Thank you all so much for the support. So many of you who are my friends are those I met while unveiling bluewalks and so many others while I developed myself as an entrepreneur. There are a few team members and collaborators who helped to build bluewalks and are no longer in contact. My gratitude goes out specially to you.

Once again, thank you all for your bluewalks support over the time.

Sincerely,

Cristobal Viedma

The Kowloon Walled City was a tiny Chinese enclave that was located in the middle of British Hong Kong for decades. It was torn down in 1993.
The history of the Walled City can be traced back to the Song Dynasty (960–1279), where it served as a watchpost defending the area against pirates and managing the production of salt. It was rebuilt as a fort in the mid-1800s on the same site on the Kowloon Peninsula of Hong Kong. After the ceding of Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1842 in accordance to the Treaty of Nanjing, the Qing (Chinese) authorities felt it necessary for them to establish a military/administrative post to rule the area and to check further British influence in the area.

Kowloon Walled City by hiroshi JET-LOG

Kowloon Walled City by adventurocity

Kowloon Walled City Overview by sftrajan

What stands there today. Kowloon Walled City Park by roaming-the-planet

Kowloon Walled City Park by Julia Hauck

<a href=”/routes/726-hong-kong-a-wonderful-city-in-china” mce_href=”/routes/726-hong-kong-a-wonderful-city-in-china”>Hong Kong a wonderful city in China</a>

Hurry up to Hong Kong if you haven’t!

Updated:  more info about Kowloon Walled City at Blog like you give a damn and doobybrain and also check out this book!

Sydney is the Harbour City. It is the largest, oldest and most cosmopolitan city in Australia with an enviable reputation as one of the world’s most beautiful and liveable cities. Brimming with history, nature, culture, art, fashion, cuisine, design, and set next to miles of ocean coastline and sandy surf beaches. The city is also home to the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, two of the most iconic structures on the planet.

Sydney is a major global city and one of the most important cities for finance in the Asia-Pacific. Sydney hosted the first Olympics of the new millennium, and continues to attract and host large international events. The city is surrounded by nature and national parks, which extend into the suburbs and right to the shores of the harbour. (Wikitravel)

Walk created by: anonymous and updated by nobradors (oh yeah. Did we say we love collaboration?)
Photograph by: plemlijn

Buenos Aires (official name Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, also called Capital Federal) is the capital of the Argentine Republic. The name means fair winds in Spanish. It is one of the largest cities in Latin America, with a lot of cultural offerings, and is the point of departure for travelling to the rest of the country. Inhabitants of Buenos Aires are called porte?os, “people from the port”. Buenos Aires is a singular, open and integrating destination that allows the visitor not only to view the city but the opportunity to have an exceptional urban adventure. (Source: Wikitravel)

Held this year from 20 to 23 October 2009, bluewalks was voted as the favourite among the many entires in WIT’s second Start Up Pitch Competition held in Singapore.

bluewalks, BidTraveller and TimeOut TV were given 5 minutes to pitch about the merits of their business proposal to a panel of investors and to delegates of the WIT conference (as many as 200 high-profile people from the tourism industry). The audience then voted for their favourite pitch by SMS. Both the audience and the panel of investors agreed that bluewalks had the best pitch.

The investment judging panel consisted of:

• William Liu, Chairman, Stream Global
• Lim Kim Hai, Executive Chairman, Regional Express Airlines
• Dennis Melka, East Pacific Capital
• Michael Yap, Deputy CEO, Media Development Authority

We are really happy to announce this and share it with you!

Congratulation to Preeti Pradhan for the winning iPhone voucher in “Where You
Walked Last Summer” contest. Pretti has been blogging at Lost in Stockholm and you can find her walk in her blog post -Stockholm City in the Summer. Fantastic job Pretti!

Also, we have four other walks that make it into the top five. They are equally fantastic!
First, take a look at “Enjoy the beautiful city of Pamplona” below by Javier Rincon Javier’s beautiful Pamplona is one of the best walks that we have!

From the photostream of Pamplona, we have Paco CT who said that the Pamplona’s City Hall is very famous for the San Fermines, and a lovely human-sized city.

Photograph taken by Paco CT

Next ,we have “Beppu Hells” created by Sanfer82(See below)

Hell pond or Hot Spring pond (See below)?

Add your comment for the photo below at joka2000’s flickr page.

