The Most Spectacular Cliffs in Asia
8 places in 8 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most spectacular cliffs in Asia are Tōjinbō (Japan), Trango Towers (Pakistan) and Flaming Cliffs (Mongolia). The list covers 8 cliffs in 8 countries. Japan has the most, with 1. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Asia's cliffs are made by forces at work on a continental scale. The collision of India with Eurasia raised the Karakoram and the Himalaya, where granite towers rise for more than a kilometre in a single face. Around the Pacific rim, lava flows cooled into hexagonal columns along the coasts of Japan, Korea and the Kuril Islands. In the deserts of Mongolia and Arabia, wind and ancient seas have left escarpments that glow red and gold in low light.
The Trango Towers in Pakistan's Baltoro region are granite spires above the Baltoro Glacier, with some of the greatest vertical rock faces on Earth. At World's End in Sri Lanka's Horton Plains, the edge of the central highlands breaks away in a sheer drop of several hundred metres to the lowlands below. Qingshui Cliff on Taiwan's east coast plunges marble and gneiss straight into the Pacific, and the Edge of the World near Riyadh is a broken escarpment of the Tuwaiq range above an ancient sea floor.
The volcanic coasts show columnar basalt at its most regular. Tōjinbō in Japan is a line of andesite columns standing over the Sea of Japan, Daepo Jusangjeolli on Jeju Island is a shoreline of stacked hexagonal pillars beaten by waves, and Cape Stolbchaty on Kunashir in the Kuril Islands fans its basalt columns along a wild beach. In Mongolia, the Flaming Cliffs of Bayanzag are red sandstone bluffs in the Gobi, famous as the place where the first scientifically recognised dinosaur eggs were found.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tōjinbō | Cliff | Japan | |
| 2 | Trango Towers | Cliff | Pakistan | |
| 3 | Flaming Cliffs | Cliff | Mongolia | |
| 4 | Cape Stolbchaty | Cliff | Russia | |
| 5 | World's End, Horton Plains | Cliff | Sri Lanka | |
| 6 | Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff | Cliff | South Korea | |
| 7 | Qingshui Cliff | Cliff | Taiwan | |
| 8 | Edge of the World | Cliff | Saudi Arabia |
01 Tōjinbō
Japan · 20.4 km from Fukui36.238° N 136.125° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 The name comes from a legend. Local tradition holds that Tōjinbō was a strong and violent Buddhist monk who was hated for his crimes; in 1182 his fellow monks took him on an outing to the cliffs, got him drunk and pushed him into the sea. His angry spirit, so the story goes, raised a storm on the anniversary every year, until a priest held memorial rites to calm him.
Did you know? The rock formed when magma forced its way into layers of sedimentary rock and cooled underground, later laid bare by the waves of the Sea of Japan.
02 Trango Towers
Pakistan35.757° N 76.201° E
mtzendo · CC BY-SA 4.0 These walls became a proving ground for high-altitude rock climbing. Nameless Tower was first climbed in 1976 by the British team of Joe Brown, Mo Anthoine, Martin Boysen and Malcolm Howells; Great Trango followed in 1977, climbed by Galen Rowell, John Roskelley, Kim Schmitz, Jim Morrissey and Dennis Hennek. In 1984 the Norwegians Hans Christian Doseth and Finn Dæhli reached the east summit by the great east face and both died on the descent.
Did you know? The 1,340-metre east-southeast headwall of Great Trango has been climbed by only one completed route, the Grand Voyage of Xaver Bongard and John Middendorf.
03 Flaming Cliffs
Mongolia44.139° N 103.728° E
Image by hbieser from Pixabay The colour belongs to rocks of the Djadochta Formation, laid down in the Late Cretaceous, roughly in the Campanian age some 75 million years ago. At that time the region was a warm, semi-arid land of wind-blown dunes, and the sediments that now form the cliffs are mostly fine reddish-orange to pale sands and sandstones. Animals buried in these sands were often preserved whole, and the formation has become one of the best-known sources of small Late Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Did you know? The type specimen of Oviraptor was found lying over a nest of about fifteen eggs, its skull separated from them by only some 10 cm of sediment.
