Stretching across central Oman, the Wahiba Sands offer a dramatic desert landscape of rolling dunes that shift in color with the changing light. This vast sea of sand is home to towering ridges and open plains, creating an otherworldly backdrop for exploration.

Sinaloa, in Northwest Mexico, comprises 18 municipalities, and Culiacán Rosales serves as its capital. It is located opposite Baja California Sur, across the Gulf of California.

Raglan, on New Zealand’s North Island, is a coastal town that has earned international renown for its surf culture while retaining a bohemian, community-centered spirit.

Dambulla, situated in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, is best known for its rock temple complex that has been in use for over two thousand years. The Dambulla Cave Temple, also called the Golden Temple of Dambulla, is made up of five caves carved into a granite outcrop, filled with over 150 Buddha statues and intricate wall paintings. These caves were first used by King Valagamba in the 1st century BCE as a refuge during exile, and later transformed into a sacred site.

Punakha sits in one of Bhutan’s most fertile valleys, cradled where the Mo Chhu and Pho Chhu rivers meet. For centuries it served as the kingdom’s capital and remains a place rich with stories woven through its fields, temples, and riverbanks. The city’s low elevation brings warmer weather than much of Bhutan’s highland regions, and rice paddies fill the landscape with vivid green during planting and golden hues at harvest.