IMAGES: AWL IMAGES
With 25 selected by the global editors of National Geographic Traveller, and an additional 10 from the UK edition
busan
south korea
CULTURE
From craft breweries to Asia’s top film festival, South Korea’s second largest city is fuelling a cultural boom
With K-pop and Korean film making waves in global culture, the country’s creative flair is firmly in the spotlight. Cinema is a communal experience in Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, which has hosted one of Asia’s most prestigious annual film festivals for nearly three decades. In 2022, the Busan International Film Festival held screenings in 14 neighbourhood venues across this seaport of 3.4 million people.
Before performances, movie lovers can grab a craft beer — Busan is celebrated for its artisan brewers — or stroll through Citizens Park, a redeveloped US military base. Opened in 2014, the park is a 133-acre retreat in the middle of downtown, planted with more than one million trees and shrubs, comprising 97 species in all. Famed for its mountains and beaches, Busan is also home to the Nakdong River Estuary. South Korea’s longest river runs through the city and shelters the whooper swan and other endangered waterfowl.
ADVENTURE
choquequirao
peru
An adventurous trek to the remote sister site of Machu Picchu is becoming more accessible
One of the most isolated Inca sites in the Peruvian Andes, the ruins of Choquequirao are reserved for the hardy few who put in the effort to reach it. Those who make the trek to the sprawling complex in the south of the country can do so only on foot, zigzagging up and down steep paths for 18 miles to reach its 10,000ft elevation, suspended between the high Andes and the jungles below.
But change is coming to rock the ‘cradle of gold’, the meaning of Choquequirao in the Quechua language. New infrastructure plans are expected to boost visits to Machu Picchu’s sister city.
Pre-pandemic, Machu Picchu had more than 1.5 million visitors annually, according to Peruvian tourism officials. Choquequirao counted fewer than 9,500. To increase accessibility, the Peruvian government has committed to spending $260 million (£231.12 million) to build a cable car spanning three miles between the town of Kiuñalla and the archaeological site.
CULTURE
egypt
King Tut’s new home at Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum opens
The debut of King Tut’s magnificent new home on the 100th anniversary of his discovery — and a string of recent archaeological findings — is reigniting global interest in Egypt. Dramatic and modern, Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) will be located in Giza at the edge of the Pyramids when it opens this month — “the perfect museum in the perfect setting,” says Fredrik Hiebert, the National Geographic Society’s archaeologist-in-residence. Hiebert started his career in Egypt and is currently supervising National Geographic’s virtual, multimedia exhibition Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience.
“It’s like the Egyptians built another pyramid to display all the golden treasures of Tutankhamun, many of which were hidden in the basement of the [old] Cairo Museum,” he says. “It’s going to become a destination museum and will change the way people visit Egypt.”
NATURE
scottish highlands
united kingdom
An ambitious plan to replant and restore native species takes root
The windswept Scottish Highlands are celebrated for their austere beauty, but the sheep-scoured landscapes are in fact the result of human interference. In ancient times, Scotland’s glens and hills were covered by the great Caledonian Forest. But centuries of logging and overgrazing devastated the ecosystem.