as important as Bali," says Candra. "Without tourists, the locals will just keep logging and looking at the forests as a source of quick income rather than as something that needs to be preserved for the world to enjoy."
–Jason Tedjasukmana

The Brief
Borneo's Kalimantan

What's at Stake
Borneo's rain forest, along with hundreds of species of plant and animal life, including the world's largest population of wild orangutans.

The Threat
Logging and palm oil plantations are decimating the rain forest.

Best-Case Scenario
Both illegal logging (including on national parklands) and legal planting of palm oil will cease, reducing stress on orangutans and their habitat.

Worst-Case Scenario
Additional palm oil plantations—even in previously protected areas—will wipe out the rain forest and all its wildlife.

The Basics

When to Go
The driest time is March through October.

Where to Stay
Rimba Lodge is basic, but some rooms have air-conditioning and hot water (rimbalodge.com; doubles, $100).

Best Way to See It
A guide and permit are required for entering the Tanjung Puting National Park. Asia Transpacific Journeys can arrange both (asiatranspacific.com).

Don't Miss
Orangutan feeding time at Camp Leakey.

Baku, Azerbaijan
The treasures of the city's medieval quarter are bulldozed to make room for the twenty-first century

To walk through the gates of the Old City of Baku, Icheri Sheher, is to experience medieval Islamic life in the Caucasus. Here are caravansaries, mosques, marketplaces, tiny shops and cafés, a maze of narrow alleys and lanes that twist and turn and open suddenly into gardens and courtyards, a colonnaded market square, and even Zoroastrian fire-worshippers' temples. As UNESCO, which added Icheri Sheher to its World Heritage list in 2000, notes: "The Walled City of Baku represents an outstanding and rare example of a historic urban ensemble and architecture with influence from Zoroastrian, Sassanian, Arabic, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman, and Russian cultures."

Behind the twelfth-century city walls, the two finest monuments are the Maiden's Tower and the Shirvanshah Palace complex. Legend says the sensuously curved tower takes its name because the eight-story structure, with fifteen-foot-thick walls, is impossible to breach. The terraced Shirvanshah Palace complex, built in the fifteenth century, includes the formal royal living quarters, a mosque, a hammam, and a mausoleum. Sparsely decorated, the palace boasts a rare, austere elegance and is considered the finest example of Azerbaijani monumental architecture.