Travel Themes China Asia

Asia, India, Vietnam and Thailand senior travel vacation articles.

Welcome to the Travel with a Challenge India and Asia Theme Page bringing together feature articles in our collection of journeys in China, India, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong. Go hiking in China, do some watercolor painting in Vietnam, take a train in India’s Himalayas or across Southeast Asia or volunteer in India and China. We have fascinating articles on these themes and more.

Feel free to explore our other Travel Theme Pages for vacations well suited to senior travelers, their families and friends. Please click on image buttons or titles below to enter each richly-illustrated feature story.

Travel with our talented storyteller, Anne Jardine, on a Trans-Siberian rail journey from China through Mongolia across Siberia to Russia, all first class on a Road Scholar educational holiday with expert-led excursions and lectures. This trip was on Anne’s bucket list. After reading her tale of adventure, it will be on yours too.

Hong Kong has long been a shopper’s paradise, but in our new article we share a richer, deeper Hong Kong experience, revealed in a 2014 menu of creatively-designed tours – from food tasting, history, and architecture to Kung Fu, cycling and exploration of rural areas by ferry and on foot – each from one to three days long.

Our Travel with a Challenge readership is mostly made up of women and men who embrace the label of Life Enhancers. Travel along with Life Enhancer, Alison Gardner, as she recounts the many new experiences she had during a small-group, 23-day women-only tour through Rajasthan and other parts of northern India.

Mother Nature has bestowed great riches on this southwest Indian state facing the Arabian Sea, among them an extensive network of natural freshwater canals that beg to be explored for a few hours or on multi-day houseboat tours. Alison Gardner uses traditional canoes to catch a glimpse of village life in the backwaters.

When two Americans from New York decided to get married in Bhutan, they had no idea what an adventure they would have, from the traditional Bhutanese dress of the bride and groom to the warm embrace of local country folk and their fellow tour participants in a truly memorable day. Read their story!

If you are a nature lover and you have China on your travel bucket list, what could be more rewarding than a volunteer vacation to assist in the conservation and care of the rare and endangered Giant Panda? Lucy Corne shares her experience as well as little known facts about these iconic members of the bear family.

Join scuba diver and writer, Doug Olthof, for a whale (shark) of an experience as he discovers the variety and beauty of Thailand’s reefs and rocks on a five-day liveaboard dive boat holiday full of delightful surprises. Even if you’re not a diver, you won’t want to miss these amazing images taken around the Similan Islands and Richelieu Rock.

Readers who love to learn about new volunteer holidays will be delighted with our story about a Darjeeling tea estate learning service option in the foothills of India’s Himalaya region. With a variety of volunteer tasks to choose from, this historic estate is a world leader in organic farming and sustainable community living.

Our contributor, Khursheed Dinshaw, takes readers to a wild peacock sanctuary and rural farming area of India where India’s national bird thrives, and villagers offer homestays and agri tourism experiences that provide authentic cultural insights for international guests.

Born and raised in India before settling in Canada 30 years ago, Margaret Deefholts shares her lingering passion for her birth country with a ride into the mountains aboard an historic miniature railway chosen by the United Nations in 1999 as a cultural World Heritage Site.

Join travel journalist, Alison Gardner, on an active cultural vacation in Northeastern China as she explores well known and little known sections of the Great Wall of China, as well as its neighboring historic sites, cities and unspoiled countryside.Additional articles with a Great Wall of China theme are hot linked separately below: enjoy our classic images from Northeastern China, and a rural village encounter.

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Artist and globetrotter, Charlene Brown, shares her solo travel encounter with city and rural life in Vietnam as she documents her vacation in a series of charming postcard-size watercolor paintings while describing her adventures.

Travel writer, Margaret Deefholts, introduces readers to northeastern India’s women of Meghalaya whose cultural and spiritual influence is a powerful and surprising feature of their unique community lifestyle.

Zukowski whisks readers from Singapore through Malaysia to Thailand while sampling the luxurious trappings and gastronomic delights of Eastern & Orient’s restored rail car service that reflects former colonial expectations.