The grand hall of the Icehotel. Photo by Jonathan Irish.

Jonathan Irish, director of National Geographic Adventures, just got back from mushing across the snows of Lapland to the Icehotel on our dog-sledding adventure in Sweden. Here’s what he had to say about his legendary—and ephemeral—accommodations.

By Jonathan Irish

The Icehotel is more of an art exhibit than a place to lay your head. Sure, you can sleep in the below-freezing rooms on a slab of ice with reindeer pelts and down sleeping bags to keep you warm. In fact, I slept pretty darn well during my stay in one of the beautifully carved “art suites.” But you don’t come to the Icehotel for a restful night’s sleep. You come to the Icehotel—located above the Arctic Circle in Sweden near a small village called Jukkasjärvi—to experience an incredible world of ice, snow, and art that’s recreated from scratch every winter.

Oh, and don’t forget the famous Icebar, a place where the electric blue and red drinks come in glasses made of ice, and people are dressed in their finest winter ski clothes.

An “art suite" at the Icehotel. Photo by Jonathan Irish.

Drinks are served in glasses made of ice at the famous Icebar. Photo by Jonathan Irish.

When I first entered the grand hall (pictured above) I was told by our guide that all the ice needed to make the incredible Icehotel comes from just ten seconds of river flow from the nearby Torne River. As I shivered and looked around in amazement, I realized I was standing in one of the most unbelievable structures I’ve ever seen: a soaring blue world of expertly carved ice. The fact that it will melt away in just a few short weeks made it all even that much more incredible.

Experience the Icehotel for yourself on our National Geographic Adventures to Sweden.

A typical scene in the Galápagos. Photo by David Vargas.

With 2012 now behind us, we’ve tallied up the Top 12 National Geographic Expeditions of the year based on the number of travelers who joined us, and the list spans the gamut from Alaska to Antarctica, and from wildlife adventures to photography workshops.

Coming in at the top is the Galápagos, that wonderland of rare and fearless species. One of our most popular destinations ever, the islands continued to draw families, photographers, wildlife enthusiasts, as well as travelers in search a destination that is truly unique.

Our first runner-up was our enigmatic neighbor to the south: Cuba. Thanks to an easing of U.S. travel restrictions to the island, we were able to secure a People-to-People license from the Department of the Treasury last year and introduce travelers to the people and culture of a beautiful and complex country long off-limits to most Americans.

Many chose expeditions of epic proportions: a voyage to the icy wilds of Antarctica, or a journey around the world in a private jet that includes the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, Easter Island, and enough other legendary sites to seriously diminish even the most ambitious bucket list.

And, it’s perhaps unsurprising that many of those who decided to travel with National Geographic wanted to go where the wild things are, whether it was Yellowstone in the middle of winter, the heart of the Amazon rain forest, or wildlife reserves in southern Africa.

See our Top 12 of 2012 below, and check out our website for a list of all the trips that made it into our Top 25.

Check out more of our top trips of 2012 on our website.

A man sells spices in the medina of Marrakech. Instagram photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, writes in from Morocco, the final stop in the Around the World by Private Jet trip from National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

It takes nearly six hours to fly across the Sahara Desert —

—about the same distance it takes to fly across the United States.

Indeed, the biggest desert in the world is as wide as the continental U.S., and from high up in the sky, I was able to take in the sea of sand from one end to the other. Hour after hour, I watched the tan sea of sand below us, interrupted only by the rippled dunes left by long tracks of hot wind. We left Egypt behind us and then passed Libya, then Tunisia and Algeria, landing after dark in the great and ancient city of Marrakech.

Upon arrival, I found Morocco’s most-visited city surprisingly dark and devoid of streetlights. I have been here before, stayed in a tumbledown room in the medina (old city) and wandered the labyrinthine stone streets as if lost in the most frenetic dreamland.

My final stop around-the-world, the mad city of Marrakech. Video by Andrew Evans.

To return again was like revisiting that same dreamland I remember from backpacking days, the streets like secret tunnels offering endless discovery for those who dig deep. Marrakech marked the final destination on our around-the-world by private jet, and for all my excitement and dropping back into the hyper-beating heart of Morocco, I also experienced the twinge of melancholy at the impending approach of the finish line.

I am sure that this an emotion that all great travelers have felt, from Marco Polo to Edmund Hilary, not when they had reached their goal, but just before they achieved it. The sadness of an adventure waning gently to a close was brightened by the drumming joys of Marrakech, a city which for me, seemed like an exclamation point to this round-the-world sentence.

