Visit the iconic Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, known for its top two floors completely covered in gold leaf and surrounded by beautiful gardens
Visit the White Temple, a unique contemporary Buddhist temple in Thailand known for its intricate white architecture and symbolic art
Visit Okunoin, the largest cemetery in Japan located at Mount Koya, with over 200,000 tombstones and the mausoleum of Kobo Daishi
The "museum without walls": grassy royal burial mounds, the Cheomseongdae observatory and Silla-dynasty treasures across the town.
A monk and his pupil on a floating monastery through the seasons of a life.
Fifteen rocks in raked gravel, arranged so you can never see all fifteen at once.
The Great Buddha sitting in the open air, Zen temples and a surf beach, an hour from Tokyo.
Japan's first capital: the Great Buddha of Todai-ji and 1,200 bowing deer in the park around it.
One of the world’s largest stupas, ringed by prayer wheels and monasteries.
The Thai kings’ glittering palace complex and the Emerald Buddha, all gold spires and mirrored mosaic.
Eighth-century Buddhist temple of stone pagodas and painted halls, paired with the Seokguram grotto Buddha above it.
Ruined former Siamese capital, UNESCO-listed.
Korea’s most dramatic mountains — granite spires, the Ulsanbawi ridge and a cable car — blazing red in autumn.
Rock-cut cave temples in Maharashtra, crowned by the monolithic Kailasa temple.
Buddhist temple where three million people come at New Year to ward off bad luck — and where the incense-smoke ritual is part of the visit.
Visit the ancient Buddhist monastery of Takht-i-Bahi in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. This well-preserved UNESCO World Heritage site, dating from the 1st century CE, features a main stupa, monastic cells, and meditation courtyards perched on a hilltop with sweeping views of the surrounding valley. Explore the intricate stone carvings and imagine the lives of monks who once studied here.
The capital Myanmar built from farmland in 2005 and moved to overnight: twenty-lane highways with almost nothing on them, and an Uppatasanti Pagoda one foot shorter than Shwedagon.
Tezuka's eight-volume life of Siddhartha, funny and profound.
Sogyal Rinpoche's Buddhist guide to death for Western readers.
Peter Matthiessen walks to Dolpo with a zoologist looking for a cat he never sees.
A Brahmin's son leaves the Buddha to find his own way, and finds it at a river.
The dzong at the meeting of two rivers, the old winter capital, with jacaranda in spring.
The 2,000-year-old sacred city: giant brick stupas and the oldest planted tree with a known date.
The Potala Palace at 3,650 metres, pilgrims prostrating around the Jokhang and the Barkhor market.
The Longmen Grottoes with 100,000 carved Buddhas, the first Buddhist temple in China and the April peony festival.
A Tibetan Buddhist town at 3,500 metres in Ladakh, monasteries on rocks and the road to Pangong lake.
Scenic peaks and the gifts museum.
Giant seated Buddha on Lantau.
Mongolia’s oldest Buddhist monastery, walled by 108 stupas on the site of Genghis Khan’s capital, Karakorum.
Masked cham dances in a dzong courtyard, ending with the unfurling of a giant embroidered thangka at dawn.
Infobox
