The Most Mystical Places in Asia

34 places in 17 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Kharanaq

   Iran32.346° N 54.666° E

   

   Kharanaq rises out of the desert north of Yazd as a single weathered mass of mud brick: hundreds of rooms, stairways, domes and lanes fused into one hill-shaped settlement, the colour of the earth it was built from. Behind it are bare mountains, in front of it the plain, and below it a green strip of fields and a seasonal river.

   Did you know? According to local tradition, a small mud-brick shrine called Mashhak marks the spot where Imam Reza prayed on his way to Mashhad.

   More about Kharanaq →

2. 02 Fushimi Inari-taisha

   Japan · 7.5 km from Kyoto34.967° N 135.773° E

   

   Fushimi Inari-taisha is best known for a single image: a path climbing a wooded hillside inside an unbroken tunnel of vermilion torii gates, glowing in the filtered light under the cedars. The gates — thousands of them along the mountain trails — are gifts.

   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.

   More about Fushimi Inari-taisha →

3. 03 Mount Kōya

   Japan · 38.3 km from Wakayama34.218° N 135.583° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Mount Kōya is not a single peak but a high basin in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, a plain at about 800 metres ringed by eight summits. In the early ninth century the monk Kūkai, known after his death as Kōbō Daishi, chose this remote upland as the centre for the esoteric Shingon school he had brought back from China, and Kōyasan grew into a temple town that is still wholly given over to religion.

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4. 04 Kedarnath Temple

   India30.733° N 79.067° E

   

   Kedarnath Temple stands at about 3,583 metres in the Garhwal Himalaya, a stone shrine set against a wall of snow peaks at the head of the Mandakini valley. It is one of the twelve jyotirlingas, the most sacred shrines of Shiva, and the highest of them all, and no road reaches it: pilgrims climb on foot for some 17 kilometres from Gaurikund.

   Did you know? A 12th-century text, the Kritya-kalpataru by the Gahadavala minister Bhatta Lakshmidhara, already names Kedarnath as a sacred site.

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5. 05 Shah-i-Zinda

   Uzbekistan · 3.8 km from Samarkand39.663° N 66.988° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Shah-i-Zinda is less a single monument than a street of the dead: a narrow lane climbing the slope south of the old Afrosiyob hill in Samarkand, lined on both sides by mausoleums whose portals are sheathed in glazed tilework. The name means "the Living King" and comes from Qutham ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad who reached Samarkand with the Arab conquest in the seventh century.

   Did you know? Until the 16th century the complex was known simply as the Mazar of the Shah; the name Shah-i-Zinda, the Living King, only took hold afterwards.

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6. 06 Hegra

   Saudi Arabia26.814° N 37.947° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Hegra, also known as Mada'in Salih or al-Hijr, was the southern outpost of the Nabataeans, the trading people whose capital was Petra. It was their second city, and in one respect it surpasses Petra: its rock-cut tombs are often better preserved.

   Did you know? An Ottoman fort was built here between 1744 and 1757 on the orders of As'ad Pasha al-Azm, governor of Damascus, to guard the pilgrim road.

   More about Hegra →

7. 07 Batu Caves

   Malaysia · 10.8 km from Kuala Lumpur3.237° N 101.684° E

   

   Batu Caves are a set of limestone caverns inside a 325-metre tower of karst just 13 km north of Kuala Lumpur, and they are above all a place of worship. The largest cave shelters the Subramaniar Swamy temple dedicated to Murugan, reached by 272 concrete steps built in 1940 and repainted in bright colours in 2018.

   Did you know? The giant Murugan statue took about 1,550 cubic metres of concrete, 350 tonnes of steel and 300 litres of gold paint imported from Thailand.

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8. 08 Naqsh-e Rustam

   Iran · 21.4 km from Marvdasht29.989° N 52.875° E

   

   Naqsh-e Rustam is a cliff face north-west of Persepolis in Fars province where the kings of Persia carved their tombs and their victories over more than a thousand years. High in the rock are four identical tombs of Achaemenid kings.

