Goguryeo painted its dead. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the rulers and nobles of this northern kingdom, which at its height held much of Manchuria and the northern half of the Korean peninsula, were buried in stone chambers beneath earthen mounds, and the walls were covered in murals that show hunting parties, processions, kitchens, stables and the gods of the four directions. Anak Tomb No. 2 lies near the town of Anak in South Hwanghae province in North Korea, in the same cluster as its better-known sibling Tomb No. 3, whose inscription gives a date equivalent to AD 357 and whose procession scenes are famous. The complex of Koguryo tombs was inscribed by UNESCO in 2004.
I have to be straight about the access. North Korea is not a country where a foreign rider can wander at will on his own motorcycle; visits are only possible on organised tours, with guides, fixed itineraries and restrictions on photography, and for most of the last few years even those have been suspended or very limited.
What I can tell you is the landscape and the historical background. Hwanghae is rolling farmland, with low hills, terraced rice fields and villages of tiled houses, in the western part of the country, south of Pyongyang and not far from the sea. Anak town, a place of about twenty thousand people, is a local centre, and the larger town of Chaeryong lies to the south. Winters here are cold and dry, with snow and bitter winds from Siberia, and summers are hot and wet with a monsoon peak in July and August.
The murals themselves fascinate historians because they preserve a world otherwise lost. Costumes, musical instruments, and architecture appear in lively scenes, and the mythical creatures, the azure dragon, the white tiger, the vermilion bird and the black tortoise-snake, guard the corners of the heavens. They influenced the art of neighbouring Korean kingdoms and of Japan, and some scholars see echoes in the later Takamatsuzuka paintings in Nara.
Few places on this list are as far from a simple ride-in stop, but the paintings deserve to be known.