Forget Machu Picchu: seven newly accessible wonders of the world
Stunning historical sites, which long existed as local secrets, can now be visited thanks to intrepid tour operators, hoteliers, and infrastructure improvements
If visiting the world’s most ancient temples and monuments, such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Machu Picchu in Peru, Chichen Itza in Mexico and Petra in Jordan – inspires your inner Indiana Jones, just imagine what it would be like to explore world wonders few people have ever even heard of yet.
Some of the world’s most staggering historical sites – places that have long existed as local secrets – have recently been made accessible thanks to a slew of intrepid tour operators, hoteliers, or infrastructure developments.
A willingness to move a little off the beaten path often provides great rewards
In the coming years, these places will find their way onto hordes of global travellers’ bucket lists, but for now they are still relatively under the radar.
There are the dramatic, 1,000-year-old temple complexes in India that are immaculately preserved, but were hard to visit in style – until the area’s first luxury hotel opened.
There is a jungle-shrouded archaeological site in Colombia that predates Machu Picchu by 650 years, and a spectacular sacred city in Sri Lanka that until now has been off limits because of underdeveloped infrastructure and political turmoil. And that’s only a drop in the bucket.
“A willingness to move a little off the beaten path often provides great rewards,” said Lisa Ackerman, executive vice-president of World Monuments Fund, who says that the joy of discovery and lack of crowds makes these underexplored sites especially exciting for visitors.
However, the benefits of visiting these places go far beyond that. Spreading visitation among more sites, she says, is an important key to tourism management everywhere – as proved by the fact that overwhelming numbers of tourists visiting Machu Picchu continually threatens to shut the site down for travellers for good. (It’s not just Peru, either; the phenomenon of over-tourism is playing out across the globe.)
And by creating a viable tourism economy around newly discovered sites, travellers motivate locals to take pride in their heritage and invest in its preservation.
With that in mind, we’ve assembled a list of the newly accessible wonders of the world, along with the practical information you need to get there first.