Photograph taken by joka2000

Coming right up, is U-Rathaus-Neukölln to my flat (Wildenbruchstraße) created by
lily-of-the-valley (See below)

This is a typical route created by couchsurfing host for couchsurfers on how to get to his/her location. You can create a route like this and share it on your couchsurfing profile page! Try creating one right away here!

Last but not least, we have Barcelona tour created by Sanfer82. He has two of his walks in the top five walks for this contest. Amazing! Congratulation Sanfer82!

And from the photostream of Barcelona, we have “Barcelona sunrise ”
taken by MorBCN

That’s all folks!

Once again, congratulation to all winners of the contest.

If you missed the contest, it’s ok. Just stay tune to bluewalks.com. We will keep you inform when there is a next round of competition At the meanwhile, why not start a walk here. Afterall, it’s not always about contest and prizes, isn’t’ it?

Join us and share your walking routes!!

PS: For the prizes, we will be contacting all winners via email shortly.

Walk created by anonymous
(You know, anonymous people shouldn’t remain anonymous, we want to thank you personally for creating great walks!)
Photograph by lechroy

San Francisco is a major city in California, the centerpiece of the Bay Area, well-known for its liberal community, hilly terrain, Victorian architecture, scenic beauty, summer fog, and great ethnic and cultural diversity. These are only a few of the aspects of the city that make San Francisco one of the most visited cities in the world.
San Francisco is located on a small seven-by-seven mile (11×11km) square of land at the tip of a peninsula between the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific coast. It has a population of almost 800,000, but is the center of a metropolitan area of millions. San Francisco is just one of the cities which makes up the entire San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco’s neighbors, cities and towns to the east of the Bay Bridge, north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and south of the city are all in separate counties, each with their own city government and local public transportation systems. (Source: Wikitravel)

A few days ago, we made a tutorial video (below) to show you how to create a route in bluewalks.

Just like how bluewalkers lily-of-the-valley and Sapphire and have done for their couchsurfing and blog, creating a walk/route can be fun and meaningful.

So, as part of the effort to encourage users to create walks, we are having a contest.

The prize is an iPhone 3GS Voucher and the last day to enter is 17 Oct 2009 16 Oct 2009.  We hope you will join in the fun!

Start by creating a route now and submit to the contest!

Have fun creating walks!

Walked created by anonymous user (we still love you anonymous)
Photograph by retlaw snellac

The name Darjeeling is a composition of ‘dorje’ meaning ‘thunderbolt’ and ‘ling’ meaning ‘place’ … ‘the Land of Thunderbolt’. The Nepalese had marched till the east of Sikkim in 1780 as far as Tista river. Due to a disagreement with Nepal, the British declared war against Nepal at the end of 1813. In 1816 by a treaty signed at Seagoulie, Nepal ceded 4000 sq. miles of territory and by the treaty of Titalya in 1817 the Rajah (king) of Sikkim was reinstated.

In 1828 two British officers, Capt. C. A. Lloyd and Mr. J. W. Grant, after settling the internal factions between Nepal and Sikkim, found their way to a place called Chungtong to the west of Darjeeling and were very impressed with what they saw and thought of making this place a sanitarium. Other British officers also reported favourably on the situation of the hill of Darjeeling.

The East India Company then directed its officers to start a negotiation with the Rajah of Sikkim for the cessation of the hill either for an equivalent in money or land. This transfer was successfully done in 1835 for an allowance of Rs. 3,000/- per annum. The Rajah of Sikkim’s revenue from this tract of land had never exceeded Rs. 20/- per annum. Later this allowance was raised to Rs. 6000/- per annum. In 1849 the relation of the British and Sikkim worsened with the imprisonment of two British officers by Sikkim authorities. Eventually they were released but as a punishment the British stopped the annual allowance and annexed this territory.

Where you walked last summer

Two weeks ago, we opened a contest to find the best summer walk.

You can view the contest ranking here.

As you may know, the contest is only based on popularity of the walk. So, if you want to win the contest, you need to get more votes and views for your submission! Share your walks online (either use twitter magic or facebook begging and tell your friends to vote for you!!

The dateline of the contest is 16 Oct 2009. You still have 15 more days to vote for your walk!

If you haven’t join the contest, you can start a walk and submit it to us!

For more details on the contest, click where you walked last summer.

Good luck !!