   Did you know? The name means 'Mural of Rostam', after the hero of Persian legend.

   More about Naqsh-e Rustam →

9. 09 Geghard

   Armenia · 26.6 km from Yerevan40.140° N 44.819° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Geghard sits at the head of the Azat gorge, where the valley closes into walls of rock, and much of the monastery is not built so much as carved. Some of its churches are hollowed entirely out of the cliff, others are half free-standing and half cut into the mountain, and the rock faces all around are pitted with monks' cells and covered with khachkars, the carved cross-stones of Armenia.

   Did you know? In 923 an Arab governor named Nasr plundered the early monastery, carrying off its manuscripts and burning its buildings.

   More about Geghard →

10. 10 Kaunos

    Turkey36.828° N 28.626° E

    

    High on a sheer cliff above the reed-lined Dalyan River, the façades of rock-cut tombs look out over the water like small temples, with columns, pediments and doorways carved straight into the stone. These are the tombs of Kaunos, an ancient port city whose ruins lie on the hills just across the river from the town of Dalyan, in south-western Turkey.

    Did you know? According to legend, the founder's twin sister Byblis fell in love with him, and the river beside the city sprang from her tears.

    More about Kaunos →

11. 11 Plain of Jars

    Laos · 5.1 km from Phonsavan19.431° N 103.153° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Plain of Jars is scattered across the Xiangkhoang Plateau in northern Laos: thousands of great stone vessels standing on hillsides and ridges, in clusters from a single jar to several hundred. They are between one and three metres tall, cylindrical, wider at the base than at the mouth, and hewn from sandstone, granite, conglomerate, limestone or breccia.

    Did you know? The heaviest of the stone jars are estimated to weigh up to about 14 tonnes, yet they were moved from quarries kilometres away.

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12. 12 Imam Reza Shrine

    Iran · 4.6 km from Mashhad36.288° N 59.616° E

    

    The Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad is the burial place of Ali al-Rida, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shia Islam, who died in 818 and was laid to rest in the village of Sanabad beside the tomb of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. A dome went up over the grave, and the city of Mashhad — the name means "place of martyrdom" — grew around it.

    Did you know? Shah Abbas the Great walked the whole way from Isfahan to Mashhad on foot as a pilgrim and later had the dome gilded.

    More about Imam Reza Shrine →

13. 13 Makli Necropolis

    Pakistan24.761° N 67.900° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Across a low, dry plateau on the edge of the Indus delta, hundreds of thousands of tombs spread over some 10 square kilometres: carved sandstone cenotaphs, brick mausoleums glazed in blue and turquoise, domed pavilions on slender columns, and stone enclosures carved so densely with rosettes, calligraphy and geometric bands that from a distance they look like temples.

    Did you know? Isa Khan Tarkhan II's two-storey mausoleum is believed to have been built during his own lifetime, decades before his death in 1651.

    More about Makli Necropolis →

14. 14 Mount Osore

    Japan41.279° N 141.120° E

    

    Mount Osore, Osorezan, "the fearsome mountain", is a volcanic caldera at the heart of the Shimokita Peninsula, the axe-shaped northern tip of Honshu in Aomori Prefecture.

    Did you know? According to the temple legend, Ennin dreamed while studying in Tang China of a sacred mountain thirty days journey east, and set out to find it.

    More about Mount Osore →

15. 15 Kayaköy

    Turkey36.577° N 29.087° E

    

    Across a green upland valley a few kilometres south of Fethiye, a whole town of roofless stone houses covers the slopes of a hill.

    Did you know? According to local tradition, Muslim settlers arriving from Greece refused to move into the empty houses, believing the town was haunted.

    More about Kayaköy →

16. 16 Western Xia Imperial Tombs

    People's Republic of China · 25.1 km from Yinchuan38.435° N 105.987° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    At the foot of the Helan Mountains, on the dry plain west of Yinchuan, a line of great earthen mounds rises from the steppe like weathered beehives. They are the tombs of the emperors of Western Xia, a state founded by the Tangut people that ruled much of northwest China from 1038 until its destruction by Genghis Khan's Mongols in 1227.

