Discover The World With Guru

The world's first camel-milk chocolate was launched in Dubai today.

The announcement of the chocolate, called Al Nassma - after the arabic word for a cool desert breeze - is a tremendous development for the UAE's camel milk industry as demand from the chocolate manufacturers will create a need for more camel milk.

Although a traditional staple for the Bedouin, camel milk is not produced on a large scale. There are currently two camel farms in the country and fresh camel milk is still very much a niche product.

The Al Nassma chocolate is produced from camel milk powder made from Dubai-based Camelicious, the brand's sole camel milk provider.

At the moment, the UAE is not allowed to export dairy, meat and other animal products into the European Union because the country, like many others in the region, has not been declared free of foot-and-mouth disease.

This may soon change as studies carried at Dubai's Central Veterinary Research Laboratory (CVRL) have proven that one-humped camels, the variety native to the UAE, are resistant to the disease.

An Austrian company, HM Chocolate Holding, has a 50 per cent ownership in Al Nassma, which means that the UAE camel milk industry now has a powerful ally to aid its efforts to bring camel milk products to European markets.

Although camel milk is produced in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, only Dubai has a facility which enables chocolate makers to produce a quality product, said Martin van Almsick, general manager of Al Nassma and former manager of the famous Cologne Chocolate Museum.

Mr Van Almsick's words were confirmed by Vienna-based Johann Georg Hochleitner, member of the company's board of directors, whose idea it was to create camel milk chocolate.

Mr Hochleitner, who has already created chocolate made out of sheep and goat milk, spent two years, travelling as far as Libya and Kazakhstan, to look for a suitable camel milk producer. After finding Dubai's Camelicious, it took another two years to develop the product line.

"We want to create a brand which has international importance," said Mr Hochleitner. "I believe this product has the power to become the sweet ambassador of Arabia born in Dubai"

"We have only the best ingredients," he said, explaining that the company does not use artificial flavours.

The honey, used in some of the flavours comes from Yemen, while the vanilla is from Madagascar.

Recently, hurricanes, floods and torrential rains have resulted in vast areas of land, sometimes whole villages and cities, being engulfed in water. The devastation is often catastrophic. People are left homeless and destitute, with little to call their own. The effects of these disasters leave their mark long after the waters have subsided. But what if there was a way out, an alternative? What if we fulfilled the dreams of Jules Verne, and many like him, and succeeded in living under the oceans. For a long time it was never thought truly possible, now it's quickly becoming a reality.

We look at five habitats underwater that show it is possible to live submerged beneath the waves.
1. Hydropolis Hotel, Dubai



Designed by Joachim Hauser, this futuristic hotel is currently being built 20m below the surface of the Persian Gulf, just off the coast of Dubai. Touted to be the world's first underwater luxury hotel, Hydropolis will include a marine biology research center but it's doubtful whether it will be oozing Eco credentials.




The logistics of these underwater habitats are intriguing; for one, where is the waste diverted to? Imagine gazing out at the underwater world, mesmerized by the vision beyond, amazed and in awe of the creation, when something floats by your panoramic window… and it's not a fish.




If it succeeds without ruining everything around it, as many predict, it could be a blueprint for sustainable designers and architects for the future.


2. Hilton Maldives Undersea Restaurant, Rangali Island



Built entirely off-site, in Singapore, this undersea restaurant in the Maldives was based on the success of the National Centre Aquarium's design in Kuala Lumpur. It proved to be more of a pain to construct than first thought, with many recalculations to check centers of gravity, weight distributions and tidal flows. If this small design required so much fiddling before it became a reality, how many complications must be occurring with the larger resorts?

Sitting 5m below sea level, the restaurant is able to serve 12 people at one sitting. Diners can sit back and enjoy watching life beyond the 5m wide viewing arch, which is made from acrylic and silicone sealed.


3. Poseidon Undersea Resort, Fiji




Although not exactly 20,000 leagues under the sea, the Poseidon Undersea Resort will sit 40 feet beneath the surface of a lagoon in Fiji. Plans for the resort have been underway since 2001 but there's no sign of it yet in the lagoon… that's because the hotel is being built in Portland, Oregon and will be transported to the site once completed. One can only imagine the carbon emissions totted up by that little trip.


Each room, or underwater pod, will be open to the water so guests can watch the marine world go by without getting wet, but at a cost of $30,000 per couple for a week's stay you would hope there was at least one dive included in the price!




