Arrive by four wheel drive, walk over the dunes of the Sahara Desert, be greeted with fresh dates and mint tea, and soak up the vista of the luxury Azali Desert Camp situated in its own private encampment.
East of Bali lies the large Indonesian island of Sumbawa. And just 10 miles off its coast is the relatively tiny and remote Moyo Island. With the entire island and its surrounding waters declared a nature reserve in 1986, it is mostly uninhabited except for a couple of small villages and the serenely secluded, Amanwana.
The Indonesian island of Lombok is often overlooked for its glamorous neighbour, Bali, but the beauty on offer here is on a much grander scale with just a fraction of the tourists. Lush forests, the brooding Mount Rinjani, exquisite white-sand beaches, beautiful headlands, epic surf, and turquoise bays assault your senses around every corner – add to this The Lombok Lodge, our hidden gem of 2015, and the result is a very alluring tropical escape.
With monkeys crashing through the trees, peacocks strutting their stuff, elephants grazing the grasslands and the elusive Sri Lankan leopard shadowing the undergrowth, Yala National Park is a vast region of woodland and open patches of grassland, and one of Sri Lanka’s jewels.