15 More Extraordinary Places You've Probably Never Heard

The world, as we all know, is a big place - alive with wonderful, well-known attractions.
And plenty that are far more invisible to popular perception. For every New York there is a canyon in a corner of Colorado which barely raises a flicker of recognition outside the state. For every crowded marketplace in Marrakech there is a mountain-framed mosque far from the beaten track in rural Morocco. For every Tokyo skyline, there is a Japanese island awash with art, utterly aloof to the noise of the capital.
The images in this gallery represent 15 such places – from the jungle-shrouded back-waters of the Far East to the sandy coastline of Mozambique via the hard edge of Western Australia.
Know some of them already? Then count yourself as a well-informed, questing traveller. Unaware of many of them? They are all waiting to be discovered...
Read the first part of our guide here
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1. Gunung Mulu National Park (Malaysia)

Tucked into the north of Sarawak – the largest Malaysian state on the rainforest-shrouded island of Borneo – Gunung Mulu National Park is home to one of the world’s most spectacular cave systems. In particular, it is home to the Deer Cave (see above), a colossal rock-framed corridor which is ranked among the biggest cave passages on the planet. You could store a fleet of 747s within – but the main residents are the wrinkle-lipped bats who emerge from the main cavern mouth every evening at dusk – and set off, en masse, to find their dinner.

2. Ninh Binh Province (Vietnam)

Pinned to the north of Vietnam, 60 miles south of Hanoi, Ninh Binh Province is an antidote to the crowded confines of Halong Bay. It deals in similar wonders – limestone scenery, lonely karsts rising from the water – but without a million tour boats chugging into the picture. Most striking, perhaps, is Tam Coc canyon, where cliffs and caves are laid out for photogenic reflection along the slow-moving flow of the Ngo Dong River.

3. Aoshima (Japan)

One of Japan’s hidden secrets, the little isle of Naoshima lies just south of the main island of Honshu (roughly equidistant between Hiroshima and Osaka). It is famed for its love of art, to the extent that intriguing sculptures – polka-dot patterned pumpkins among them (see above) – dot the landscape. The Chichu Art Museum, meanwhile, has a surprising range of works by Claude Monet – a long way from the gardens of Normandy which inspired him.

4. Miho Museum (Japan)

Another Japanese wonder, this remarkable institution lies in the town of Shigaraki, near Kyoto. It houses a collection of Western and Asian antiques garnered by textile heiress Mihoko Koyama – but the museum’s most striking facet is its design. It was crafted by the Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei – who effectively injected it into a mountainside. Three quarters of the building is cocooned within rock – large glass walls and a transparent roof allow light to penetrate. A hint of Bond-villain lair? Perhaps – although this is a spectacular structure which should certainly be spared 007’s destructive urges.

5.Kimberley region (Australia)

Australia has its iconic moments – Sydney Opera House, Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef. This we know. But it also has its areas of thrilling remoteness – of which the Kimberley region is certainly one. Roughly three times the size of England, the northernmost portion of Western Australia is difficult to reach – it is a long way from just about anywhere you may decide to drive from. But it rewards those who make the effort to see it in a series of stark landscapes – low-slung mountain ridges, steep-sided canyons, sullen rivers like the Ord and the Fitzroy flowing through a cracked landscape. It also has the Bungle Bungles (known as the Purnululu range by the indigenous Kija people) – rounded lumps of rock, kindred spirits to Uluru, which form the centerpiece of Purnululu National Park.

6.Black Canyon of the Gunnison (USA)

Deep in the wilds of Colorado lies Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Like a mini version of the Grand Canyon, it has sheer walls of grey stone that plunge more than 2,700ft to the thundering Gunnison river – a great fissure so narrow in places that sunlight only reaches to the bottom at midday. Above, ravens and golden eagles float and dip on the thermals. According to the National Parks website, the canyon contains some of the steepest cliffs and oldest rock-faces in North America – yet even in peak season, you may see no other visitors and no RVs. There are marked trails along the north and south rims, and experienced, fit climbers can risk the long scramble down to the inner canyon.

7.Marfa (USA)

Very much the USA’s no-nonsense state, Texas is not a corner of America where you expect to find artworks on the side of dusty highways. So Marfa is a surprise to most visitors. Hidden in the Chihuahuan Desert just 60 miles from the Mexican border, this one-horse railroad town was revitalised in the Eighties by New York artist Donald Judd – who used it as a canvas for his minimalist vision. Cue a series of sculptures and installations, as well as a contemporary art museum, the Chinati Foundation, which make the town a hotspot of visual culture. That all of this exists in a slice of desert that Spanish explorers called El Despoblado (“The Uninhabited”) makes Marfa all the more exotic.

