The Most Beautiful Pilgrimage Sites in Asia
10 places in 5 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful pilgrimage sites in Asia are Fushimi Inari-taisha (Japan), Mount Kōya (Japan) and Kedarnath Temple (India). The list covers 10 pilgrimage sites in 5 countries. Japan has the most, with 4. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Asia gave rise to most of the world's major religions, and each of them carries the faithful into the landscape. Hindu and Jain pilgrims climb mountains where the gods are said to dwell, Buddhists circle relics and balancing rocks, Shinto shrines treat whole mountains as sacred, and Shia Muslims travel to the tombs of the Imams. The sites are often defined by the journey itself: thousands of steps, high passes or tunnels of gates.
Fushimi Inari-taisha in Kyoto, head shrine of the god Inari, is famous for the thousands of vermilion torii gates that form tunnels up the slopes of Mount Inari, each donated by a person or a business. Kedarnath Temple stands among Himalayan peaks at more than 3,500 metres and is one of the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shiva. The Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur are reached by a long stairway beneath a giant golden statue of Lord Murugan, and the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, around the tomb of the eighth Shia Imam, is one of the largest religious complexes in the world.
Some sites are stranger still. Mount Osore in northern Japan, a volcanic caldera of sulphur vents and a silent lake, is traditionally seen as a gateway to the afterlife. Taung Kalat in Myanmar is a monastery on top of a sheer volcanic plug, home of the nat spirits, and the Kyaiktiyo Pagoda rests on a gilded boulder balanced at the edge of a cliff. Shatrunjaya in Gujarat is a hill crowned with hundreds of Jain temples, and Sefa-utaki on Okinawa was the most sacred place of the Ryukyu Kingdom, entered through a triangular gap between leaning rocks.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fushimi Inari-taisha | Shinto shrine | Japan | |
| 2 | Mount Kōya | Pilgrimage site | Japan | ✓ |
| 3 | Kedarnath Temple | Pilgrimage site | India | |
| 4 | Batu Caves | Pilgrimage site | Malaysia | |
| 5 | Imam Reza Shrine | Pilgrimage site | Iran | |
| 6 | Mount Osore | Pilgrimage site | Japan | |
| 7 | Taung Kalat | Pilgrimage site | Myanmar | |
| 8 | Shatrunjaya | Pilgrimage site | India | |
| 9 | Kyaiktiyo Pagoda | Stupa | Myanmar | |
| 10 | Sefa-utaki | Pilgrimage site | Japan |
01 Fushimi Inari-taisha
Japan · 7.5 km from Kyoto34.967° N 135.773° E
Image by Pexels from Pixabay The shrine is the head sanctuary of Inari, the kami of rice and harvest who became the patron of commerce, and it presides over a network of roughly 30,000 Inari shrines across Japan. By tradition it was founded in 711 by the Hata clan, an influential immigrant family from the Korean peninsula, on the slopes of Inariyama, a 233-metre sacred mountain at the southern end of Kyoto's eastern hills. The main hall dates from 1499, and the great two-storey entrance gate is credited to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Everywhere stand stone foxes, Inari's messengers, many holding a key to the rice granary in their jaws.
Did you know? According to legend, the clan chief Hata no Irogu shot an arrow at a rice cake that turned into a white bird; rice sprouted where it landed on the mountain.
02 Mount Kōya
Japan · 38.3 km from Wakayama34.218° N 135.583° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Lianguanlun · CC BY 4.0 Two poles organise the town. At one end stands the Danjo Garan, the original ritual complex, dominated by the Konpon Daitō, a great pagoda about 48.5 metres high that stands for the centre of the mandala. Nearby is Kongōbu-ji, the head temple of Kōyasan Shingon Buddhism, and the great Daimon, the main gate of the mountain, is flanked by guardian figures. At the other end lies Okunoin, the resting place of Kūkai, who according to Shingon belief did not die but remains in eternal meditation awaiting the future Buddha.
03 Kedarnath Temple
India30.733° N 79.067° E
Shivam Kumar 766 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The date of the original temple and the name of its builder are unknown. One of the earliest references to Kedara appears in the Skanda Purana, which names it as the place where Shiva released the waters of the Ganges from his matted hair, and by the 12th century the site was clearly an established pilgrimage centre. Tradition credits the 8th-century philosopher Adi Shankara with reviving the temple, and some accounts hold that he died in the mountains nearby; a memorial to him stands behind the shrine. The name is usually explained as "lord of the field".
Did you know? Each winter the temple closes and the festival image of Shiva is carried down to the Omkareshwar Temple in Ukhimath, where it is worshipped for six months.
04 Batu Caves
Malaysia · 10.8 km from Kuala Lumpur3.237° N 101.684° E
Image by zibik from Pixabay The temple owes its existence to K. Thamboosamy, a Tamil trader who promoted the caves as a Hindu shrine; the Murugan temple was completed in 1891, and the first Thaipusam celebration was held the following year. Today Batu Caves are the focus of Thaipusam in Malaysia. Devotees walk in procession from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple in Kuala Lumpur, bathe in the Batu River and climb to the temple carrying kavadi — burdens of offering, some decorated with peacock feathers and attached to the body with hooks and skewers. Before the caves became a shrine they served as shelters for the indigenous Temuan people, and from the 1860s Chinese settlers dug guano here for fertiliser.
Did you know? The statue took three years to build and was unveiled during Thaipusam in January 2006.
