#heritage-architecture

#heritage-architecture

Tucked away in the Wat Ket area, a quiet pocket of Chiang Mai well clear of the chaos of the Old Town, at 137 Pillars House you're close enough to dip in when you want to, but far enough out that the noise never follows you back. It's the kind of neighbourhood where mornings start slowly, perhaps with a quick trip to the nearby Lung Khajohn Wat Ket, one of the city's best rice roll spots, or a plate of Neng's Clay Pot Roast Pork (insanely delish!), before retreating back to the calm of the hotel gardens.

On a cold march morning in the Qizilqum, or Red Desert, of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic in the far west of Uzbekistan, I woke in darkness to watch the sun rise. It peeked over the horizon just as I was clambering up the sprawling central enclosure of Ayaz Kala 3, an 1,800-year-old mud-brick citadel near the textile-wrapped yurt where I'd spent the night, staining the bastions and battlements a dazzling cadmium red.