Marrakech is a city of turbaned motorcyclists, cross-eyed snake charmers, thick-lipped camels, burlap bags overflowing with cinnamon, ginger, dried roses, jasmine — windows dripping with silver, and baskets rolling in the lost antiquities of Berber kingdoms past: rings, crowns, necklaces, cuffs, jewels.

Marrakech is the bazaar you always imagined from 1001 Arabian Nights, and as I tiptoed through undefined puddles and dodged the mopeds and animal carts trundling past me, I felt as if I was alive inside any of these old fairy tales and that any minute, I would fall into the plotline of some troubled sultan, be approached by a distressed maiden, conjure up a genie or accidentally purchase a magic carpet.

Read the rest of the story on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

See the full Around the World by Private Jet itinerary.

Surrounded by hieroglyphics, an ancient Egyptian figure decorates the tomb of Ramses VI. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, visits the sights of Luxor, Egypt and compares them to his home of Washington, D.C. Andrew is traveling Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

I am relieved to discover that King Tut’s tomb is smaller than my apartment back home.

Now, when I return from this transcendent circumnavigation, I am less likely to suffer from any serious bouts of post-travel claustrophobia. After freely roaming around the gargantuan sphere of Earth, I expect my home in the city will seem small, but not as small and confining as the eternal home of poor undignified King Tut, laid to rest in a windowless underground studio apartment with the unromantic address KV62, dishonored daily by the noisy parade of uninvited sunburned guests.

As mummified humans go, King Tutenkhamen is quite small. Archeologists estimate that in life, Tut was 5’11” and standing next to him, my ballpark guess is that over the millennia, he’s shrunken at least a foot. I stare at his black raisin of a body, shriveled up and cloaked in a shroud, as if lying on a table, waiting for a massage.

The boy king could use a spot of moisturizer—as could I. The air is so dry, here, in the Valley of the Kings, at the edge of the great and sandy Sahara—my throat has turned to cotton. Back at the hotel, they’ve got industrial-strength humidifiers humming in the hallways, filling the air with scented, barely-moist air, so that our nostrils won’t chap.

Once or twice a day, the electricity cuts out for a few seconds, sending us all into silent blackness, then recovering with the buzz of appliances switching back on again. I wonder what would happen if the power stayed off and all the humidifiers died—would the super-dry air simply mummify me in my sleep so that come morning, I would look just like King Tut, with his twisted beef jerky limbs under the sheets?

Tomb of Ramses VI, adjacent to tomb of King Tutenkhamen. Photo by Andrew Evans.

Cameras have been disallowed inside the Valley of the Kings, on the grounds that the bright lights of flash photography will fade the splendiferous and colored paintings. And so I carry no camera—only my phone that happens to takes decent (if not grainy) pictures of the tomb’s stone-carved walls, every inch alive with important hieroglyphs—a billboard and instruction manual for the afterlife.

I accept that I am tempting fate by sneaking an iPhone into King Tut’s tomb. I know all about the curse of the pharaohs and the uncanny misfortunes that befall nosy explorers and Egyptologists past—any and all who disrupt the graves of Egypt’s dynastic kings.

Even so, I am compelled by the force of the internet to Instagram King Tut’s blurry body to the world. Howard Carter would have done the same thing, accompanied by a rapid tweet of the famous first words he spoke after discovering the tomb in 1922: “I see wonderful things.”

Read the rest of the story on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

Check back soon for the next post as Andrew travels Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

A young male lion moves stealthily through the yellow grass of the Serengeti. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, goes on safari in the Serengeti in Tanzania while traveling Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

We speak of the blue planet, and praise the beauty of our living green Earth, but I am swiftly discovering that much of our world is simply brown.

This is not a bad thing.

Brown can be beautiful when it goes on forever, as it does on the plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania. The dry brown land is an endless ocean here, a rippled landscape that disappears into the single blue horizon in every direction.

A hippopotamus hovers in the muddy pools of Serengeti National Park. Photo by Andrew Evans.

This sea of dirt is brown, the dying grass is brown, the dead trees are brown, as are the ominous vultures that roost in the branches. Brown is the color of elephant dung; the color of my khaki clothes and the color of so many different antelope that pop up from the grass—the gazelle, impala, topi, dik-dik, waterbucks and wildebeests. I watch the smaller antelopes as they twitch about in the knee-high grass like self-conscious teenagers, always unsure, never relaxing, ready to spring away if needed.

We are all looking for lions—the hunted and we, the hunters, armed with cameras and binoculars, cooing when we see the big cats hiding in the brown grass, giving away their location to the world and causing a swarm of safari jeeps to gather like security to a shoplifter.

