Lonely Planet says: The world’s greatest temple to the Hindu god Vishnu, the magnificent monument of Angkor Wat is the crowning glory in a complex of more than Lonely Planet says: Stretching more than 1,860 miles up the northeastern coast of Australia, it’s home to the world’s largest network of coral reefs and thousands of species of fish and marine life. Lonely Planet says: It’s a myth that it can be seen from space, but this awe-inspiring maze of walls and fortifications stretching for an astonishing 5500 miles across rugged landscape seems both infinite and indestructible. book has been years in the making and brings together the most compelling places in the world according to our team,” Lonely Planet’s Editorial Director Tom Hall says. Here are the top 10 travel experiences from Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel List. We hope this will inspire many more travel wish lists of your own.

Lonely Planet says: Acres of shimmering white marble, a few thousand semiprecious stones carved and inlaid in intricate Islamic patterns, all in perfect symmetry – the breathtaking mausoleum is architectural perfection. Lonely Planet says: This massive 50,000-seat amphitheater is Rome’s most thrilling sights, and a monument to raw, merciless power, which can still be felt today by anyone who steps foot inside. For the first time, the team at Lonely Planet and its panel of industry experts have ranked the top 500 unmissable experiences and hidden gems across the land – to create this definitive travel wishlist. And so the top 20 list finds Tasmania’s Museum of Modern and Old Art and Fez’s Medina rubbing shoulders with travel titans such as the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal. Experience Guides For travelers that want to design a trip that feels unique, these guides uncover exciting new ways to explore iconic destinations. Ideal for trips lasting between 1 and 2 weeks.Ultimate Travel: The 500 Best Places on the Planet…Ranked,” is being launched in August in some countries as “Ultimate Travelist,” but will not be available in the U.S. until October. temples, shrines and tombs that forms a virtual city of spires in the jungles of northern Cambodia. While many are best-of list regulars, culled from UNESCO’s World Heritage roster or, indeed, Lonely Planet’s own country-by-country highlights, there are a few surprises. Lonely Planet says: It’s not the outrageously dramatic Andean setting, nor the way that the city clings to impossibly precipitous slopes that makes Machu Picchu so mind-blowing – it’s the fact that no one really knows what happened here. Lonely Planet says: Look down at two billion years of geologic time and you’ll see why the mile-deep, 277-mile-long phenomenon is nature’s cathedral.

In pole position is the temple complex at Angkor in Cambodia – which LP says “won by a landslide” – followed by Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Peru’s Machu Picchu. traveler has a list of places they simply have to see. Of course, what makes a place special is different for everyone, but this is our definitive list and one we hope will inspire many other travel wish lists.”