The Yamashiro hot springs region, un-scrolling outside our car window, had a lyrical beauty akin to a Japanese Haiku poem. We had landed at the historic town of Kanazawa, a short flight from Tokyo, and checked into a Japanese ryokan (inn) called Beniya Mukayu.

Suffused with Japanese-style minimalism, each suite had its own outdoor hot springs tub on the balcony where you could soak as steam wreathed upward while beyond snowflakes fluttered downwards like white confetti. Fifteen minutes later, we slipped into casual cotton kimonos and headed for the spa where soothing soaks and massages with herbal poultices and foot baths spiked with curative herbs left us feeling almost limbless.

On the main island of Honshu we revelled once again in another private onsen (hot springs bath) experience in Okuhida village. At the 86-room Hotakaso Yamano Hotel and Ryokan, facing the northern Japan Alps, we accessed our private hot springs pool area by a cable lift outside the hotel that seemed to lurch down into the bowels of the earth.

Enveloped in a snow-shawled landscape, the hot springs steamed and hissed like angry serpents with 4,000 litres of water, per minute. We submerged ourselves in a simmering pool, rimmed by humped rocks, and gnarled ancient trees. Snowflakes danced and kissed our shoulders and after a soul-stirring 15 minutes, we chugged upwards in the cable lift again.

We joined other guests warming themselves around a fire in a lounge and raised jubilant toasts to good health and togetherness.

There are direct flights from Tokyo to Kanazawa’s Komatsu airport from where taxis are available for Beniya Mukayu in the Yamashiro Onsen area.

The Okuhida region is accessible from Tokyo by train and taxi, and the journey takes about three-and-a-half hours.

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The hot springs bubbled and hissed like a coven of witches at a party. Whorls of steam and vapour curled over our heads, blurring our vision and filling us with a feeling of lassitude. We were in the geothermal valley of Beitou, on the northern outskirts of Taipei, in Taiwan.

The air around the 4,000sqm boiling bubbling lake of sulphurous water felt as hot as Satan’s breath. Encircled by the Chingshan peaks, Beitou’s lush expanse hugs the foot of Yangmingshan National Park.

We lingered by the pea-soup-coloured lake, beyond which spread the homeland of the ancient Ketagalan people. These simple people feared this burbling mass of hot water and called it Hell’s Valley. (There are green-coloured hot springs only in Beitou and in Akita, Japan.)

Beitou’s conversion from HelI’s Valley to a romantic sought-after hot springs escape began with the Japanese occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. It was in this island-country that the Japanese tried to re-create the onsens that they were used to back home. Soon Beitou became famed for rejuvenating dips in healing waters.

We, too, discovered hot springs bliss at the Relais & Chateaux Villa 32, a boutique luxury spa resort that nestles in the valley of Beitou, surrounded by hunched mountains. Each elegant suite comes with its own private hot springs tub and there are two Japanese style suites as well.

But Villa 32’s main draw card is that it has five different hot springs. Apart from Beitou’s jade-green sulphur springs and the white sulphur springs, a trio of alkaline hot springs in three different colours also spurt at Villa 32. The spa resort’s outdoor pool beckoned and we uncurled ourselves in the warm water and let the mineral-rich waters gush and slide smoothly over naked skin. Stress and worry took flight like clouds on a rain-washed morning.

A number of international airlines fly to Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport, 40km west of Taipei. Beitou can be reached by MRT or a taxi from Taipei.

Breakfast with bubbles in a thermal pool is an ideal way to launch into Valentine’s Day. Or, would you prefer bathing and dining like a Roman senator?

We were in Leukerbad, a famed hot springs region that snuggles in to a valley above which rises to sheer snow-muffled cliffs.

Home to the largest and highest thermal spa centres in the Alps, Leukerbad’s 65 springs spew calcium and sulphate-rich waters that have been considered therapeutic since the 14th century. A total of 4 million litres per day gush upwards in this charming Swiss town. People stride around in dressing gowns, driven by a single goal — the pursuit of wellness in any of the 30 thermal baths (public and private).

Indeed, Leukerbad is Europe’s largest, high-altitude medical and alpine wellness thermal spa resort. Couples can relax in the mineral-rich thermal waters of upscale Walliser Alpentherme and Spa, sweat it out in the sauna village, and wallow in an array of medical, beauty and spa therapies. Leukerbad Therme (earlier known as Burgerbad) comes with water slides, water jets, pools for toddlers, and 10 mineral-rich hot water pools. It’s a great place for mum, dad, and kids to bond.

We checked into the upscale Walliser Alpentherme and Spa, splashed around in its indoor and outdoor pools and revelled in the vigorous pummelling by jets that roared from the sides. The snow-kissed mountains seemed just an arm’s stretch away and then, it started to snow. We fielded the snowflakes on our tongues even as warm water swirled around us.

At Walliser Alpentherme, we indulged in time travel in the Roman-Irish baths, where we felt like we were participating in a rite of passage. This is the venue of a two-hour bathing ritual with ancient Roman and Irish elements woven in.

We returned to our hotel, feeling limbered up and at one with the world.

Leukerbad is a three-hour-20-minute train journey from Zurich airport and three hours from Geneva airport.

Over a millennium ago, the mighty Roman empire had retreated from this little Black Forest town in southwest Germany but it left behind a legacy — Baden-Baden’s famous hot springs spas.

Indeed, the popular Roman–Irish Baths at Friedrichsbad Spa entices tourists and couples to revel in Roman-style indulgence. A 17-stage, four-hour ritual started in a steam room where we slumped in loungers, sweating off the angst of the outside world. A spell in the sauna and steam room was followed by a scrub with soap and a brush.

Now tingling and fresh, we set off to enjoy a series of thermal pools, each one filled with hot springs water at different temperatures. The last stop was a brief one in a pool filled with freezing cold fresh water. Our penultimate stop was on a massage bed where masseuses slathered and massaged us with creams.

The Caracalla spa had a sublime effect on us, too, with its array of hot springs pools, neck showers, Jacuzzis, steam rooms, and aquatic jets.

Baden-Baden is an hour’s drive from Stuttgart and 12km away from Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden airport.