8.Scotts Bluff National Monument (USA)

Nebraska rarely tops the must-visit lists of even the most devoted of US-obsessed wanderers. But it calls to those who love the more rough-shod contours of the American landscape in the form of this grand ridge of rock, which rears to 800ft (240m) above the plains of this less-known state. Utterly majestic, Scotts Bluff might be described as a lost shard of Monument Valley. You can climb to its summit and peer out across a vista that only true Americanophiles ever see, with the North Platte River winding along far below.

9.The Rupununi region (Guyana)

South America is blessed with numerous landmark moments – and even in Guyana, the Rupununi region is lost behind the splash and crash from the country’s most famous site, Kaieteur Falls. But, tucked into the south-west of this little nation, close to the border with Brazil, this expanse of savannah and wetland deserves closer inspection. Not least for the graceful – yet enormous – Victoria Amazonica lilypads which decorate the surface of the Rupununi River, and the otters who swim playfully between these saucers of green.

10. San Agustin Archaeological Park (Colombia)

Slotted into the south of Colombia, in Huila department, San Agustin Archaeological Park was granted Unesco World Heritage status in 1995 – and with good reason. It spreads out as an enclave of grassy clearings, dotted with excavated tombs which may be almost two millennia old. Who was buried here is a mystery – this unnamed Andean civilisation had vanished long before the Spanish conquest of South America in the 16th century. All they left were the “tomb guardians” who protected them in death – slabs of stone carved with faces that, though human, also have the features of birds and jaguars.

11. Los Haitises National Park (Dominican Republic)

The Dominican Republic stands as a mystery to many travellers – with even those who make it to what is the eastern half of the second biggest island in the Caribbean (behind Cuba) being restricted to the beaches of Punta Cana by an absence of viable transport links. Pinned to the north-east coast, Los Haitises National Park can only really be accessed by boat on an official guided tour – but it seduces those who discover it with lonesome rock formations and lush mangrove swamps. This is "Hispaniola" as Columbus found it in 1492.

12. Ibo Island (Mozambique)

Part of the Quirimbas archipelago – a cluster of islands which dots the Indian Ocean, just off the long eastern edge of Mozambique – Ibo was once one of Portugal’s main footprints in Africa. Then the colonial era collapsed in 1974, and this distant outpost was left marooned by the tide of history. Four decades on, its churches, forts and homes are sun-bleached and fragmented – though some of them are being reconditioned as boutique hotels, as Mozambique struggles away from a difficult past into a more promising present.

13. Ruaha National Park (Tanzania)

This glorious expanse of epic vistas and noble wildlife is the largest national park in Tanzania – but it suffers from a lack of profile when placed alongside Serengeti National Park and the annual spectacle of the Great Migration. No matter. Those who venture to this sublime slice of land at the heart of the country – feasible to reach by road, but most easily accessed via the Jongomero airstrip – find a place where elephants roam amid the howls of wild dogs and the calls of more than 500 bird species. That the Great Ruaha River – which dissects the park, often runs dry in parts – only adds to the area’s dusty majesty.

14. Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art (Slovakia)

You expect to encounter one of the 20th century’s most revered artists in New York, where his Factory studio was a creative whirlwind. You know you can find him in his birthplace, Pittsburgh, where the Andy Warhol Museum (warhol.org) salutes the city’s most famous son. But a town in Slovenia? Medzilaborce has a link to Warhol in that his mother, Julia Warhola, was born 10 miles away in the village of Mikova. It embraces the connection in style via the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art, set up by the icon’s family in 1991. It has a fine collection of his works, including a raft of Marilyn Monroe prints (see above).

15. Tin Mal Mosque (Morocco)

Concealed in the High Atlas mountain range – alongside the serpentine road which leads from Marrakesh to Morocco's desert south – lies the Tin Mal Mosque. This is a roofless ruin of a place of worship built in 1156 to commemorate the founder of the Almohad dynasty. The keeper will unlock it for you – it is one of only two mosques in Morocco that non-Muslims may enter. Inside, you will find intricate plasterwork and sculpted ceilings that hint at the glorious building this once was. It is just 60 miles (100km) from Marrakesh, but most tourists never come this far. Be one of the few who do.

Source:Telegraph

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