Why Papua New Guinea
There is still a territory to the east of the island of New Guinea where more than 800 distinct cultures coexist in the same tropical forest. Papua New Guinea is not a destination: it is an experience of radical decentralization. Here, ancestral traditions are not reconstituted for tourists. They are alive, practiced every day, inscribed in the body paintings, wooden totems and ceremonial dances that have resonated on the highlands for millennia.
This country of 10 million inhabitants, barely smaller than France, has 839 languages listed. Each valley, each village in the Highlands can have its own language, its own rituals, its own social rules. Travelling to Papua New Guinea means crossing a cultural continent concentrated in a small space, where the human encounter exceeds all that the usual destinations can offer.
For the diver, the naturalist or the traveler off the beaten track, PNG is also a promise of pristine nature. The Madang reefs are among the richest in the Pacific. The forests of the Highlands are home to birds of paradise whose courtship displays leave you speechless. And the Sepik River, a huge artery of the flooded plain, leads to villages where the houses of the spirits keep some of the most powerful tribal art in the world.
