Five lesser-known spots in five not-so-secret destinations

Mar 24, 2012 5:55:31 AM

Note: Javascript is disabled in your browser.
To see the gallery in all its glory, you'll need to enable Javascript.

View gallery

Sometimes the best sights aren’t always the most obvious, or the most famous. Sure, the Sydney Opera House is amazing and the Taj Mahal is unmissable, but the crowds are insane and the costs unfathomable. So, skip those long, wallet-draining queues and get to the heart of a place with some of these less-visited destinations.

Country: India
Alternative spot: Sikkim

If you’re suffering from too much heat, city dust and dirt, or just crowd overload in India, then a spell in the former kingdom of Sikkim is the perfect antidote. The clean, fresh mountain air of the Himalayas sweeps this state, the second smallest after Goa as well as the least populous. There’s room to move and even feel alone, but the people are among India’s most friendly, with a charming manner that’s unobtrusive and slightly shy.

Plunging mountain valleys are lushly forested, interspersed with rice terraces and flowering rhododendrons. Tibetan-style Buddhist monasteries (gompas) add splashes of white, gold and vermilion to the green ridges and are approached through avenues of colourful prayer flags.

Sikkim’s big-ticket item is the majesty of Khangchendzonga (Kanchenjunga, 8598m), the world’s third-highest mountain straddling the border between Sikkim and Nepal. Khangchendzonga’s guardian spirit is worshipped in a series of spectacular autumn festivals and its magnificent white peaks and ridges can be spied from many points around the state. Dawn is its best show, when the sun lights up the eastern face.

The tiny outpost of Sikkim is surrounded by the mountainous outskirts of Nepal, China and Bhutan, in the very north of India.

Find out more about Sikkim in our digital guidebook chapter

Country: New Zealand
Alternative spot: Dunedin and Otago

Coastal Otago, and its one major city, Dunedin, has attractions both urban and rural, offering travellers a chance to escape the crowds of Queenstown, party down in the South Island’s coolest city, and get up close and personal with the island’s most accessible wildlife.

The heart of Otago is Dunedin, long credited as New Zealand’s indie musical heartland and definitive student party town. With a plateful of fabulous restaurants and cafés, it’s also a great place to lay off the two-minute noodles and indulge your stomach. From its stately train station (one of many grand old Victorian buildings in town), you can catch the famous Taieri Gorge Railway inland, or continue further on NZ’s greatest bike trail, the Otago Central Rail Trail.

You can find the South Island’s coolest city on the south east coast.

Find out more about Dunedin and Otago in our digital guidebook chapter

Country: Japan
Alternative spot: Hokkaidō

Comprising one-fifth of the country’s total land mass, yet home to only 5% of the population, Hokkaidō is where all of your preconceived notions of Japan will be shattered. A frozen hinterland with a wild frontier spirit, Hokkaidō is defined by everything that Japan’s southern islands are not. Aside from a few major cities, the untamed north country is a hauntingly beautiful wilderness, on par with the Canadian Rockies or New Zealand’s South Island.

Carved by a network of glorious highways, the island attracts all manner of adventurer, drifter or escapist. In fact, the image of cruising across Hokkaidō’s dramatic landscapes is often associated with unfettered freedom in the minds of the Japanese.

For the thrill-seeking traveller in search of sweeping vistas, amazing wildlife, wide open roads and overwhelming emptiness, Hokkaidō is a refreshing contrast to the often claustrophobic density of Honshū. From November to March, a Siberian cold descends on the island, providing some of the best skiing in both Japan and the eastern hemisphere.

Beautiful and desolate, Hokkaidō is Japan’s most northern island.

Find out more about Hokkaidō in our digital guidebook chapter

Country: South Africa
Alternative spot: Northern Cape

Welcome to South Africa’s last great frontier. The republic’s largest, least-populated and downright strangest province is a playground for off-the-grid explorers. A journey through this super-sized land of half-human trees and singing sands, of big orange-ball sunsets and bright starry nights is like stepping into the pages of a swash-buckling adventure by Laurens Van der Post and Dr Seuss. Ride a snowboard down a dune in the candy-cane striped desert. Drive a 4WD along a shipwrecked coastline by a diamond sea. Hike across surreal moonscapes in harsh but rewarding |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park. Or search for black-maned lions in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier’s remote and crimson outback. The choice is yours.

Find out more about South Africa’s Northern Cape in our digital guidebook chapter

Country: Australia
Alternative spot: Tasmania

Image by Nomad Tales

Dazzlin’ Tassie is brilliant, beautiful and accessible. It’s compact enough to ‘do’ in a few weeks and layered enough to keep bringing you back. The island state has exquisite beaches, jagged mountain ranges, rarefied alpine plateaus, plentiful wildlife and vast tracts of virgin wilderness, much of it within a World Heritage area. Tasmania produces some of the world’s great gourmet food and wine, and has a flourishing arts scene and a burgeoning urban cool.

