All in Travel
Kathmandu’s Garden of Dreams is an oasis in the heart of a hectic city. Once a private garden, it lay in disrepair for decades before being restored for public use. It’s right next door to Kathmandu’s main tourist district, Thamel. Once you chill out in the garden, you may find yourself in no hurry to leave.
What are the top 5 destinations in Asia for first-time visitors that would appeal most to senior travellers? It’s advisable to start with destinations that provide a ‘soft landing’, and not ones like India that can be quite overwhelming for less experienced travellers. Here are our recommendations for the best places to visit for those new to Asia.
After more than 60 years, Graham Greene’s classic novel about Vietnam, The Quiet American, continues to captivate readers. Visitors to Ho Chi Minh City can retrace the author’s footsteps and visit some of the places mentioned in the book – a particular pleasure for senior travellers with a feel for history.
Tibet is a destination that is on the bucket list of many senior travellers, but often they are discouraged from making the trip because of the fear of suffering altitude sickness. Is it possible to travel to Tibet without being afflicted by altitude sickness?
An overnight cruise on a houseboat through the lush tropical backwaters of Kerala should be one of the highlights of any senior traveller’s trip to India. It’s the ultimate experience in relaxation - eat, sleep, eat and watch the world go slowly by.
Revisiting places that you first saw when you were young is one of the joys of senior travel. It’s fun to see how places have changed and how they haven’t. At the same time, you yourself have changed and are seeing them through different eyes.
The hill stations in the Himalayan foothills in northern India may be more famous, but those in India’s southern states have a lot to offer senior travellers. Most of them are in the more easily accessible Western Ghats, a biologically diverse mountain range that runs through five states.
Cheonggyecheon is a stream that runs for 11 km through the heart of South Korea’s capital, Seoul. Since being redeveloped in 2005 it has become a popular tourist destination, featuring a linear park and many attractions. But it wasn’t always as clean or popular as it is today. The stream has a turbulent history.
Kampong Ayer is a series of interlinked stilt-house villages built along the Brunei River, which runs through the capital Bandar Seri Begawan. The villages are home to an estimated 30,000 people and are thought to be the largest stilt settlement in the world.
Often billed as Asia's most spectacular pageant, the Esala Perahera is held in the Sri Lankan hill town of Kandy. The Esala Perahera festival runs for 10 days, and there are parades during the day and at night featuring dancers, drummers, acrobats, fire-eaters and brightly decorated elephants.
Japan’s wisteria flowering season is from about mid-April to mid-May, immediately following the sakura (cherry blossom) season, so if you’ve not been able to make it to Japan to see the cherry blossoms, then the wisteria flowering season provides an excellent substitute.
