Travel briefs

TRIP TIP

Visiting China, but your Mandarin is, frankly, flawed? No problem. Just dial up an interpreter. At least two new companies offer over-the-phone interpretation services with live operators. You speak with them in English, then hand over the phone and they explain your needs to Chinese-speaking locals. Beijing-based chinaONEcall offers packages starting at $79 for 60 minutes of talk time (1-877-660-2838, www.chinaonecall.com). Boston-based Fone-In Inc., which handles dozens of languages besides English and Chinese, charges $57.99 for a one-year membership plus $2.23 per minute (1-877-988-3556, www.fone-in.com).

LOS ANGELES TIMES

REAL DEAL

The European Travel Commission is sponsoring a "You and Europe" contest for anyone who comes back from Europe with video footage and a story to tell. Upload your film at www.visiteurope.com, where it will be seen by the public and by the contest's judges. Videos can be submitted through Sept. 30, after which the judges will pick one filmmaker to win a trip to Europe for two.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PLAN AHEAD

Online registration is available for mountaineers attempting climbs of Mount McKinley or Mount Foraker. All climbers are required to preregister with Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska at least 60 days in advance of the climb (www.nps.gov/dena/planyourvisit/talkeetnaranger.htm). Park officials say they anticipate about 1,300 climbers this year, most in May and June.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ON DISPLAY

In London, the Imperial War Museum has just opened "For Your Eyes Only," which it says is the first major exhibition devoted to the life and work of James Bond author Ian Fleming, including his pre-Bond stint as a travel writer. It runs through March 1 and includes props from 007 movies such as prototypes of the switchblade shoes worn by Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb in "From Russia With Love." Visitors also will encounter the disorienting fact that the creator of the world's coolest secret agent also wrote the child's book "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Some of the most glamorous Bond vehicles will be shown at the Beaulieu National Motor Museum, and a two-day self-guided Bond itinerary includes Dukes Bar, where Fleming allegedly heard a bartender describe a martini as "shaken, not stirred" (1-800-462-2748, www.visitbritain.us).

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

OPENING

W is opening its first European hotel in Istanbul. The chain has 17 hotels in the United States and four others in Montreal, Mexico City, the Maldives and Seoul, South Korea. The Istanbul hotel will open Tuesday with 134 guest rooms, a spa and chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spice Market restaurant on a site near the Bosphorus Strait and the trendy Nisantasi neighborhood.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOOK BRIEF

National Public Radio commentator Julian Crandall Hollick takes a serious but wondrous approach to India's great river in "Ganga: A Journey Down the Ganges River" (Island Press, $25.95). As the Ganges sweeps down from its source in the high Himalayas and flows across India, it is worshiped, pillaged, poisoned, siphoned off and diverted. The river is both dying and eternal, exploited yet sacred. Hollick inquires of those along the river how the Ganges can be revered as a goddess who "cleanses the body of disease and the soul of sins, and opens the way to the next life" while at the same time serving as a national sewer. There is another conundrum, as well: In a river in which millions of worshipers bathe and drink daily, what has prevented major outbreaks of disease? Perhaps, as Hollick discovers, this "Mysterious Factor X" is merely a hard-working bacteriophage. Or perhaps, as the people along the river suggest, it is further evidence of the power of the goddess.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

WEB WATCH

Camping season is upon us. ForestCamping.com may help you find your spot among the trees, birds and bees. The site is researched by a husband-and-wife team who say they have visited most of the 168 national forests listed. You'll get just the facts: how many RV and campsites the campground has, whether they have flush toilets, campground elevation, directions, etc., all in a searchable database. While it's not comprehensive -- more campgrounds in the Western states are mentioned -- or as sophisticated as it could be, it contains useful information all in one site.

LOS ANGELES TIMES