There's a specific kind of travel fatigue that sets in after you've visited enough popular destinations. Not fatigue with travel itself — that doesn't really happen, at least not for me — but fatigue with the experience of standing in a queue to see something beautiful while fifty other people photograph it simultaneously. The Eiffel Tower is magnificent. The Amalfi Coast is everything people say it is. But there's a different quality to standing somewhere remarkable when you're one of twelve people there instead of twelve hundred.
I've been chasing that feeling more deliberately over the last few years. Not to be contrarian about popular places — some places are popular for genuinely good reasons and deserve the crowds — but because the world has a significant amount of beauty sitting in destinations that don't show up on the standard lists, don't have Instagram accounts dedicated to them, and haven't yet been processed into a tourist product. Those places are the ones I want to write about here.
I'm Shubham, and these are the destinations I'd be on a plane to tomorrow if I could only pick one of them. Some are unknown to most Indian travellers. Some are known but consistently skipped in favour of their more famous neighbours. All of them are worth the deliberate decision to go.
Why Underrated Destinations Reward the Effort
The word "underrated" gets misused in travel writing. It often means "slightly less famous than the most famous version of this type of destination" — Porto described as underrated relative to Lisbon, for example, when Porto receives millions of visitors a year and has been discovered by every European city-break traveller for the last decade.
The destinations in this guide are underrated in a more literal sense: they receive a fraction of the visitors their quality merits, the infrastructure hasn't been overwhelmed by tourism, the prices reflect local economics rather than tourist demand, and the interactions you have there feel more genuine because the local population hasn't had years of mass tourism reshape how they relate to foreign visitors.
That last point matters more than it sounds. The warmth you experience in a place that doesn't see many outsiders is qualitatively different from the warmth of a tourist economy that has learned to perform warmth. Both can be pleasant. Only one of them is real.
Georgia — The Caucasus Country Nobody Is Talking About Enough
I've recommended Georgia to more travellers over the last two years than any other destination, and the consistent response after they return is some version of: why didn't I go sooner? Georgia sits at the intersection of Europe and Asia in the South Caucasus, bordered by Russia to the north, Turkey and Armenia to the south, and Azerbaijan to the east. It has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, has its own unique script that looks like nothing else on earth, produces wine in a tradition that predates France's by several thousand years, and has a food culture that stands entirely on its own rather than borrowing from its neighbours.
Tbilisi, the capital, is the kind of city that takes a day to disorient you and a week to love. The old town — Abanotubani — is a neighbourhood of wooden balconied buildings, sulphur bathhouses that have been running since the fifth century, and churches in a Byzantine style distinct from anything in Western Christianity. The Narikala fortress sits above the city and the walk up through the old town to reach it is better than the fortress itself.
Outside the cities, Georgia's landscape is genuinely extraordinary. The Kazbegi region in the Greater Caucasus mountains — three hours by road from Tbilisi — has the kind of scenery that makes you wonder if you've wandered onto a film set. Gergeti Trinity Church, a medieval monastery sitting on a ridge at 2,170 metres with Mount Kazbek behind it, is one of the most photographed images of the Caucasus and still manages to be more impressive in person than in photographs.
The wine. Georgia invented the qvevri method of winemaking — fermenting and ageing wine in large clay vessels buried underground — roughly 8,000 years ago. The amber wines produced this way taste like nothing from a conventional winery, and drinking them in a family-run guesthouse in Kakheti, the main wine region, with food produced from the same property, is one of the more specific and irreplaceable travel experiences available anywhere.
Shubham's Take: Georgia has one of the most favourable exchange rates for Indian travellers of any destination I've visited. A full day of excellent food, wine, and accommodation in a good guesthouse can be done for the equivalent of ₹2,500–4,000 per person. The flight from Delhi or Mumbai via Istanbul or the Gulf runs ₹25,000–40,000 return. The value is almost unfair.
Best time to visit: May to June and September to October Getting there: Via Istanbul (Turkish Airlines), Dubai (Emirates/flydubai), or Yerevan with connections
Faroe Islands — The Atlantic Archipelago That Looks Unreal
The Faroe Islands sit in the North Atlantic between Norway and Iceland, an autonomous territory of Denmark with a population of around 55,000 people and a landscape that genuinely defies the scale you expect from a place that size. Eighteen volcanic islands, dramatic sea cliffs that drop hundreds of metres into the ocean, waterfalls that fall directly into the Atlantic, grass-roofed houses in fishing villages that look like they were placed there by someone who wanted to make a point about what a fishing village should look like.
