The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty in Asia

21 places in 11 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Lake Baikal

   Russia53.303° N 108.005° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   That age is why roughly 80% of the species found in the lake exist nowhere else on Earth. The strangest of them is the golomyanka, a nearly transparent fish with no swim bladder and a body that's up to 40% fat by weight, adaptations that let it live and reproduce at crushing pressure a kilometre or more down — it's essentially the only fish species alive that has fully committed to the lake's abyssal zone as a permanent home.

   Did you know? Beneath the lake bed lies some 7 km of sediment, so the floor of the rift itself is 8 to 11 km below the surface.

   More about Lake Baikal →

2. 02 Ha Long Bay

   Vietnam · 12.4 km from Hạ Long20.900° N 107.200° E

   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   The scenery is the drowned end of a karst landscape. The rock itself is hundreds of millions of years old, but the shapes are the work of roughly twenty million years of tropical rain dissolving it: clusters of cone-shaped hills in some parts of the bay, isolated towers standing alone in others. When sea levels rose, the valleys between them filled with water, leaving the summits as islands. Rain and waves have also hollowed out caves.

   Did you know? Of the bay's roughly 1,969 islands, 989 have names, and only about 40 have permanent inhabitants.

   More about Ha Long Bay →

3. 03 Tiger Leaping Gorge

   People's Republic of China27.230° N 100.140° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   The name comes from a story, not a survey: a tiger, cornered by hunters with the river roaring below and the gorge walls closing in, is said to have leapt from the bank onto a boulder sitting mid-channel at the narrowest point — barely 25 meters across — and from there onto the far side to freedom. Two separate spots along the gorge claim to be that exact place, and the boulder at the upper one is still pointed out to visitors as the Tiger Leaping Stone.

   Did you know? In the early 1980s four rafters set off down the gorge and were never seen again; the river here is considered unnavigable.

   More about Tiger Leaping Gorge →

4. 04 Valley of Flowers National Park

   India30.730° N 79.618° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty
   • biosphere reserve

   

   The outside world learned of it by accident. In 1931 the British mountaineers Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton and R. L. Holdsworth lost their way returning from Kamet and came down into a valley full of flowers; Smythe gave it its English name and wrote a book about it. In 1939 the botanist Joan Margaret Legge, sent by Kew Gardens, fell to her death while collecting plants on its slopes, and her sister later put up a memorial near the spot. The valley was declared a national park in the early 1980s and lies, together with Nanda Devi National Park to the east, within the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.

   Did you know? Long before Smythe's visit, Colonel Edmund Smyth had reached the Pushpawati valley in 1862.

   More about Valley of Flowers National Park →

5. 05 Huanglong

   People's Republic of China32.741° N 103.831° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   The pools are the spectacle. Depending on depth, algae and light, the water shifts from turquoise and emerald to deep blue, amber and pale yellow, and the terrace walls themselves glint gold. The largest set, the Five-Colour Pools near the head of the valley at around 3,500 metres, packs hundreds of small basins into one hillside beneath snowy peaks. Along the way are travertine falls, shallow sheets of water sliding over the rock and caves formed by the same deposits. At the head of the water stands an old temple, associated with both Buddhist and Bon traditions.

   Did you know? Just below lies the Zhengyan, or Flamboyant, group with 658 pools, and further down the Guests Welcome Pond group has about 350.

   More about Huanglong →

6. 06 Wulingyuan

   People's Republic of China29.346° N 110.467° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   The pillars were shaped over hundreds of millions of years: the sandstone was laid down in the Devonian period and then lifted by tectonic forces, and erosion by water carved it into separate columns. The scenic area covers about 690 square kilometres of the Wuling Mountains and is made up of four parts: Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, the Suoxi Valley and Tianzi Mountain nature reserves, and the more recently added Yangjiajie. There are some 40 caves, many rich in calcite formations, and a natural arch, Tianqiaoshengkong, the "bridge across the sky", counted among the highest natural bridges in the world.

   Did you know? Zhangjiajie, one of the four parts of Wulingyuan, became China's very first national forest park in 1982.

   More about Wulingyuan →

7. 07 Seongsan Ilchulbong

   South Korea · 39.5 km from Jeju33.458° N 126.942° E

   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   What makes the place geologically famous is how clearly it shows its own making. The wave-cut cliffs expose the internal layering of the cone in cross-section, a textbook of hydrovolcanic eruption that helped earn its listing in 2007 as part of the UNESCO World Heritage site Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes. From the summit you look back over the low neck of land that ties the cone to Jeju, toward green farmland and the volcanic cones (oreum) that dot the island. During the Second World War the Japanese navy dug some eighteen caves into the base of the cliffs to hide suicide boats, a sombre detail in an otherwise serene setting.

   Did you know? The grassy crater floor lies about 90 metres above sea level, roughly halfway between the waves and the rim.