04 Cape Stolbchaty
Russia44.024° N 145.676° E
Екатерина Васягина · CC BY-SA 4.0 The columns were formed by volcanic activity in the island's distant past, associated with the nearby Mendeleev volcano; the scientists of the Kurilsky nature reserve describe the rock as andesite–dacite lava that was squeezed out and solidified in place. Erosion has broken the formation into distinct parts, and the reserve gives them names that describe what one sees: the Organ, where the columns stand upright in tight ranks like pipes; the Bastion; the Pavement, where the broken tops of the prisms form a tiled floor at the waterline; and the Turtle. Along the same shore stand weathered stacks that, in the right light, look like hooded monks.
Did you know? It is protected within the Kurilsky nature reserve, founded in 1984 and covering about 65,000 hectares of Kunashir and two small islands.
05 World's End, Horton Plains
Sri Lanka · 36 km from Badulla6.783° N 80.793° E
Pamuditha2000 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The cliff is reached on foot by a circular trail of about 9.5 kilometres that begins near the old Farr Inn visitor centre. The route crosses open grassland and patches of cloud forest before reaching Mini World's End, a smaller drop of around 270 metres that serves as a preview, and then the main edge. The loop returns by Baker's Falls, a 20-metre cascade on the Belihul Oya, named after the explorer Samuel Baker. The whole circuit takes about three hours at an easy pace.
Did you know? Stone tools of the prehistoric Balangoda culture have been found on the plains above the escarpment.
06 Daepo Jusangjeolli Cliff
South Korea · 31.6 km from Jeju33.237° N 126.425° E
Image by HanshinLyon from Pixabay What makes the place remarkable is the variety within that order. Some columns stand upright in tight ranks; others lie on their side, their hexagonal ends facing outward like the butt ends of stacked timber; at the base, waves have broken the tops into stepping-stone platforms. Korea's heritage authority describes the joints as clean and varied enough to look like deliberate sculpture, and the comparison holds: at high tide the surf explodes against the pillars and falls back in white sheets, while at calmer moments the water in the gaps turns deep blue-green.
Did you know? The lava came from a small volcanic cone, or oreum, called Nokhaji-ak, one of the hundreds of satellite cones scattered across Jeju.
07 Qingshui Cliff
Taiwan · 27.7 km from Hualien City24.219° N 121.693° E
Fred Hsu · CC BY-SA 3.0 The cliff is made of the same rocks that form the marble canyon of Taroko Gorge just inland: metamorphosed limestone turned to marble, with gneiss and green schist, pushed up and folded where the Philippine Sea Plate grinds against the Eurasian Plate. From a viewpoint the eye travels down pale, forested rock faces to a narrow ribbon of pebble beach and then to the sea, which changes colour from the shallows to the open ocean. The contrast of colour is the thing to look for, along with the thin line of road cut into the mountainside, appearing and vanishing in tunnels.
Did you know? The rocks began rising about nine million years ago, as the collision of the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates pushed deep marble and gneiss to the surface.
08 Edge of the World
Saudi Arabia24.946° N 45.991° E
Sammy Six · CC BY 2.0 The cliffs are made of layers of Jurassic limestone laid down when this part of Arabia lay under a shallow sea, and the floor beneath them is often described as an ancient ocean bed. Fossil corals, shells and ammonites are found in the rock. The ridge was raised by movements of the Arabian plate and owes its sharp profile to harder beds that resisted erosion while softer rock wore away. The name Tuwaiq is linked to the Najdi word for a ring or bow, after the escarpment's long arc; locally the viewpoint is also called simply al-Mutall, "the overlook".
Did you know? In the 13th century the geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi recorded the escarpment under the name Al-'Aridh, a name that later came to cover only the section around Riyadh.
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 spectacular cliffs in Asia?
- On our list, Tōjinbō (Japan) ranks first, followed by Trango Towers (Pakistan) and Flaming Cliffs (Mongolia).
- Which country has the most cliffs in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Japan (1), Mongolia (1) and Pakistan (1).
- Why does basalt form hexagonal columns?
- When a thick lava flow cools and contracts, it cracks into a network of joints that run perpendicular to the cooling surface. Hexagons are the most efficient way to relieve the stress evenly, so the rock splits into long, mostly six-sided columns.
- Where were the first dinosaur eggs discovered?
- At the Flaming Cliffs (Bayanzag) in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, by the American Museum of Natural History expedition led by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1923. They were the first dinosaur eggs to be recognised as such by scientists.
- How many cliffs are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 8 cliffs in 8 countries. Japan has the most, with 1.