February 7: This week’s best travel stories

Hammer Blow: The True Story of the Carderock Killing

Outside Online

Inside a mysterious, gruesome climbing death—and an explosive relationship that sparked what looks very much like murder. Read the story

North of Tokyo, exploring the sacred and scenic

The New York Times

Temples and shrines co-star with waterfalls and mountains in Nikko, two and and a half hours from Tokyo by train. Read the story

The Cossacks ride again

Roadsandkingdoms.com

During the Sochi Olympics, which begin Feb. 7, more than 800 Cossacks will be patrolling the city, including the Olympic Village, around the clock. “For us, this is normal weather,” says Vladimir Samokhvalov, shrugging off the minus-8 temperature even as icy droplets form on the lower edges of his mustache. “When Hitler was attacking Moscow, the temperature was minus 40.” Read the story

Journey to Shangri-La: The magic of China’s Secret Kingdom

National Geographic

My itinerary will take me north into one of China’s wildest landscapes: the Three Parallel Rivers National Park, where the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze Rivers thunder off the Tibetan Plateau and cut through the mountains of Yunnan as they funnel into gorges twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. Well into the 1930s, this once unruly region harbored ancient and isolated cultures—an ideal location for my grandfather’s lost tribe. Read the story

The Parisian Belle epoque time capsule

The Daily Beast

When a 91-year-old woman died in 2010, her family discovered she owned an apartment in Paris that she had abandoned in perfectly preserved—and decorated—condition over 70 years ago. Read the story

Hawaii’s New Wave: Honolulu is the next foodie frontier

Condé Nast Traveler

Forget the surf: Honolulu is in the midst of a culinary revolution, with a bumper crop of new food trucks, farmers’ markets, pop-ups, and restaurants making it America’s latest gourmet destination. Deborah Dunn eats her way through paradise. Read her story