Digital travel platform Agoda has named five quieter destinations across Asia where travellers can experience snow this winter. The list points travellers away from large resorts, where lift queues and lodging costs have risen, toward smaller towns where the snow still feels local.
The first destination is Zao Onsen in Japan, in Yamagata. There, freezing wind and snow coat the conifers on the slopes until they stand like hooded figures, known as juhyo or snow monsters. On winter evenings they are lit from below, turning an ordinary ski field into a striking scene.
In South Korea, Agoda points to Taebaek, which sits away from the Olympic crowds of Gangwon's better-known towns. Taebaek hosts a late-January snow festival built around hand-carved snow and ice sculptures, sledding hills and mountain trails that lead to some of the country's most reliable early-season powder.
In India, Agoda lists Gulmarg in Kashmir, which is served by one of the world's loftiest cable cars. It rises into wide, lightly tracked bowls. Mornings bring tea sellers and the smell of woodsmoke, while afternoons offer long, quiet descents that few travellers outside the subcontinent have discovered.
Kanas, in the far north of Xinjiang near the Altai Mountains in China, is the fourth destination. Agoda describes a long glacial lake that freezes over, snow piling onto the roofs of old Tuvan villages, and smoke rising from log cabins where families keep to the traditional way of spending the season. The fifth is Sapa in Vietnam, where cold air dropping over the Hoàng Liên Son mountains brings frost and the occasional dusting of snow to the rice terraces. Hill-tribe markets continue to trade in the mist there.
Jay Lee, Regional Director, North Asia at Agoda, said winter in Asia offers much to travellers willing to look further afield. « From a snowy mountain village to a warming soak in an outdoor onsen, these destinations offer different ways to enjoy the season and experience local life », Lee said. Agoda says it offers more than 6 million properties and more than 130,000 flight routes, and that travellers can plan trips through or the Agoda app.