This Week’s Take offers you a capsule summary of the high and low lights of TakeOffeh.com’s Daily Dispatches from the past seven days.

Here are a few of the more unusual travel tales TakeOffeh has been tracking in recent weeks.

Adventure specialist Intrepid Travel has been operating small group adventures to Asia for 22 years. The staff know the continent very well, and they’ve put together a Top 10 list of unforgettable Asian travel experiences – ranging from the sublime to the bizarre.

Why Here: Celebrating its 100^th anniversary as a U.S. state on Valentine’s Day 2012, Arizona was the 48^th state to join the Union. The Grand Canyon state borders on New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California and Mexico, with which it shares a 626 km. long international border. A favourite winter destination for Canadians, Arizona is a place of extremes, with a desert climate in its southern half delivering scorching summers and mild winters, while its northern half features pine and spruce forests, high plateau, mountains and canyons. The state has been known to post both the highest and lowest temperatures in the U.S. on the same day. There are ski resorts in the north near Flagstaff and Alpine, while in Tempe, far to the south, the average July high is 42C or 107F. The capital is Phoenix, the 6^th most populated city in the U.S., with a metropolitan area of about 4.2 million people, about 2/3 of the state’s population. Along with manufacturing and mining, tourism is a major part of the Arizona economy, with its climate and striking natural beauty attracting close to 40 million visitors per year. They come for sun, golf, spa treatments, the Grand Canyon, Native American culture, Wild West history, Cactus League baseball spring training and extreme outdoor adventures.