Japan has a specific effect on first-time visitors that TrotRadar hears described more consistently than the equivalent report from almost any other destination: “It was completely different from what I expected, and better in every way I didn’t know to…
Iran is the destination that most consistently produces the same response in travelers who visit it: “It was the best trip I’ve ever taken, and it was nothing like what I expected.” The gap between Western media representation of Iran…
Istanbul is one of the great cities of the world — TrotRadar makes that case in our dedicated city coverage and stands behind it entirely. But Turkey is a country of 783,000 square kilometres containing one of the densest concentrations…
Bhutan has a tourism policy unlike any other country on earth: a mandatory daily fee designed not to discourage visitors but to ensure that every visitor who arrives contributes directly to conservation, healthcare, education, and the preservation of the cultural…
Palawan has been voted the best island in the world by multiple travel publications in multiple consecutive years — and it earns the recognition. But the Philippines is not Palawan any more than Italy is Rome. An archipelago of 7,641…
Asia is not a destination. It is the largest continent on earth, containing approximately 60% of the world’s population, 48 countries, and a range of cultural, linguistic, culinary, and physical landscape diversity that makes any generic advice about “traveling in…
Samarkand gets the cover photograph. TrotRadar gave it the dedicated guide it deserves earlier. But Uzbekistan is a country of three major Silk Road cities — not one — and the traveler who flies in and out via Samarkand alone…
Vietnam is a country shaped like a bamboo pole with a rice basket on each end — the geographic metaphor used locally to describe the broad agricultural deltas of the north and south connected by the narrow central waist of…
The India Golden Triangle — the roughly equilateral route connecting Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur across a 720 km circuit in northern India — is the most visited tourist route in the subcontinent and the starting point for more first India…
The quality gap between the finest restaurant food and the finest street food is narrower in Asia than anywhere else on earth — and in several cities on this list, the street food is not a budget version of the…
Eight of the world’s ten highest mountains are in Nepal. The country’s northern border traces the crest of the Himalayas — a 2,400 km arc of peaks that contains Everest, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu, and Annapurna. The…
Taiwan sits in a peculiar position in the travel landscape: consistently rated by the travelers who visit it as one of the finest destinations in Asia, yet consistently absent from the first-page searches and top-ten lists that drive most travel…