The islands have been gaining gradual attention over the last five years as travellers look for alternatives to Iceland, which has become genuinely crowded and expensive. The Faroes are neither. Tourism infrastructure exists — there are good hotels, rental cars are available, the roads are well-maintained through tunnels that connect the islands — but the number of visitors remains small enough that you can drive an hour from the capital Tórshavn and find yourself entirely alone in a landscape of mountains and ocean that looks like it belongs to another century.
Gásadalur village is the image most associated with the Faroes — a waterfall dropping from a cliff top directly into the sea, a handful of turf-roofed houses behind it. Before a road tunnel was built in 2004, the village was only accessible by hiking over the mountain. Now it takes twenty minutes to drive there. The waterfall doesn't know the difference.
The hiking in the Faroes is among the best I've read about from travellers who prioritise that — not Himalayan-scale altitude but dramatic ridgeline walks with views of ocean in every direction that are available to anyone of reasonable fitness without technical equipment.
Shubham's Take: The Faroes are not cheap — Scandinavian pricing applies to food and accommodation. A mid-range guesthouse runs €80–150 per night. The food is excellent in a way that catches you off guard — lamb raised on the hillsides, fish caught that morning, fermented and dried meats that are a specific local tradition. Getting there requires a connection through Copenhagen or Reykjavik. It's a destination that takes deliberate planning. Every traveller I've spoken to who went says it was worth the effort required to get there.
Best time to visit: June to August for the best hiking weather and long daylight hours Getting there: Via Copenhagen (SAS, Atlantic Airways) or Reykjavik
Uzbekistan — The Silk Road Cities That Deserve More Attention
Uzbekistan sits in Central Asia, landlocked between Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, and contains some of the most significant Islamic architecture in the world alongside a history as a crossroads of the ancient trade routes that connected China to the Mediterranean. Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva — the three main Silk Road cities — were among the most important cities in the world during the periods when those trade routes were the arteries of global commerce, and what remains of that period is genuinely staggering in scale and preservation.
Samarkand's Registan — three massive madrasas arranged around a central square, covered in turquoise and azure tile work — is the image most associated with the city and one of those rare cases where the reality is larger and more impressive than the photographs. The tilework, at this scale and in this state of preservation, doesn't really have a comparison in the world outside of Iran and Morocco, and the Registan surpasses both on scale.
Bukhara is the more lived-in version of the Silk Road experience. Where Samarkand is grand and somewhat monument-focused, Bukhara is a city where the historic architecture is still integrated into daily life — people live in the old town, markets operate in ancient caravanserai, and the concentration of historic mosques, mausoleums, and madrasas in a walkable area is higher than any other Central Asian city.
Khiva is the smallest and least visited of the three, and possibly the most atmospheric. The Ichan Kala — the walled inner city — is almost entirely preserved from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which gives it the quality of a city that stopped in time. It can be covered in a day and a half, which is exactly the right amount of time to be inside it before the stage-set quality starts to feel more prominent than the history.
The food in Uzbekistan is also genuinely worth going for on its own terms. Plov — a rice dish cooked in lamb fat with carrots and meat — is the national dish and the version served in Samarkand's plov centres, where giant kazan vessels cook it over open flame for the city every morning from 7am, is a specific experience. The bread, baked in tandoor ovens and sold at every corner, is among the best bread available anywhere in the world in terms of simplicity and quality.
Shubham's Take: Indian passport holders require a visa for Uzbekistan, which is available as an e-visa and processes within three to five days. The country is inexpensive — a good guesthouse in Bukhara's old city costs ₹1,500–3,000 per night, and a full meal at a local restaurant runs ₹400–800. Flights from Delhi connect through Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or Almaty. Total trip cost for ten days covering all three Silk Road cities runs ₹60,000–90,000 per person including flights — exceptional value for the scale of what you're seeing.
Best time to visit: April to June and September to November Getting there: Via Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or direct on Uzbekistan Airways from Delhi
Kotor, Montenegro — The Adriatic Town That Hasn't Been Consumed Yet
The Adriatic coast has had a well-documented tourism problem for a decade — Dubrovnik specifically reached a point of saturation that prompted visitor caps and entry fees. Montenegro, sitting just south of Croatia, has the same dramatic coastline, the same medieval architecture, and a fraction of the visitors. Kotor, its most significant historic town, sits at the inner end of a fjord-like bay and is surrounded by walls that climb the mountain directly behind the city.
The old town of Kotor — compact, marble-paved, Byzantine and Venetian in architectural character — takes about an hour to walk fully. The walls above it take another hour to climb and provide the view that earns the effort: the entire Bay of Kotor from above, with the town directly below and mountains on every side. It's the kind of view that produces involuntary conversation with whoever happens to be standing next to you.
The Bay of Kotor beyond the old town is a series of small villages, peninsulas, and islands that are most accessibly explored by local boat. The island church of Our Lady of the Rocks, built on an artificial island created by Montenegrin fishermen across centuries, is the kind of thing that sounds unremarkable until you're standing on it looking at a hand-built island in the middle of a bay surrounded by mountains.