4. Jules' Undersea Lodge, Florida



Initially an underwater research facility, used to explore the continental shelf off the coast of Puerto Rico, Jules' Undersea Lodge now sits motionless in Emerald Lagoon in Key Largo, spending its retirement showing guests the wonders of the underwater world.
Jules Verne sleeping

Accessed by scuba diving down 21 feet to a landing platform, Jules' Undersea Lodge is big enough to house six people at a time. It boasts two private rooms, a relatively spacious living area with kitchen and has huge windows in every room so guests can watch the fishes go by.


The chamber sits on stilts just five feet from the bottom of the Lagoon and compressed air prevents water from flooding the rooms.

5. Red Sea Star Restaurant, Israel

The underwater Red Sea Star Restaurant, in the Israeli resort of Eilat, offers another take on underwater establishments. Designed by Israeli husband and wife team, Ayala and Albi Serfaty of Aqua Creations, the underwater theme is carried throughout the design, which has been created to look like a reef. Chairs take the form of sea-urchins and jelly fish, lights are starfish shaped and sand lies under an epoxy bonded floor, even the menu reflects the underwater theme, which given the setting seems somewhat disturbing.

The view is not what most people would imagine as most of the reefs around Eilat are dead or dying. To recreate a reef system for diners, the restaurant management built an artificial reef from iron mesh and transferred various already broken species of coral onto it. Once in the water a new reef was born.

We're used to seeing stunning images of cascading waterfalls in all their fluid glory, but have you ever wondered how they would look if Jack Frost was let loose on them? Well, you need wait no longer as we have compiled a range of fantastic frozen waterfalls.

1. This enchanting image of an ice waterfall perfectly captures the force and flow of the water underneath the ice, making it hard to comprehend how it ever manages to freeze.




2. Ice climbers flock to The Fang in Vail, Colorado. The enormous ice pillar forms from the cascading waterfall only on exceptionally cold winters, and when it does the column can measure up to 50 meters high and has been known to have a base measuring 8 meters wide.







3. If you think climbing an ice waterfall is scary, imagine the fear factor when part of the cascade breaks off and collapses to the ground mere meters from you and your buddy. That's exactly what happened climbers Albert Leichtfried and Markus Bendler on their ascent of a frozen waterfall near Hokkaido, Japan. Their friend managed to capture the frightening moment on camera. Both climbers made it to safety soon after.



4. Thick layers of ice sit on St Louis Falls in Beauharnois, Quebec. The area is home to one of the largest hydroelectric generating stations in the world.







5. This fantastic shot shows the waterfall freezing from outside in; there's still a considerable waterfall flowing within the ice lume.







6. Undulating waves and nodules of ice give this waterfall in Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, such wonderful texture.


7. This random waterfall was discovered on the road side of a seldom travelled road near Hamilton, Canada.



8. The folds at the bottom of this waterfall demonstrate how slowly waterfalls can freeze, and are in stark contrast to the jagged, spiky icicles hanging from the edge of the rock.







9. This great image was taken in Oak Creek Canyon near a place called Temple of Mother Earth on the West Fork Trail, Sedona, Arizona.







10. A simply fabulous shot from the bottom of the ice waterfall looking up. Just look how the ice has built up from the spray on surrounding twigs. That's what you call natural beauty.

The tiny village of Ilakaka, Madagascar had barely 40 residents before 1998. Then, a large deposit of sapphires was discovered along a nearby riverbed, and caught the eye of some Thai businessmen in the gem trade. Word got out, and Ilakaka swelled to tens of thousands of residents.

The center of a sapphire boom, today the source of nearly 50% of all the sapphires in the world. Illegal miners
mixed with large-scale operations, all operating under little or no regulation, in a wild-west atmosphere
of potential fortunes, lawlesness, violence and hardship.

In the years since, the easily-mined sapphire fields have been picked clean, and the remaining miners often work in deep holes, climbing far underground. Mining is also a family effort - according to an official study, of the 21,000 children living in the region, 19,000 belong to working families.

The tiger temple in thailand is a place where an extraordinary bond between man and the world's biggest cats has been formed. The tigers here are so peaceful…its almost as if they have accepted buddhism as their religion. In fact, they even sit for the meditating sessions with the monks and kneel down in front of them as it they are the gurus. The tigers are so docile that the monks have to sometimes train them to fight otherwise they would lose all their power of self protection.

The link started in 1999 when a sick baby tiger, orphaned after poachers shot its mother, was brought to the monks. Within a few years several other tiger cubs similarly orphaned by poachers had arrived. The most amazing thing is none of the cubs turned out ferocious on growing up. The monks believe that these tigers are none other than the former buddhist disciples who have taken rebirth in the same place.


A paradise for tiger lovers !