New Territories, Hong Kong's other landscape

The New Territories fill everything between Kowloon and the mainland border, and they hold the parts of Hong Kong that most visitors never see: country parks, walled clan villages, oyster beds and a coastline of empty white beaches. **Sai Kung** is the obvious starting point — a harbour town where you buy fish from the boats tied up at the waterfront and hire a sampan out to the islands. Beyond it, the **Hong Kong Geopark** protects cliffs of hexagonal volcanic columns up to thirty metres tall, and the sands of *Tai Long Wan* are reached only on foot or by boat. Walking here is the point. The **MacLehose Trail** crosses the whole territory in a hundred kilometres, and its first two sections along the High Island Reservoir are among the best coastal walks in Asia. **Tai Mo Shan**, at 957 metres the highest peak in Hong Kong, occasionally gets frost in winter. The interior is older than anything on the island. Kat Hing Wai at Kam Tin is a Punti walled village still enclosed by its Ming-era ramparts; the **Ping Shan Heritage Trail** links ancestral halls, a study hall and Hong Kong's only ancient pagoda; and Sam Tung Uk in Tsuen Wan preserves a full Hakka compound as a museum. In Sha Tin, the **Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery** waits at the top of a stairway lined with life-size gilded arhats, and the Heritage Museum tells the story of Cantonese opera and local film. Add oysters at Lau Fau Shan, birds at the Mai Po marshes and a bike ride from Sha Tin to Tai Mei Tuk, and you have a completely different Hong Kong.