Montenegro as a country is also worth more time than just Kotor. The national park of Durmitor in the north has mountain scenery that competes with anywhere in the Alps. Tara Canyon — the second deepest river canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon — runs through it. The combination of coast, mountains, and medieval towns in a country the size of Connecticut makes it one of the more varied small-country travel experiences available in Europe.
Shubham's Take: Montenegro uses the Euro despite not being an EU member. Prices are lower than Croatia and significantly lower than Italy or Greece. A good apartment in Kotor's old town costs €60–100 per night. The food — especially grilled fish and the local smoked ham called njeguški pršut — is excellent. Indian passport holders don't require a visa. Flights connect through Belgrade, Istanbul, or Vienna.
Best time to visit: May, June, and September Getting there: Via Istanbul, Belgrade, or Vienna with connections to Podgorica or Tivat
Hampi, Karnataka — India's Most Undervisited UNESCO Site
Most international travel guides to India skip Hampi entirely. Most Indian travellers have heard of it but haven't gone. That combination — known but unvisited — makes Hampi one of the most accessible underrated destinations available to Indian travellers without a passport requirement or an international flight budget.
Hampi is the site of Vijayanagara, the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire which was one of the largest and most powerful empires in Indian history between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. At its peak the city had a population of around 500,000 — larger than most contemporary European cities — and covered an area of over 650 square kilometres. What remains is a UNESCO World Heritage site of temples, royal enclosures, market streets, and elephant stables distributed across a landscape of enormous granite boulders that give the terrain a quality unlike anywhere else in India.
The Virupaksha Temple at the base of the main bazaar has been in continuous worship for over 700 years. The Vittala Temple complex, a thirty-minute walk or cycle from the main bazaar, contains the famous stone chariot and musical pillars — pillars that produce different musical notes when tapped, a feat of ancient acoustical engineering that still works and still produces the specific disorientation of hearing something that shouldn't be possible from stone.
The boulder landscape of Hampi is also where the ruins live, and exploring it on a bicycle or on foot, with temples appearing suddenly between rock formations and the Tungabhadra river providing the western boundary, is an experience that takes multiple days to fully process.
Shubham's Take: Hampi is reached most easily by overnight train from Bangalore to Hospet, the nearest railway town, followed by a local auto-rickshaw or bus to Hampi itself. The journey takes around nine hours. Accommodation in Hampi village runs ₹800–2,500 per night for guesthouses. The entire experience — two to three nights, bicycle rental, entry fees to monuments, local food — costs ₹5,000–8,000 per person beyond the train fare. For the scale and significance of what you're seeing, it's one of the best value cultural experiences in India.
Best time to visit: October to February Getting there: Overnight train from Bangalore to Hospet
Oman — The Middle East Destination That Rewards Slower Travel
Most of the conversation about Middle East travel focuses on Dubai and Abu Dhabi — the built environments, the scale, the specific kind of experience those cities have engineered. Oman is the alternative to all of that. It's a country of wadi hikes, desert camping, mountain villages, and a coastline that runs from the dramatic fjords of the Musandam Peninsula in the north to the empty beaches of Dhofar in the south, with ancient frankincense trade routes connecting the interior.
Muscat, the capital, is one of the more pleasant Arabian city experiences available — clean, calm, architecturally consistent in a way that reflects actual heritage rather than constructed identity, and genuinely welcoming to visitors in a manner that doesn't feel like a hospitality industry performance. The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is among the most architecturally significant mosques in the Islamic world and is open to non-Muslim visitors — an unusual generosity that reflects the broader openness of Omani culture.
Wahiba Sands — a large desert region in the interior — provides the dune experience that most travellers associate with the Arabian Peninsula, without the crowds that attend similar experiences in Dubai. Camping overnight in Wahiba Sands, with no light pollution and more stars visible than most people have seen, is the kind of experience that sounds like a cliché until you're actually there.
The Jebel Akhdar mountain range in the Al Hajar Mountains reaches 3,000 metres and contains a plateau of terraced farms, rose gardens, and villages that are climatically and culturally unlike the coastal lowlands. The rose water produced here — from the Damask rose, cultivated since the ninth century — is sold at every roadside stand and is worth bringing home more of than seems reasonable.
Shubham's Take: Indian passport holders receive a visa on arrival in Oman. Flights from major Indian cities — Kochi, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad — are frequent and competitively priced, often running ₹15,000–25,000 return. The country is more affordable than its Gulf neighbours for food and accommodation at the mid-range level. A rental car is the right way to explore — Oman's road network is excellent and the distances between the main regions require independent transport.
