Travel inspiration in Asia

Also known as Si Phan Don, 4,000 Islands is one of the most laid-back destinations in Laos. It is situated in the south of the country, just above the border with Cambodia, and is a wonderful place to come to experience rural, authentic Lao…

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Nowhere else in India does the distant past feel closer to the surface than the rock-cut complexes of Ellora and Ajanta, a day’s journey northeast of Mumbai. Carved from the mountains of the Deccan Plateau between 2nd century BC and 11th ce…

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A contender for the title ‘China’s Greatest View’ has to be the panorama of jagged peaks, boulder-strewn snowfields and waterfalls surrounding Tian Chi Hu, a spectacular crater lake on the border of North Korea. Filling a windswept caldera,…

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Using sketches, original photos, information boards and other pieces of evocative memorabilia, the Changi Prison Museum tells the stories of some of those civilians and soldiers who were interred in this hell-hole after the Fall of Singapor…

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Hyderabad’s iconic Char Minar (literally ‘Four Towers’) mosque was erected in 1591 by Sultan Muhammed Quli Qutb Shahi, to commemorate the eradication of plague from his newly established capital. Flanked by a quartet of 54-metre-tall minare…

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Framed by the rippled slopes of the Yunshan Mountains, the magnificent Imperial Mountain Resort in Chengde, 155 miles (250km) north of Beijing on the banks of the Wulie River, served as a summer season retreat for the Manchu emperors. The…

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On the western edge of Sichuan’s Red Basin, Chengdu is the largest city in Western China, with an ultra-modern, high-rise centre that belies its role as a regional capital for over 4,000 years. Brocaded silk from here found its way to the b…

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The capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai is India’s fourth city – a fast-paced, traffic-filled metropolis of 4.7 million people. This strip of the Coromandel Coast first rose to prominence in 1640s, after the East India Company constructed Fort S…

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Roughly midway between Trichy and Madurai, on a plain studded with granite boulder hills and groves of palmyra palms, lies the Chettinad region. This rural backwater is famous above all for its eccentric 19th and 20th-century mansions, whic…

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Despite its expanding, modern suburbs, the old, moated, low-rise core of Thailand’s second city retains the ambience of a traditional market town. Numerous antique houses survive in the winding back lanes of its old quarter, along with a bu…

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Ladakh’s first contact with Buddhism came in the 10th century, when its rulers looked to Kashmir rather than Tibet for religious inspiration. Because most of them were destroyed by Muslim raiders in later eras, few monuments from this early…

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In the far north of Thailand, Chiang Rai served briefly as the capital of the medieval Lan Na kingdom before the rise of Chiang Mai. Today, it’s known primarily as the gateway to the Golden Triangle region – “golden” because of the wealth t…

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