Travel magazine
Six running series and hundreds of articles, written by the people who plan the trips.
When to go
Seasons, month by month, region by region
What it costs
Real budgets in dollars, with tables
Routes that work
Tested itineraries and combinations
Eating across Asia
What to order and where
On foot
Treks and long walks, described honestly
Before you book
Visas, permits, timing, practicalities
Yunnan on foot: Tiger Leaping Gorge, Shaxi and the Yubeng valley
Yunnan is where China stops looking like China and starts looking like the eastern edge of the Himalaya, which is exactly what…
Walking in Armenia: Dilijan, Aragats and the southern trails
Armenia is not a trekking destination in the way Nepal or Kyrgyzstan are, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.…
Walking in northern Vietnam: Pu Luong, the Muong Hoa valley and Ha Giang
Trekking in northern Vietnam is a phrase that oversells what the walking actually is, and undersells how good it is. There are…
Trekking in Asia compared: Nepal, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Bhutan
People ask us to compare these five countries as if they were five versions of the same holiday. They are not. The…
The climb to Tiger’s Nest, honestly described
Paro Taktsang, the monastery on the cliff, is the photograph that sells Bhutan. It is also the hardest physical thing on a…
Which tiger park, and what your odds actually are
Start with the sentence that decides everything else: nobody can promise you a tiger. Anyone who does is selling you something, and…
Taiwan’s high mountains, and how the permits actually work
Taiwan has 268 peaks over 9,840 feet (3,000 m), which is more than most people expect from an island 245 miles (394…
The hill country on foot: which walks are worth the day
Sri Lanka's hill country is the best walking in the country and one of the more overlooked walking regions in Asia. Tea…
Svaneti or Tusheti: which one to walk
Georgia has two high regions worth building a trip around, and almost everybody who asks us about them has read the same…
Hiking Seoraksan, and how Koreans actually hike
South Korea is roughly seventy percent mountain and it is one of the great walking countries of Asia, which almost nobody says…
Song-Kul and horse trekking, described honestly
Song-Kul is the photograph that sells Kyrgyzstan: a lake at about 10,000 feet (3,000 m) with no building on its shore, white…
The road to Xinaliq, and the walking above it
Xinaliq is a village of stone houses stacked along a ridge in the far north of Azerbaijan, at roughly 7,500 feet (2,300…
Walking the Nuratau mountains, and sleeping at Aydarkul
Two thirds of the way through an Uzbekistan trip, something happens to most travellers. They have seen four or five extraordinary tiled…
Which of New Zealand’s Great Walks should you do?
There are eleven Great Walks, the Department of Conservation's network of multi-day tracks with maintained huts, and choosing between them is usually…
Diving and snorkelling the Maldives, honestly
The rest of this series is about walking. This one is about a country that is 99 per cent water, where the…
Walking the Kumano Kodo: which route, which season
The Kumano Kodo is not one trail. It is a network of pilgrimage routes across the Kii peninsula south of Osaka, walked…
Khao Sok and Thailand’s national parks: what the walking is actually like
Thailand is not a trekking country in the way Nepal is a trekking country, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling…
Walking the Kolsai lakes and Kaindy
Let us start with the sentence that will save some people a disappointment and others a wasted permit application.
The Kalaw to Inle trek
If we could put one thing into a Myanmar itinerary and remove everything else, it would be this walk. Not because it…
The Hong Kong hiking trails almost no visitor finds
Hiking in Hong Kong is the single most under-used thing in the territory, and the statistic behind it is the most useful…
Horse trekking in Mongolia, and the Altai on foot
Mongolia is a country where the horse is transport rather than recreation, and that single fact explains almost everything about riding here:…
Which Great Barrier Reef trip is worth the money
The Great Barrier Reef is not a place. It is about 1,400 miles (2,300 km) of separate reef systems, and the difference…
Walking the Hajar mountains and the wadis
Start with the sentence that matters most, because everything else depends on it.
Everest North Base Camp: what it is actually like
The first thing to understand about Everest north base camp is that it is not a trek. There is almost no walking…
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