Best time to visit: October to April Getting there: Direct flights from most major Indian cities
Plovdiv, Bulgaria — Europe's Oldest Inhabited City
Most people who visit Bulgaria go to Sofia, do a day trip to the Rila Monastery, and call it done. Plovdiv — two hours east by train — is where the more interesting version of Bulgaria lives, and it has the distinction of being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with evidence of settlement going back 8,000 years.
The old town of Plovdiv, built across three hills and preserved from the National Revival period of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, is one of the most genuinely beautiful historic neighbourhoods in the Balkans — coloured houses with overhanging upper floors, cobblestone streets, Roman ruins integrated into the modern city at street level. The ancient Roman theatre, built in the second century AD and rediscovered during a landslide in 1972, is still used for performances and one of the better-preserved examples in Europe.
Plovdiv was the European Capital of Culture in 2019, which produced significant investment in the arts infrastructure without the mass tourism arrival that the designation sometimes brings. The result is a city with an active contemporary arts scene sitting inside a beautifully preserved historic shell — the combination that makes European cities most worth visiting.
The Kapana neighbourhood — a formerly neglected craftsmen's district that has been revitalised into a concentration of independent cafés, studios, and restaurants — is where the city's younger creative community has settled and produces the most interesting street-level experience in Plovdiv.
Shubham's Take: Bulgaria uses the Bulgarian Lev rather than the Euro, and prices are among the lowest in the European Union. A good meal at a traditional mehana — a Bulgarian tavern — costs the equivalent of ₹400–700. Accommodation in Plovdiv's old town runs ₹2,500–5,000 per night for well-reviewed guesthouses. Flights connect through Sofia, Istanbul, or Vienna. For European old-town atmosphere at non-European prices, Plovdiv is the most honest answer I can give.
Best time to visit: April to June and September to October Getting there: Via Sofia, Istanbul, or Vienna
Luang Prabang, Laos — Before It Changes Further
Luang Prabang sits at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers in northern Laos, and is one of those places that manages to be genuinely small — the historic town centre is walkable in forty minutes — while feeling like it contains an entire country's worth of texture. It has over thirty Buddhist temples for a town of fewer than 60,000 people, a French colonial architectural layer sitting alongside traditional Lao structures, and a pace of daily life that is noticeably different from anywhere else in Southeast Asia.
The morning alms-giving ceremony — tak bat — happens every day at dawn, when hundreds of monks in saffron robes walk silently through the streets collecting food from the faithful. It's a genuine daily religious practice, not a tourist performance, though the tourist industry around it has grown enough to require some navigation. Watching from a respectful distance without crowding or photographing intrusively is the right approach — it's still one of the more moving things a dawn in Asia can offer.
The Mekong river life around Luang Prabang — boat trips to the Pak Ou caves where thousands of Buddha images have accumulated in limestone caves above the river, or simply sitting on the bank watching the river move at dusk — has a specific unhurried quality. The night market along the main street operates every evening and sells the best-quality Lao textiles available anywhere at prices that reflect local production rather than tourist markup.
Luang Prabang is changing. Tourism has increased significantly over the last decade and will continue to. The version of it available now — relatively quiet, genuinely atmospheric, not yet homogenised by the volume of visitors that would change its character — is worth going for before that changes further.
Shubham's Take: Indian passport holders require a Laos e-visa, which processes in three to five days for around $30. Flights connect through Bangkok, Hanoi, or Chiang Mai. The town is small enough that accommodation, food, and transport are all genuinely cheap — a good guesthouse costs $20–40 per night and a meal at a local restaurant runs $3–6. If you're already doing a Southeast Asia trip with Thailand or Vietnam in it, Luang Prabang is the addition that consistently gets described as the highlight of the full trip.
Best time to visit: November to February Getting there: Via Bangkok, Chiang Mai, or Hanoi
The Pattern These Destinations Share
Looking at this list, a few things come up consistently across all these places: they're either in regions that sit adjacent to famous destinations and get skipped in favour of them, or they're places where the required extra planning effort exceeds what most travellers are willing to do, or they're simply places that haven't yet been processed into the Instagram circuit that drives a significant percentage of modern destination selection.
None of them are obscure in a way that requires expedition-level planning. All of them have functional tourism infrastructure — hotels, restaurants, transport options, English signage where it matters. The barrier is slightly more deliberate decision-making than clicking on the first obvious result in a search for "best places to travel."
That's a low barrier. It costs a few extra hours of research and occasionally a slightly more complicated routing to the airport. What it returns is the version of travel that most people are actually looking for when they say they want to "really experience a place" — smaller crowds, more genuine interactions, prices that reflect local reality rather than tourist demand, and the specific satisfaction of being somewhere that most people you know haven't been.
