Alexander the Great's easternmost city, the Panjshanbe bazaar and the Syr Darya river.
Red rock buttes, vortex hikes and a Chapel built into the cliff, two hours from the Grand Canyon.
A cathedral lit up every Saturday, an aqueduct and the monarch butterfly forests two hours away.
The mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, Timur's unfinished masterpiece and Kazakhstan's holiest site.
A silver-mining city of pink cantera stone with a cable car over the centre and a mine to walk through.
The live-music capital: SXSW, bats under the Congress bridge and breakfast tacos.
One of the best aurora spots on Earth, on Great Slave Lake, with an ice road in winter.
The Garden City oasis, camel market and Jebel Hafeet, the UAE's only UNESCO site.
Barbecue burnt ends, the jazz district at 18th and Vine and 200 fountains.
A maze of streets built to confuse pirates, clay tinajones jars and a ballet company.
A pastel walled city built against pirates, the quietest colonial capital in the Yucatan.
The Mesoamerican reef a swim from shore, West End dive shops and whale sharks.
Hegra, the Nabataean tombs of the southern Petra, and the Elephant Rock in a desert of sandstone.
The heart of America's wine country: 400 wineries, the Wine Train and hot-air balloons at dawn.
The city of saints: blue-tiled Sufi shrines and the hottest summers in the subcontinent.
Taiwan's old capital: Dutch forts, hundreds of temples and the best street food on the island.
A Bai walled town between Erhai lake and the Cangshan mountains, the backpacker capital of Yunnan.
Carved wooden houses of the Siberian merchants and Decembrist exiles, an hour from Lake Baikal.
The end of the Trans-Siberian, a hilly Pacific port with cable-stayed bridges and Korean-Russian food.
A golden sandstone fort still lived in, and camel safaris into the Thar desert dunes.
The car-free island of Gulangyu with its colonial villas and pianos, and the Fujian tea houses.
The floating markets of the Mekong Delta at dawn, boats selling fruit under a pole that shows what they sell.
The Tamil north, a Dutch fort, the Nallur Kandaswamy temple and the crab curry.
'Little England' at 1,900 metres: tea estates, a golf course and a post office from 1894.
The illuminated Maharaja palace, the Dasara festival and the sandalwood and silk of the old bazaars.
The eight-kilometre underground river through a cave and the capital of Palawan.
The city of trees in Tohoku, Date Masamune's castle hill, the Tanabata festival and gyutan beef tongue.
The summer capital in the pine-covered Cordillera, a night market and strawberry farms.
The Savitsky museum, a hidden collection of banned Soviet avant-garde art in the Karakalpak desert.
The blue city under the Mehrangarh fort, the biggest and most dramatic in Rajasthan.
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