From rafting to swimming, snorkelling and diving, here’s a few of our favourite water-based holidays around the world. Surfing at Raglan, New Zealand Don’t be surprised if you to come to the beach town of Raglan and stay for longer than intended. Many do. Experienced surfers are drawn by the reliable swells and one of…
However good your intentions are, it’s often all too easy to retreat to the comfort of the hotel room and shy away from really engaging with the locals when you’re on your travels. Here’s a selection of holiday ideas that will thrust you into the heart of the community you’re visiting and foster a much…
The island of Borneo – which is divided between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei – is home to some of the world’s best diving sites, along with a huge variety of plants, birds and mammals, some unique to the country. Yet it is also the land of the super-logger and oil-palm plantations that are eradicating the…
One of the great pleasures of travel is observing – and learning from – the locals. Here’s a selection of awe-inspiring rituals from around the world, that feature dancing, theatrics and a little sacrificial slaughter. Cavorting with the kukeri, Bulgaria When it comes to the rich folk heritage of Eastern Europe, few events carry the…
Hiking up a volcano and dunking in natural hot springs should be on everyone’s bucket list. If you’re yet to get up close and personal with lava, and the only geysers you’ve encountered are down the pub, might we suggest one of these memorable experiences? Hiking by Stromboli’s lava flows, Italy Stromboli is the most…
For all the media’s focus on big-money events, it’s often weird local games or odd new hybrid events that really capture the joy of sport across the world. So we asked the authors of The Rough Guide to Cult Sport to select their ten favourite strange sports from the book (with apologies to the likes…
Whether we dwell in city centre or suburb, we nearly all dream of escaping the humdrum and finding somewhere truly off the grid. As the world shrinks, more and more places that promise isolation find their offerings increasingly crowded. Here’s five destinations, drawn from Rough Guides’ Make The Most Of Your Time On Earth, that…
There are few expeditions more disquieting than visiting Indonesia’s Komodo Island. Approaching by boat, it appears staggeringly beautiful – the archetypal tropical hideaway. But doubts about the wisdom of what you’re about to do surface as soon as you step ashore and discover that you’re sharing the beach with the local deer population: if they’re…
From canoeing the lakes of Vietnam to riding an elephant through the jungles of Indonesia, enjoy the journey as much as the destination with our pick of some of the most amazing alternative travel experiences in Southeast Asia. Catch a Biodiesel bus around Cambodia Visits to the temples of Angkor Wat, the Killing Fields around…
It’s not the most famous, the most active or the biggest volcano in the world, but Indonesia’s 2392m-high Mount Bromo is one of the most picturesque – in a dusty, post-apocalyptic sort of way. The still-smoking and apparently perfectly symmetrical cone rises precipitously out of a vast, windswept, sandy plain. This is the Sea of Sand, actually the floor…