   More about Seongsan Ilchulbong →

8. 08 Gunung Mulu National Park

   Malaysia4.043° N 114.813° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   The superlatives are real. Deer Cave has one of the largest cave passages known, 120 to 150 metres across. The Sarawak Chamber, discovered in 1980, is one of the largest underground chambers in the world, about 600 metres long and 415 wide. Clearwater Cave is the longest cave system in Southeast Asia, with more than 227 km of passages mapped. A handful of show caves, among them Deer Cave and neighbouring Lang's Cave, are open to ordinary visitors.

   Did you know? Mulu is regarded as the most thoroughly studied area of tropical karst anywhere in the world.

   More about Gunung Mulu National Park →

9. 09 Jiuzhaigou Valley

   People's Republic of China33.200° N 103.900° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   That seismic origin isn't just history; it's ongoing risk the park has had to live with directly. In August 2017, a magnitude-7 earthquake tore through the region and damaged several of the valley's signature features, including draining much of the water from what had been one of its clearest pools — the same kind of violent, sudden geology that built the place in the first place came back to reshape it.

   Did you know? Nuorilang Falls is about 20 metres high but some 320 metres wide, often described as one of the widest highland waterfalls in China.

   More about Jiuzhaigou Valley →

10. 10 Huangshan

    People's Republic of China30.125° N 118.167° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The pines are their own attraction, and their strangeness is easy to miss in photographs. Many grow directly out of bare granite, roots forced into cracks so narrow there's barely visible soil to speak of, twisting sideways along the rock to chase what little water and nutrient exists. Nearly a hundred individual trees have been given names by generations of visitors; the most famous, the thousand-year-old Guest-Greeting Pine at the foot of Yu'nv Peak, has become as much a symbol of the mountain as the peaks themselves.

    Did you know? Known in the Qin era as Yishan, the mountain was renamed Huangshan by imperial decree in 747 in honour of the Yellow Emperor.

    More about Huangshan →

11. 11 Derinkuyu Underground City

    Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri

    Turkey · 27.8 km from Nevşehir38.373° N 34.735° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    What makes Derinkuyu extraordinary is how completely it was engineered for survival. A system of vertical shafts carried fresh air down through every level, one of them a central well more than fifty metres deep that supplied water both to the hidden rooms and to the village above. Narrow corridors force visitors to stoop in single file, and at key points heavy round stone doors, set in grooves, could be rolled across the passage from the inside and could not be moved from the outside. A tunnel several kilometres long is believed to have linked the city to its neighbour at Kaymaklı.

    Did you know? Each level could be sealed off on its own, so defenders could cut off a breached section, move people internally and even mount counterattacks.

    More about Derinkuyu Underground City →

12. 12 Karakul Lake

    Tajikistan39.040° N 73.420° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    A peninsula reaching out from the southern shore and an island off the northern shore divide the lake into two very different basins. The eastern one is shallow, about 13 to 19 metres deep, while the western basin plunges to around 230 metres. Karakul has no outlet, and its water is brackish; after the last ice age its level stood some 35 metres higher than today. Only one species of fish, a loach of the genus Triplophysa, lives in it. The lake is a Ramsar wetland, listed in 2001, and an Important Bird Area for migratory and breeding birds, and it lies within Tajik National Park.

    Did you know? The lake's only fish, a small loach, is named Triplophysa lacusnigri, a scientific name meaning roughly the loach of the black lake.

    More about Karakul Lake →

13. 13 Pamukkale

    Turkey · 17.4 km from Denizli37.924° N 29.122° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The city built on top of it, Hierapolis, wasn't founded for the view. A shrine had stood on the site since at least the 7th century BC, and the Hellenistic king Eumenes II turned it into a proper spa town in the 2nd century BC on the strength of exactly what still draws people today: a belief that the thermal water cured what regular medicine couldn't. It worked well enough, or was believed to work well enough, that Hierapolis grew into a city of roughly 100,000 people, survived a devastating earthquake under the emperor Nero in 60 CE, and was rebuilt as a fully Roman city afterward.

    Did you know? Priests of Cybele went down into the poisonous cave and came out unharmed, while visitors could buy birds and small animals to see how deadly its fumes were.

    More about Pamukkale →

14. 14 Dasht-e Lut

    Iran30.264° N 59.241° E

    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The great spectacle is the kaluts, the yardangs of the central Lut. Over a belt some 150 km long, the wind has carved soft sedimentary deposits into long parallel ridges separated by deep corridors, like the hulls of an immense fleet of upturned ships or the ruined walls of a city. The tallest stand many tens of metres high, and they are counted among the tallest and most continuous yardang fields in the world. In the low sun of morning and evening their flanks turn amber and rose and their shadows stretch for hundreds of metres across the floor of the corridors.

    Did you know? NASA's Aqua satellite recorded a ground temperature of 70.7 °C here in 2005, while the air above may have been far cooler.

