Features - Asia

The archetypal bustling Metropolis, Tokyo effortlessly blends contemporary wonders with traditional sensibilities.

Built, destroyed, and rebuilt about a dozen times, Delhi is one of the oldest cities in the world and is also one of the most multi-layered.

The gateway to the Himalayas, Kathmandu has been attracting travellers, adventurers, and the downright curious for millennia.

Famed for its millionaires, movie stars, and maze-like settlements, Mumbai is a city of extremes. Its inhabitants come from every Indian region and walk of life, but live crammed together on a narrow peninsula of reclaimed land curling into the Arabian Sea.

Hanoi is no stranger to foreigners. The 1,000-year-old capital has been occupied by the Chinese and the French, and saw its fair share of American GIs during the Vietnam War.

Think Beijing is a city of bureaucrats while Shanghai has all the fun?

Bengaluru – ‘The garden city’ – in the dawn of 2011, is an invigorating but tasty city to tackle. The local flavours are aplenty, but to relish any of them you’ll need the resolve and patience of a seasoned wayfarer – especially to tackle the traffic chaos caused by an as-yet rough-hewn metro rail system cutting through the city’s central avenues. Yet beneath its knotty, hard-shelled surface exist layers of delights, distillations, and delicacies unique to Bengaluru. All you need to do is dig in with gusto.

Phuket – now famed for sun-and-sea tourism, this lush tropical island in the south of Thailand was once rich in tin deposits. Devastated by a Burmese invasion in 1809, traders from the British Straits moved all mining activity to the Bay of Tongkah near Old Phuket town.