Tradition Bucket List

One of Shinto’s holiest shrines, said to house the sacred sword of the imperial regalia, set in a 1,000-year-old camphor forest.

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.

Watch Mongolia's three manly sports festival in Ulaanbaatar

A river, cannons that jump to capture, and generals who may never meet.

A Canadian dexterity board where you flick discs at a centre hole.

Japanese chess, where captured pieces change sides and come back.

A mill game carved into cathedral cloisters and Roman roof tiles.

A South Asian tabletop strike-and-pocket game, all wrist and chalk.

Two hundred years of pegging fifteen-twos on a wooden board.

Germany's national card game; three players, complex bidding, deep strategy.

Life-sized wooden effigies of the dead, watching from balconies cut into the cliff graves.

A circular Berber fortified granary of 114 cells, built in the twelfth century and still standing.

Knotted by hand at a rate of centimetres a week; the art Persia is still measured by.

Kanaga masks and five-metre sirige poles danced on the cliffs of Bandiagara.

Kolkata's clay-modeller quarter builds ten-armed goddesses all year, then floats them down the Hooghly.

Three thousand terraced evaporation pools on an Andean hillside, worked by the same families since Inca times.

Amazonian ceremonial headdresses woven from human hair and macaw feathers, in the Mato Grosso museums.

Hand-beaten silver and gold crosses, each parish with its own design, carried at Timkat.

Cultural village and over-water night show.

Land of fortified tower-houses, UNESCO-listed.

Ancient temple that gave Macau its name.

The original vine-bungee land diving.

One of the region’s biggest livestock markets, camels haggled over by the hundred.

Calm lagoon and voodoo villages.

Huge highland tribal gathering.

Sacred pool of tame crocodiles.

The "valley of heaven", craft and culture.

Sandstone plateau fortress of King Moshoeshoe I, birthplace of the Basotho nation.

Vast mosque of the Mouride brotherhood, goal of the Grand Magal pilgrimage.

Nutmeg, cocoa and cinnamon estates on the "Isle of Spice", with tastings and chocolate factories.