Perhaps the lions hate us or perhaps they don’t care because they are so full.

A female cheetah guards her two cubs from beneath a tree in Serengeti National Park, in northern Tanzania. Photo by Andrew Evans.

The blinking lioness has streaks of red blood on her fur cheeks—the first bit of color I have seen on the savanna.

Read the rest of the story and view more photos on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

Check back soon for the next post as Andrew travels Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

Flying over the crater and peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,341 ft; 5,895 m), Africa's tallest mountain. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, describes the experience of “exploring the world” by private jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

This voyage feels like I’m flying through the pages of the National Geographic Atlas. I love it.

Every other day we move many inches across the map, jetting away from one intricate landscape of the Earth, soaring high overhead, taking in the scenes of mountains and rivers and sea below and then coming back down to another page of planet Earth.

I realize that we are not simply traveling around the world by private jet—we are exploring the world from the air. Every amazing stop along the way may be highlights of this expedition, but it’s the way we connect the dots that contributes to the stupendous travel experience that this is.

As we fly around the world, our pilot identifies the features below us. Already in the past week, I have witnessed the summit of Mount Everest, I have seen Burma’s Irrawaddy River and as we left India, I caught the bright blue Arabian Sea below us, bluer than any color ever printed on a map.

To experience the globe firsthand, by air, is a true personal highlight of this trip. Now I can never see a map of Somalia and not remember how we flew along the coastline, so that I could identify that shore below as a country I knew only by name and reputation. Now I have a personal memory in my mind.

As we began our descent into Tanzania, I witnessed the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, poking up through the fluffy white haze as if giving all of us a private showing of this, the highest mountain in Africa. Standing at 19,341 ft. (5,895 m.), the cratered promontory of Kilimanjaro stood out from among the horizon of cotton ball clouds and I felt a happy surge in my chest, as if being introduced to a celebrity crush.

Read the rest of the story on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

Check back soon for the next post as Andrew travels Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

A welcome smile in a village outside Agra, India. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, takes in the sights, sounds, and smells while visiting the India as part of the Around the World by Private Jet trip with National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

From the air, India is an immense puzzle—

–a hazy puzzle of dusted field and clustered village, with broken beige roads like sun-bleached branches on a dead tree.

Down below, pixelated city blocks resemble the square doodles I draw and fill in mindlessly when I am back at home, sitting on hold and waiting for some customer service agent, the anonymous accented telephone voice who is likely speaking to me from one of these same concrete blocks—here, in India.

Our jet’s descent brings the world back into focus, a lifeless landscape honeycombed with dry fields—shapeless patches of personal property in a land where nothing is very personal at all.

On the ground, India is loud—

—the spastic insanity of rubber wheels and sturdy fauna on the road, eager gasoline engines, and above all, car horns.

Read the rest of the story and watch a video on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

Check back soon for the next post as Andrew travels Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

Kissing baby panda Shuang Xing at the Chengdu Panda Base. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, recounts the extraordinary experience of cuddling and kissing a baby panda while visiting the Chengdu Panda Base as part of the Around the World by Private Jet trip with National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

How do you get a panda to sit still?

With lots of honey. This is what I learned while visiting the Chengdu Panda Base during a morning layover on this, my extraordinary expedition around-the-world by private jet.

That’s right. I got to cuddle a baby panda on my private-jet layover in southern China. Let me tell you, that sure beats gnawing a pretzel dog at JFK. In fact, after this, I’m not sure I’ll ever be content with any other kind of travel than an all-first-class private jet around the world that stops for pandas. The freedom to jump from one stupendous destination to another is extraordinary, especially when it allows you direct access to one of the most important conservation stories in the world.

I remember when the giant panda became the flagship of the environmental movement, way back in the eighties. In my own lifetime, I have watched the world take notice of this remarkable creature and the challenges it faces (loss of habitat, food, and tricky breeding), and I have witnessed a global effort to keep China’s endemic star afloat.

Sadly, the plight of the panda is no less urgent today than it was when I was a kid hugging stuffed panda toys. Presently, only 2,000 animals are left in the wild, reduced to an ever-shrinking, disconnected habitat. In my hometown of Washington, DC, the National Zoo works tirelessly to preserve pandas and produce new offspring, highlighting the very complex problems faced by the species in the wild. For me, coming to China and experiencing pandas in their natural habitat made it all the more evident that with all threatened animals today, only our most concentrated, collaborated efforts will succeed in countering the damage already done by humans.

So, what’s it like to hold a baby panda?

