horse trek in Mongolia would be well worth doing, but not in winter

China perhaps??

My mate is due to move out to papua new guinea with his girlfriend in 2 weeks, whilst I don't think it's the kinda of place to stay for weeks it is supposed to be amazing although very ghetto. My friend got in with the locals so is safe to travel alone. Massive mountains, rainforest and big waves are at its highlights.

Lebanon, Beirut mostly.

War long since over, but it was pretty 'edgy'.

Beautiful place though. The food is absolutely outstanding and Lebanese Christian women may very well be the most beautiful people on the planet.

I worked in the far south of the Altai (in Siberia) for a month once. Limited water – after 2 weeks of fieldwork I got a bucketful of water to wash with. But stunning scenery in the whole region. A bit complicated but if you can get access it's an amazing place, the people I met were very friendly aswell.

(hmm… I wanted to show you a photo here but I can't seem to get it working from Flickr. Probably because I can't log on anymore!)

I can highly recommend visiting Bolivia. Amazing place. Some of the weirdest landscapes on Earth I reckon.

Sounds like you will have an amazing trip!

Leh is beautiful and so are its people (at least the Tibetan refugess).
Cook Islands are wonderful with great friendly locals who sing and play ukuleles and drink beer. Had a wonderful time staying wih an African extended family in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe and in Tafara township in Harare.

[img]http://images110.fotki.com/v570/photos/7/763004/2826516/IMGP1472-vi.jpg[/img]

A great place to visit for 6 months but wouldnt go back packing with out a big gun.

Faliraki.. or Scilly Isles

trail_rat – Member
…odd you should mention that – in austrailia on the gold coast – i was very glad to be leaving places after a day. full of pricks most of the places – unfriendly and pretencious – a bit like here

brisneyland and sydney were good but the bits inbetween i did not like !

Hate to say it but the Gold Coast is full of Poms, so no surprise 🙂

Best parts of Oz are in the north or west. North & West Queensland, Northern Territory, W.A. It's possible to get hundreds of miles from anywhere.

Canada is good. We went last year, flew Manchester to Calgary, picked up a hire car & drove to Canmore – about an hour's drive. It's just outside the Banff national park so it's a bit cheaper to stay than Banff itself, which is only 20mins up the road

We stayed there for 6 nights, then back to Calgary for 2 nights for a wedding. Then a road trip to Vancouver, staying over in Kamloops – surprisingly hot at 38deg during the day in early August. 3 nights in Vancouver & then another road trip back to Calgary for the flight home – bad planning, could've flown home from Vancouver & had another night there.

Plenty of scope for outdoorsy stuff in the Rocky Mountains – two trips you shouldn't miss are Lake Louise:

and the Columbia Icefields:

Downtown Vancouver is nice – I'd move there tomorrow – but there's also Vancouver Island to visit, maybe a bit of whale watching, or a trip to Whistler (about an hour or two away). And there's also Stanley Park at the northern end of downtown:

Chinatown is well worth a visit too – eat in a proper chinese restaurant, where the chinese locals eat

more here

South America- Boliva, chile argentina

Beautiful place though. The food is absolutely outstanding and Lebanese Christian women may very well be the most beautiful people on the planet.

Chinses-Malaysians – especially in Penang for me.

Did a 3-week raod trip to BC, it was brilliant. Started in Vancouver then picked up our RV and went to Tofino (van island) where we got engaged!
Then to squamish, whistler, Kelowna and Nelson then back to vancouver.
Absolutely amazing riding too. Can't wait to go back to nelson, but would avoid Kelowna.
I've also had the pleasure of going to a couple of african countries but wasn't ideally placed to get a full cultural experience.

New York.

French Guiana. Twice.

Not as exotic or adventurous as some of the above, but we did camp out in the jungle, go boating at night looking for jungle wild life, and nearly sink at midnight somewhere between our camp and a Foreign Legion camp.

portsmouth.

its the only place in this world I've actually felt in danger of getting mugged.

john drummer and backhander, that was another idea of ours, would love to do some sort of trip maybe starting up north in vancouver or calgary then travel down the rockies via various methods of transport! or similar thing in the andes!

Sorry for stating the obvious but the place is fooking massive! We'd have struggled to make the rockies from van and back in 3 weeks and seen/felt the places in any depth. we wanted to do the rockies but it meant an average of driving 250 odd miles per day. In any case, it gives us reason to go back. If I ever get even half a chance to emmigrate, I'll be off in double time. Seeing the whales etc off van island was undescribable, seeing eagles soaring and bears wandering around left me speechless.