The 12 Most Underrated Destinations on Earth Right Now

Kars is a frontier city that feels more Caucasian than Mediterranean — stone buildings with Russian Imperial facades, a bitter wind carrying the smell of roasting chestnuts, and a castle overlooking the Kars River valley. The city is a patchwork of Ottoman, Armenian, and Russian influences that somehow coheres into something distinctly its own. Forty-five kilometres east, the ruins of Ani — once a rival to Constantinople — sit on a plateau above a gorge that marks the Armenian border. The churches stand roofless against enormous skies, their frescoes fading into sandstone.

Pohnpei is a volcanic island so lush it feels like the planet's prototype for tropical abundance — a place where rainfall exceeds ten metres a year and the result is not misery but an almost absurd density of green. The interior rises to nearly 800 metres, split by waterfalls that drop from basalt ledges into pools ringed by ferns the height of a person. The coastline is fringed by mangroves rather than beaches, which is precisely why the reefs beyond them remain pristine: manta rays cruise the channels at Palikir Pass, and the coral walls drop into blue-black depths within swimming distance of shore. But what makes Pohnpei unlike anywhere else is Nan Madol — a ruined ceremonial city of over 90 artificial basalt islets, linked by canals, built on a coral reef flat starting around the 8th century and abandoned by the 17th. The columnar basalt logs, some weighing five tonnes, are stacked in crisscross patterns across an area of nearly 1.5 square kilometres. No one is entirely sure how they were transported. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage listing, yet on most days the only people there are a caretaker and the crabs.