05 Imam Reza Shrine
Iran · 4.6 km from Mashhad36.288° N 59.616° E
Iahsan at English Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 What makes it remarkable to look at is the sheer accumulation of Persian craft over a thousand years. Seven great courtyards open one into another, each framed by tiled iwans and minarets; the oldest and largest is the Enghelab, or Atiq, courtyard. Above the tomb rises the golden dome, its gilded plates catching the light from far across the city, while the halls around the burial chamber are lined with mirror mosaic — thousands of small facets that turn lamplight into a glittering, almost liquid surface. The tilework ranges from Timurid mosaic faience to Safavid and Qajar glazed panels, so a walk through the complex is also a walk through the history of Iranian architecture.
Did you know? Its central library is traced back to 974 and holds roughly a million volumes, including more than 200,000 manuscripts and tens of thousands of handwritten Qurans.
06 Mount Osore
Japan41.279° N 141.120° E
Douglas P Perkins ( Douglaspperkins ( talk )) · CC BY 3.0 The Osorezan range is a group of eight somma volcanoes whose highest summit, Mount Kamafuse, reaches 878 metres. The last magmatic eruption took place more than ten thousand years ago, but fumaroles remain active. In the Meiji period sulphur was mined here for gunpowder, though the venture proved unprofitable because of the remoteness of the site. Within the caldera stands Bodai-ji, a Sōtō Zen temple dedicated to Jizō, the bodhisattva who protects the souls of children and travellers. By tradition it was founded by the monk Ennin in 862; it was abandoned in 1457 and revived in 1530.
Did you know? The gold has never been mined: it was found only after the area became a quasi-national park, and in 2007 it was named a notable Japanese geosite.
07 Taung Kalat
Myanmar20.913° N 95.209° E
Image by LuisValiente from Pixabay The plug is climbed by a covered stairway of 777 steps that winds up its flank, once looked after by the renowned hermit U Khandi, who restored many sacred stairways in Burma. The ascent passes shrines, prayer halls and the macaques that live on the mountain, and ends at a summit terrace with a view over the palm-studded plain towards Bagan. The name Popa is usually traced to a Pali and Sanskrit word for flower.
Did you know? Mount Popa, the parent volcano locals call Taung Ma-gyi or mother hill, last erupted around 6050 BCE and has a caldera some 1.6 km wide breached to the north-west.
08 Shatrunjaya
India21.468° N 71.800° E
Image by 710beppo from Pixabay For Jains this is one of the holiest places on Earth. Tradition holds that Rishabhanatha, the first Tirthankara, came to the hill, and that his disciple Pundarika attained liberation on the hill, which was therefore once called Pundarikgiri. According to Jain belief, 23 of the 24 Tirthankaras sanctified the hill with their visits, all except Neminatha. The hill is regarded as a dwelling of the divine rather than of people, and no one, not even the priests, stays on the summit overnight. Each year on the full moon of the month of Kartik, a great pilgrimage on foot draws devotees to the hills.
Did you know? The hill holds 863 temples, of which 108 are large, spread across nine walled clusters on twin summits.
09 Kyaiktiyo Pagoda
Myanmar17.484° N 97.098° E
Image by peteranta from Pixabay It is one of the three holiest pilgrimage sites in Myanmar, ranked after the Shwedagon and Mahamuni pagodas. Local tradition explains the balance with a relic: the Buddha is said to have given a strand of his hair to a hermit, who asked the king to enshrine it in a rock shaped like his own head, and it is this hair that keeps the boulder in place. The king, in the legend, found the rock on the sea bed and brought it here by boat with the help of the king of the gods; the boat is said to have turned to stone and is venerated as a separate shrine a few hundred metres away. The name itself comes from the Mon language and is usually glossed as "the pagoda on the hermit's head".
Did you know? A bent-toed gecko first collected in the sanctuary in 2001 turned out to be new to science and was named Cyrtodactylus aequalis in 2003.
10 Sefa-utaki
Japan · 15.8 km from Naha26.173° N 127.827° E
Ultratomio · CC BY-SA 3.0 Utaki are the sacred places of the indigenous Ryukyuan religion, usually groves or rocks rather than buildings, and Sēfa-utaki was the most sacred of all in the Ryukyu Kingdom. Its ceremonies were in the hands of the Kikoe-ōgimi, the highest priestess of the state. The site probably took its formal shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under King Shō Shin, who centralised the kingdom's religious hierarchy. According to the Chūzan Seikan, the kingdom's official chronicle, the creation goddess Amamikyu came to Okinawa at this place, and Kudaka Island, visible from Sangūi, was regarded as the land where she first descended.
Did you know? Inside Sangūi lies Chōnohana, the highest-ranking prayer spot, where the creation goddess Amamikyu was believed to descend by way of a fan-palm tree.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful pilgrimage sites in Asia?
- On our list, Fushimi Inari-taisha (Japan) ranks first, followed by Mount Kōya (Japan) and Kedarnath Temple (India).
- Which country has the most pilgrimage sites in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Japan (4), India (2) and Myanmar (2).
- Why does Fushimi Inari have so many torii gates?
- Each gate is a donation from a person or company, traditionally offered in thanks or in hope of success in business, since Inari is the Shinto god of rice and prosperity. The donor's name is inscribed on the back of the gate.
- Why doesn't the Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo fall?
- The granite boulder rests on a sloping ledge with a very small contact point. According to legend, it is held in balance by a strand of the Buddha's hair enshrined in the small pagoda on its top.
- What festival is celebrated at the Batu Caves?
- Thaipusam, a Tamil Hindu festival in honour of Lord Murugan. Devotees climb the stairway to the Temple Cave, many carrying offerings and ornate frames called kavadi.
- How many pilgrimage sites are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 10 pilgrimage sites in 5 countries. Japan has the most, with 4.