    Did you know? Chinese writers often call the site the "Pyramids of the East", a nickname earned by its tall, tapering earthen mounds rising from the plain.

    More about Western Xia Imperial Tombs →

17. 17 Khndzoresk

    Armenia · 34.5 km from Kapan39.512° N 46.434° E

    

    Old Khndzoresk in southern Armenia is a village carved into the walls of a deep gorge: hundreds of artificial caves cut into the rock pillars and cliffs on the slopes of the Khor Dzor, the "deep gorge". For centuries people lived, kept animals and stored food in these dwellings, linked by paths and stairways that climb from ledge to ledge.

    Did you know? According to local tradition, the village was founded by two hunter brothers fleeing from Nakhichevan, who followed a deer into the gorge and decided to settle there.

    More about Khndzoresk →

18. 18 Daisen Kofun

    Japan · 14.2 km from Osaka34.564° N 135.487° E

    

    Daisen Kofun in Sakai, on the southern edge of Osaka, is the largest keyhole-shaped burial mound in Japan and one of the largest tombs ever built anywhere, often set beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the tomb of China's First Emperor.

    Did you know? A 2018 three-dimensional survey revised the mound's length from 486 to about 525 metres, because its base continues for metres below the moat water.

    More about Daisen Kofun →

19. 19 Houtouwan Village

    People's Republic of China30.727° N 122.820° E

    

    On the north shore of Shengshan, one of the outer islands of the Shengsi archipelago where the Yangtze estuary opens into the East China Sea, a whole fishing village has been taken back by plants. Houtouwan climbs a steep cove in terraces of houses, and almost every wall, roof and stairway is now wrapped in a continuous coat of creepers.

    Did you know? The name Houtouwan translates roughly as "Back Bay", a plain description of the cove on Shengshan's northern shore where the village was built.

    More about Houtouwan Village →

20. 20 Saimaluu-Tash petroglyphs

    Kyrgyzstan41.181° N 73.814° E

    

    Saimaluu-Tash, "the patterned stones" in Kyrgyz, is one of the great rock-art galleries of Asia, and one of the hardest to reach. High in the Fergana Range, at around 3,200 metres, two alpine valleys separated by a low ridge are strewn with boulders of dark rock, and on more than ten thousand of them people pecked images through the glossy black and grey desert varnish to the paler stone beneath.

    Did you know? The rock art can be dated with confidence only from the first millennium BC, when the Saka-Scythian 'animal style' appears on the stones.

    More about Saimaluu-Tash petroglyphs →

21. 21 Bangudae Petroglyphs

    South Korea · 13.9 km from Ulsan35.604° N 129.178° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On a sheer rock face above a bend of the Daegokcheon stream in Ulsan, someone began carving whales around seven thousand years ago — and people kept adding to the panel for millennia. The main surface at Bangudae Terrace is only about eight metres wide and five high, yet it holds some three hundred engraved figures, among the richest prehistoric image walls in East Asia.

    Did you know? One carving shows a mother grey whale carrying her calf on her back, the way the species lifts its young to the surface to breathe.

    More about Bangudae Petroglyphs →

22. 22 Gamsutl

    Russia42.303° N 46.997° E

    

    Gamsutl clings to the crest of a steep spur of Mount Gamsutlmeer in the mountains of central Dagestan, a village of grey stone houses stacked one above another up the slope. It lies in the Gunib district, about ten kilometres south-east of the old mountain stronghold of Gunib, high above the valley of the Tsamtichay, at an altitude usually given as between 1,400 and 1,500 metres.

    Did you know? At its height the village is said to have held some 3,000 inhabitants in its roughly 300 stone houses.

    More about Gamsutl →

23. 23 Kbal Spean

    Cambodia · 39.7 km from Siem Reap13.687° N 104.015° E

    

    In the forested Kulen Hills northeast of Angkor, a small river runs over a bed of sandstone carved nearly a thousand years ago.

