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Wildlife holidays

Travel

Walking with spirits in Cambodia’s sacred forests

Former loggers and poachers have embraced ancient traditions to promote and protect the Cardamom Mountains’ ever-threatened natural wonders I’m two hours downriver from the Chi Phat community ecotourism camp, in the Koh Kong region of Cambodia, when my phone signal fizzles out completely. It’s dawn and we’re chugging through the snaking Preak Piphot River towards the starting point of a 9-mile (15km) overnight trek into the country’s sacred, spirit-filled Cardamom mountain range. The region, a six-hour bus ride west of the capital Phnom Penh, recently made global news for being home to a raft

Travel

Alone with the stars, lynx and wolves in ‘Empty Spain’

A world away from the tourist hotspots of the coast, Extremadura and Castile and León offer unpolluted skies, lower prices – and hope for the future of vulnerable wildlife As photographed at night from a satellite, or the International Space Station (ISS), the Iberian peninsula looks encrusted with lights along its coastal edges. Madrid forms a big pulsing cluster near the centre, while surrounding hinterlands appear as something of a void. Ever fewer people live out in Castile and León and Extremadura, adjoining regions that cover much of what is known as La España Vacía, or “Empty Spain”. No