For too long Australian mainlanders derided their compatriots across Bass Strait, partly because Tasmania took a long time to emerge from the ignominy of its grim past. The first 100 years of European settlement were mired in violence and deprivations imposed upon the island’s Indigenous peoples and convicts, and there remains a pervading sense of melancholy and loss. But this is only part of Tasmania’s confounding enigma. It’s where the courses of mighty rivers were changed to generate hydro-electricity, where railways were built across impossible terrain and where miners and pioneers eked out meagre means in the most hostile and isolated environments. It’s a land of contradictions – of wilderness and logging trucks, wildlife and road kill, where the relics of a cruel history are all the more affecting because they’re so heartbreakingly beautiful.

Find out more about Tasmania in our guidebook

Like this? Sign up to get our best articles by email

Comments

23 October 2010 3:34AM joshseo Report this comment
Isn't Tasmania where all the 'killer ants' are from? I've seen on TV and people need immediate treatment if bitten.
25 October 2010 3:26PM leahmaria Report this comment
Y'know, it actually costs nothing to go see the Sydney Opera House (unless you're going to see a production and even then the price may not be exorbitant depending on what you're seeing.) :P
joshseo - uh, well I spent 7 weeks in Tasmania two years ago and didn't encounter any warnings about killer ants, much less the ants themselves :P People often get anaphylactic reactions to fire ants (and they're extremely painful even to people who aren't allergic) and they have infiltrated some areas of Australia but I'm not sure about Tasmania. Tasmania is a fantastic corner of Australia though. I would strongly recommend it to anyone in Australia who has the time to pop down there.
25 October 2010 4:53PM smileyphoebs Report this comment
Tassie is great! definitely a must even for Aussies
25 October 2010 5:24PM lana63 Report this comment
Lol, at the comment about ants.
25 October 2010 10:38PM knowles Report this comment
haha thanks for that info on the ants
26 October 2010 8:52PM paddyleblanc Report this comment
Lots of leeches in Sikkim though! Well worth a visit but bring good quality rain gear. I have never experienced rain like that before or since I visited. The constant pounding on the galvanised iron roofs became normal and between showers I almost felt like whispering!
21 December 2010 11:03PM travela Report this comment
I didn't go to Sikkim during the monsoon, so no pounding rain, but it was a great place. Saw the 4th highest mountain in the world from the balcony of the hostel and went to a great festival at the monastery in Pelling to celebrate the mountain.
The ants in Tassie sound much like the drop bear stories!! (You know, the koalas that drop out of trees onto the heads of unsuspecting walkers)
21 December 2010 11:09PM travela Report this comment
Sorry typo, distracted and didn't proof read...3rd highest...
22 December 2010 6:37AM educate Report this comment
Yeah.. no thanks (ha ! ha!)for reminding me of the Leeches in Sikkim. I never got used to them. Sikkim is sort of my home town.. I was involved with a trekking / expedition company that were the first ones to do trekking in that region in western Sikkim.. so I loved the picture of Tsoka (and other pictures) on the site. If you do go during the monsoons (i.e. from April end till the beginning of Oct), yes, the area is filled with leeches... but if you go any higher than Tsoka (say beyond 10,000ft), then they disappear as it is too cold for them. e.g in Dzongri you wont find them... But during the dry season you do not see them.. and most trekking do take place during the dry time. However, if you want do see some of the high altitude flowers then you have to go during the rainy season...around May. Sikkim gets perhaps one of the worst yearly rainfall-- they get more than 150 inches a year. Thanks for sharing the picture..
27 December 2010 11:16PM cornfield Report this comment
I wish LP would leave a few places alone. Once the LP community (of which I am one) finds out- thats it folks. Sikkim is a good example of this. Once mass tourism hits it will destroy the place and the reasons why it is good. Unlike Tasmania (the whites have already committed cultural and physical genocide there) Sikkim's culture is very frail. This is a conundrum especially since LP has now become a multinational corporation whose secret is really that it has Tony Wheeler's original charming format.
12 February 2011 7:44PM luftikus Report this comment
Have been living in Japan for more than 2 years now, and visited Hokkaido 3 times. And every time was a highlight. By now, my favorite part of Japan. And as the article states, it reminded me often of Canada. Definitely a place where you can easily spend some weeks just enjoying the nature. Try avoiding the big cities. Although Sapporo (former Olympic city) and Asahikawa (famous zoo) have some few attractions, the real beauty of Hokkaido is found in its nature. But also be aware of the highest bear density worldwide! :-D
29 May 2011 5:07AM ghoomakar Report this comment
sikkim- paradise almost...@confield, i agree, already 3 yrs back gangtok(capital & biggest city in sikkim) was overrun by hotels,souvenir shops & diesel fumes from tourist vehicles..But go further north and west 4 the real spcl places...i was there in winters...green hills, numerous waterfalls, sulphur hot-water springs, frozen waterfalls.....and the beautiful frozen Gurudongmar lake at 17100 ft above sea level surrounded by snow capped mountains...unfortunately LP or any traveler's dilemma is once info abt a place is shared, its no longer secret...
13 November 2011 6:33AM bikebloke Report this comment
Just returned from South Africa. Wanted to go up to the Northern Cape, but there wasn't time. Also, if you don't drive - like myself - public transport was lacking.