    More about Dasht-e Lut →

15. 15 Göreme National Park

    Göreme Tarihî Millî Parkı

    Turkey · 12.5 km from Nevşehir38.653° N 34.863° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    What makes the valleys extraordinary is that people moved into the rock. From the 4th century small groups of hermits cut cells into the tuff, and over time these were linked into monastic communities with chapels, refectories and storerooms carved rather than built. The area around Göreme is said to have held some 400 churches. Many of them were painted: some decoration goes back to the 6th and 7th centuries, while the most accomplished cycles belong to the 10th and 11th. The cluster now presented as the Göreme Open Air Museum holds the best of them.

    Did you know? An inscription in Tokalı names its painter, Nikephoros, and its patrons, Constantine and his son Leon, a rare case of known donors among the rock churches.

    More about Göreme National Park →

16. 16 Wadi Rum

    Jordan · 33.6 km from Aqaba29.576° N 35.420° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    People have passed through here for thousands of years, and they have left their mark on the rock. Petroglyphs of hunters and antelope, inscriptions in the scripts of ancient Arabia, and a small Nabataean temple excavated near Rum village all testify to an old route between Arabia and the Levant. In 2025 a hieroglyphic inscription bearing the cartouches of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III was announced, the first royal inscription of its kind found in Wadi Rum. At the spring of Ain Shalaaleh, water still drips from a crevice beneath Nabataean carvings.

    Did you know? The valley's name is traditionally linked to Iram of the Pillars, a lost city mentioned in the Quran.

    More about Wadi Rum →

17. 17 Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park

    Philippines10.167° N 118.917° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The river's last stretch is tidal: seawater pushes up to about 6 km into the cave, so a thin layer of fresh water floats on top of salt water. Inside are huge chambers, including the Italian's Chamber, about 360 metres long and one of the largest cave rooms known, and galleries of stalactites and stalagmites lit only by the boatman's lamp. Explorers in 2010 found a second level to the river, with small waterfalls and a dome rising around 300 metres above the water. Bats and swiftlets roost overhead, and the deeper passages are almost impossible to explore because of the lack of oxygen.

    Did you know? The sea cow fossil, dating from the Miocene, sat about 3 metres above the river in a passage that had never been explored before.

    More about Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park →

18. 18 Tubbataha Reef

    Philippines8.953° N 119.868° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    This is a true atoll system, built on an extinct submarine volcano on the Cagayan Ridge: as the old volcanic islands sank, the corals kept growing towards the light. The result is a shallow reef top that ends abruptly in walls dropping more than 100 metres into blue water, and those walls are what divers come for. Surveys have counted around 600 fish species and 360 coral species, along with sharks (whitetip reef sharks are the familiar sight, hammerheads the prize), manta rays, turtles, schools of barracuda and jacks, and Napoleon wrasse. The North Islet is a nesting ground for seabirds and marine turtles.

    Did you know? Records of the reef's seabirds go back to 1911, and around eight species breed here, including red-footed and brown boobies and sooty terns.

    More about Tubbataha Reef →

19. 19 Badain Jaran Desert

    People's Republic of China40.072° N 102.210° E

    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The combination is what makes the landscape so extraordinary: a steep golden dune falling straight into a pool of blue, green or rust-red water, . Rainfall here is only about 50–60 mm a year, and evaporation is many times greater, so the lakes are fed by groundwater whose origin scientists still debate. Their chemistry varies enormously, from almost fresh to brines of more than 330 grams of salt per litre, so that lakes a short walk apart can be entirely different in character. Some slopes also sing: in dry summer conditions the sand sliding down steep leeward faces produces a low booming rumble that can exceed 105 decibels.

    Did you know? The World Heritage property alone covers about 7,260 square kilometres, surrounded by an even larger buffer zone.

    More about Badain Jaran Desert →

20. 20 Mount Sanqing

    People's Republic of China28.952° N 118.052° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    The name means "Three Pure Ones", after the trinity of the highest deities of Taoism, because the three main summits — Yujing, the highest at 1,817 metres, Yuxu and Yuhua — were likened to them sitting side by side. The mountain has been a Taoist place for many centuries, and the Ming dynasty was its heyday: at its heart, in a high basin at about 1,530 metres, stands the Sanqing Palace, rebuilt in the 1450s, the centre of a cluster of old Taoist buildings on the mountain.

    Did you know? The mountain sits on an ancient suture where crustal blocks of South China joined about 850 million years ago; its granite peaks are far younger, from the Mesozoic.

    More about Mount Sanqing →

21. 21 Shilin Stone Forest

    People's Republic of China24.818° N 103.325° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty
    • UNESCO Global Geopark

    

    The protected area spreads over roughly 500 km² and is divided into several zones, which include caves, lakes and waterfalls as well as the pillar fields. The most visited part, near the main entrance, is a dense maze of peaks with smooth, fluted sides; another section holds the formation everyone comes to find — a single pillar said to be Ashima. In the story told by the Sani, a branch of the Yi people who live around Shilin, Ashima was a girl forbidden to marry the man she loved and turned to stone; local tradition still points to her silhouette among the rocks.

    Did you know? The main pillar fields are carved from Permian Makou limestone, while the Naigu Stone Forest formed in dolomite and dolomitic limestone of the older Qixia Formation.

    More about Shilin Stone Forest →