Travel Briefs

In July, the Supreme Court of India banned all tourism and business activities within the “core areas” of all of its 25 national tiger reserves until states comply with the “core/buffer” management strategy laid out by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 1972.

Protected core areas of at least 300 square kilometers are where tigers can find water, shelter and prey and breed in safety. Around these are “buffer areas” in which limited industry (logging, farming, grazing, etc.) as well as tourism lodges are allowed.

It is the states’ responsibility to notify...

The “Tali Wiru Experience,” a dinner served on an isolated dune with a view of Uluru and the distant Olgas, is offered April 1, 2012, to Jan. 15, 2013, by Ayers Rock Resort in Australia (phone +61 2 8296 8010, fax +61 2 9299 2103, e-mail travel@voyages.com.au). Tali wiru means “beautiful dune” in the Aboriginal language Anangu. For AUS295 (about $313) each, no more than 20 guests are picked up from the resort’s six hotels and taken to Tali Wiru, where they will walk 250 meters on soft sand to the top of the dune. Canapés and champagne are served as the sun sets, followed by a four-course...

A Brazilian judge in early January ordered police to stop fingerprinting and photographing U.S. visitors to Rio de Janeiro, arguing the practice might hurt tourism in the city. The judge, in Brasilia, overturned a Dec. 29 order by a judge in northwestern Brazil to retaliate for U.S. fingerprinting and photographing of visitors. (In January, the U.S. began taking digital photographs and inkless fingerprints of visitors from countries that require visas, part of a program intended to thwart terrorists.) The Brazilian practice led U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to complain about delays...