Jill Worrall gives in to her nagileh weakness in Istanbul.

Bhutan's fertile landscape provides a seasonally-shifting array of botanical wonders... many of which offer picturesque grazing opportunities for the local herds of yak.

The Bhutanese tradition of blessing people with large wooden phalluses has apparently proved remarkably successful in promoting fertility.

Turkmenistan is nearly 90 per cent desert but in the capital the waterfalls almost never seem to stop flowing. They do so at the expense of the fast-shrinking Aral Sea, one of Central Asia's greatest environmental disaster zones.

The market held on the outskirts of Ashgabad every weekend is possibly Central Asia's largest bazaar.

Not many tourists visit North Korea, but it is possible on a select few guided tours.

This peninsula in the north-west of Turkey is best known to New Zealanders as the site of the Allied troop landings of April 25, 1915 - a date now commemorated annually as Anzac Day. Almost 3000 New Zealanders and more than 8000 Australians were killed during the ill-fated nine-month Gallipoli campaign and the peninsula is now a popular pilgrimage site for tourists from the Antipodes who wish to pay their respects.