    Did you know? In the main field of lingas, five are set in a quincunx, an arrangement that, like the central towers of Angkor Wat, stands for the cosmic Mount Meru.

    More about Kbal Spean →

24. 24 Bimmah Sinkhole

    Oman23.036° N 59.071° E

    

    On the stony coastal plain of eastern Oman, a few hundred metres from the Gulf of Oman, the ground simply opens. Bimmah Sinkhole — Hawiyyat Najm in Arabic — is a near-round pit some 50 by 70 metres across and about 20 metres deep, its pale limestone walls dropping to a pool of startlingly clear turquoise water. Seen from the rim, the colour looks almost artificial against the dun rock around it.

    Did you know? The pool is widely believed to connect to the Gulf of Oman through a submerged cave passage, but no diver is known to have documented the route.

    More about Bimmah Sinkhole →

25. 25 Taung Kalat

    Myanmar20.913° N 95.209° E

    

    Rising abruptly from the dry plains of central Myanmar, Taung Kalat is a sheer-sided volcanic plug — the hardened throat of an old vent from the Mount Popa volcano — standing about 225 metres above its surroundings, with a gilded Buddhist monastery balanced on its crown.

    Did you know? According to legend, the flower-eating ogress Me Wunna loved Byatta, the king's flower gatherer; he was executed for it, she died of grief, and both became nats.

    More about Taung Kalat →

26. 26 Daereungwon

    South Korea · 0.5 km from Gyeongju35.838° N 129.212° E

    

    Daereungwon, in the middle of Gyeongju, is a park of great grassy domes: 23 burial mounds of kings, queens and nobles of Silla, the kingdom that ruled this corner of Korea for centuries from its capital here. The mounds rise like soft green hills among pines and paths, and their smooth curves against the sky are the image of the city.

    Did you know? Hwangnamdaechong is the largest Silla tomb ever found: its joined mounds stretch about 120 metres north to south and rise over 20 metres high.

    More about Daereungwon →

27. 27 Onega petroglyphs

    Russia61.673° N 36.029° E

    

    On the low rocky headlands of Lake Onega's eastern shore, just above the waterline, thousands of figures were pecked into the rock some five to six thousand years ago: swans with long necks, elk, fish, boats, people, and strange beings that are half human and half animal.

    Did you know? In 1935 four pieces of rock carrying carvings were cut from Cape Peri Nos and shipped to the Hermitage; explosives used in the work destroyed some figures.

    More about Onega petroglyphs →

28. 28 Shatrunjaya

    India21.468° N 71.800° E

    

    Shatrunjaya is a hill covered in temples. On the summit and ridges above the town of Palitana in Gujarat stand almost 900 Jain shrines, from tiny niches to large temples with carved spires, packed so closely that from a distance the crest looks like a city of carved stone.

    Did you know? In 2014, after a hunger strike by about 200 Jain monks, Palitana became widely described as the world's first vegetarian city, with meat, fish and eggs banned from sale.

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29. 29 Kyaiktiyo Pagoda

    Myanmar17.484° N 97.098° E

    

    Kyaiktiyo, better known as the Golden Rock, is a granite boulder perched on the very edge of a ledge near the summit of Mount Kyaiktiyo in Mon State, southern Myanmar, at about 1,100 metres above sea level. 6 metres high and some 15 metres around; it rests on a sloping rock shelf with a tiny area of contact, and about half of it overhangs a sheer drop into the valley. On top sits a small stupa about 7 metres tall.

    Did you know? According to legend, the hermit who received the Buddha's hair was named Taik Tha and kept the relic tucked into the knot of his own hair.

    More about Kyaiktiyo Pagoda →

30. 30 Dargavs Necropolis

    Russia · 29.6 km from Vladikavkaz42.841° N 44.446° E

    

    High in a mountain valley of North Ossetia, on a grassy slope above the village of Dargavs, stands a cluster of close to a hundred white stone houses with steep, stepped roofs. They are not houses for the living.

    Did you know? The site holds about 95 crypts, and because generations were stacked inside them, an estimated 10,000 people may have been buried here.

    More about Dargavs Necropolis →