Kissing a baby panda at the Chengdu Panda Base in Szechuan, China. Video by Andrew Evans with help from Roberta Jennings.

Read the rest of the story on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

Check back soon for the next live post from the trip around the world, and follow the whole trip here.

In Xi'an, a Chinese chef whips a length of dough into shape before pulling it into long noodles. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, reports on “real Chinese food” while in Xi’an, China on National Geographic Expeditions‘ Around the World by Private Jet trip.

By Andrew Evans

Not once while I was in China did I eat rice.

Perhaps I was ordering wrong but I also don’t remember seeing it on any menus. Instead, I was fed a steady diet of delicate dumplings and noodles so long it took me ten seconds to slurp a single spoonful.

Chinese food may have already conquered the world, but in China (particularly this part of China), the real spectrum of cuisine includes a much wider and colorful palate of flavors. There is no General Tso’s doughnut-fried chicken around here, but barbecued squid on a stick? Why, yes.

My first real Chinese food in China was a simple bowl of noodles and Shaanxi beef. A single bite, lifted up with awkward chopsticks unveiled the soft doughy noodle and rich beef broth, swimming with aromatic cinnamon, star anise and dried mandarin orange peel.

Read the rest of the story and watch a video on National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog.

Check back soon for the next post as Andrew travels Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

Morning light casts a shaft of sun upon life-size terra cotta warriors. Photo by Andrew Evans.

National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, remarks on his stop at Xi’an, China to visit the famous 7,000-strong army of life-size terra-cotta warriors. Andrew is traveling Around the World by Private Jet with National Geographic Expeditions.

By Andrew Evans

In China, it’s all about the gift shop.

Since arriving in the Middle Kingdom, nearly every destination we visit comes equipped with a well-stocked gift shop manned by an English-speaking staff all ready to grant us, their new friends, at least a twenty percent discount.

Even a callused traveler as myself is susceptible to the material charms of jade, silk scarves, smiling panda teacups, silver-tipped chopsticks and semi-precious to less-than-precious Buddha statues. Although I arrived in China on a private jet from Cambodia, I have discovered a new solidarity with Marco Polo, who marched some 15,000 miles overland to and from Beijing, returning home with the most remarkable Chinese souvenirs.

Bronze horses: resembling figurines in the Han Dynasty tomb of Emperor Liu Qui, this nearly life-size pure bronze chariot was found in Pit 2 of the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di whose reign (221-206 BC) marked the end of the Qin Dynasty. Photo by Andrew Evans.

The word souvenir comes from the French remember, and based on the number of souvenirs I am confronted with in China, I get the impression that my gracious hosts are concerned with my ability to remember much of anything.

They are probably correct in this assertion. Everything I remember about the terra cotta warriors comes from reading National Geographic, specifically the October 1996 issue, which details one of the greatest archeological finds of the century. While I had read about great discoveries of the past (like that of King Tut’s tomb in 1922), the terra cotta warriors revealed themselves in my lifetime—of all the world’s wonders I intend to visit on my trip around the world, the terra cotta warriors are most memorable for me because in the course of my life, humankind has been confronted with the great mystery that comes from great discovery.

And yet for all the reading and research one may do, nothing comes close to walking into the behemoth hanger that encloses Pit 1 of Emperor Qin

Buried secrets: Large unexcavated portions of Pit 2 still hold secrets about Emperor Qin Shin Haung in his tomb near Xi'an, China. Academics can only guess how many terra cotta warriors actually exist as there is still no definitive number of other pits that remain undiscovered. Photo by Andrew Evans.

Shi Huang’s tomb, ripped open like some dusty strip mine, and then taking in the panoramic vision of these thousands and thousands of life-size clay soldiers, standing at attention, most of them facing the same direction.

Wow. Such was my oversimplified reaction upon staring at the manmade entourage that accompanied the Emperor into his afterlife. Reading about thousands of soldiers is far different than seeing thousands of soldiers in real life. Suddenly I felt sympathy for all those victims of the six warring states with whom Emperor Qin Shi Huang waged battle. Even as ceramic effigies, the sheer size of the terra cotta army is intimidating. Even more mind-boggling is the reality that this one pit—the one most often shown in documentaries and tourist brochures—is but one of the countless other burial pits believed to exist for this one Emperor.

On National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog, see a photo gallery and read more about Andrew’s stop in Xi’an–including a behind-the-scenes visit to the normally locked vaults of the Shaanxi History Museum where guests were face to face with some of the original terra cotta figures.

Check back soon for the next post from the around the world trip, and follow the whole trip live here.