The presence of industrial quantities of Byzantine pottery dating from the sixth century AD on the headland at Tintagel, Chinese silk in the tombs around Mecca and 'Arabic' numerals in the 13th-century beams of Salisbury Cathedral tell us we have been interdependent not for decades but across millennia.

If you look at some of the smaller capital markets in Asia, when they want funding, they either come here to Hong Kong or they go to California, the mecca of the Internet, because they can capture the liquidity and then move on and do what they want to do, which is develop a business.

I'd love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God - much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.

Yosemite has the most impressive and accessible granite big walls in the world. The rock is amazing. And because of that, it's been the mecca for climbing in the U.S. - and the world to a large degree - for all of climbing history. It's the place to test yourself against the historic routes of the past.

In the holy city of Mecca violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons to swat an insect or speak an angry word a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living.

The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.