Every place in the Wander Atlas

Every country149 with a pin

United States478 places

Ancient Bristlecone Pine ForestNature · ●●●●●A grove of trees near the top of the White Mountains has been alive since before the pyramids, and the Forest Service…
Avenue of the GiantsNature · ●●●●●The old highway was left in place when the freeway bypassed it — 31 miles of two-lane road threading through the…
Big Bend & West TexasNature · ●●●●●The least-visited great national park in the lower 48, where the Rio Grande cuts 460-metre limestone canyons on the…
Denali & Interior AlaskaNature · ●●●●●North America's highest mountain rising 5,500 metres from a plain that is barely above sea level — the greatest…
Joshua Tree National ParkNature · ●●●●●The Joshua trees only grow where the Mojave meets the Colorado desert, and this is the park built around that line…
Mono LakeNature · ●●●●●One of the oldest lakes on the continent — at least 760,000 years in its basin — twice as salty as the ocean, ringed by…
Mount TamalpaisNature · ●●●●●The mountain the whole Bay Area looks up at, with a fern-and-redwood canyon of wooden ladders on one side and the open…
Point Lobos State Natural ReserveNature · ●●●●●The one Big Sur stop worth setting an alarm for, and the reason to be at a gate at 8am on vacation.
The Boundary WatersNature · ●●●●●Over a thousand lakes stitched together by portage trails across a million acres of forest on the Canadian border…
The City MuseumOddity · ●●●●●A ten-storey former shoe factory that a sculptor spent years turning into a climbable structure — caves of rebar and…
The EvergladesNature · ●●●●●Not a swamp but a river — 100 km wide and a few centimetres deep, moving so slowly you can't see it, across a limestone…
The Marin HeadlandsNature · ●●●●●The most photographed view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and behind it a whole wild headland of old gun batteries, a…
Tuolumne Meadows & the Tioga High CountryNature · ●●●●●An hour past the Valley crowds, Tioga Road climbs into a different park entirely: subalpine meadows at 8,600 feet…
Yosemite Valley (done right)Nature · ●●●●●The most famous seven square miles of granite on Earth — and it still beats the hype, if you refuse to experience it as…
Alabama HillsNature · ●●●●○A field of rounded orange boulders sits at the foot of the highest mountain in the Lower 48, and Hollywood has been…
Alamere FallsNature · ●●●●○A waterfall that pours off a cliff straight onto the sand, at the end of a long, unmarked, slightly dangerous hike…
Alcatraz IslandPoint · ●●●●○The most famous prison in America sits on an island in the bay, and its fullest story isn't the cellblock but the…
Angel IslandNature · ●●●●○An island in the middle of the bay with a 360-degree view of the whole region and a haunting immigration station where…
Anza-Borrego & the Desert SculpturesNature · ●●●●○The largest state park in the country runs on badlands and slot canyons and a wildflower bloom that only shows up some…
Año NuevoNature · ●●●●○A windswept point where thousands of elephant seals haul out to fight, breed, and molt, reachable in winter only on…
Baker BeachNature · ●●●●○The classic Golden Gate view from the sand, a disappearing cannon in the dunes behind it, and the beach where Burning…
Balboa ParkPoint · ●●●●○The biggest urban cultural park in the country, bigger than Central Park, is a mile of Spanish-fantasy architecture…
Bodega Head & the Hole in the HeadNature · ●●●●○A granite headland that rode up the San Andreas Fault from hundreds of miles south — with cliffs among the best…
BodieOddity · ●●●●○The best-preserved ghost town in the American West sits at 8,400 feet east of the Sierra — 200 buildings frozen…
BolinasTown · ●●●●○The coastal town so committed to being left alone that residents kept tearing down the highway sign pointing to it.
Cahokia MoundsPoint · ●●●●○Twenty minutes from the Gateway Arch stands the largest earthwork in the Americas, at the centre of what was, around AD…
Calaveras Big TreesNature · ●●●●○The grove that introduced the world to giant sequoias — and promptly cut the biggest one down and turned its stump into…
California State Railroad MuseumPoint · ●●●●○Twenty-one lavishly restored locomotives and cars — some dating to 1863 — fill a cavernous hall in Old Sacramento, in…
Carmel Mission (San Carlos Borromeo)Point · ●●●●○The stone basilica in Carmel was the headquarters of the entire California mission chain — and Junípero Serra, who ran…
Carrizo PlainNature · ●●●●○The last great piece of the grassland sea that once filled the Central Valley — where superblooms turn fifty miles of…
Castle Rock State ParkNature · ●●●●○High on the Santa Cruz Mountains' crest, wind and rain have hollowed the sandstone into honeycombed caves and bulbous…
Cataract FallsNature · ●●●●○After winter rain, a creek off Mount Tamalpais tumbles down a mossy fern-walled staircase in waterfall after waterfall…
Channel Islands National ParkNature · ●●●●○Take a boat out from Ventura to a chain of wild islands where a fox the size of a house cat lives and nothing else on…
Chaw'se Indian Grinding RockPoint · ●●●●○A slab of limestone in the Sierra foothills is dimpled with 1,185 grinding holes, the most of any bedrock mortar site…
Chinatown (the alleys)Wander zone · ●●●●○The oldest Chinatown in the country, once you get off the souvenir street and into the alleys where it actually lives.
City of Ten Thousand BuddhasOddity · ●●●●○One of the largest Buddhist monastic communities in the Western Hemisphere occupies a former state mental hospital…
Clouds RestNature · ●●●●○The best summit view in Yosemite isn't Half Dome — it's the peak a thousand feet above it, with no cables, no lottery…
Columbia State Historic ParkTown · ●●●●○A whole gold-rush town survives with no cars in it, costumed shopkeepers working the same trades, and a stagecoach…
Convict LakeNature · ●●●●○A glacial lake pinned against a 12,000-foot wall of banded rock, named for an 1871 shootout where escaped Carson City…
Desolation WildernessNature · ●●●●○West of Tahoe the forest gives out and the land turns to bare white granite holding more than a hundred alpine lakes.
Devils Postpile & Rainbow FallsNature · ●●●●○A cliff of basalt columns so geometrically perfect it looks stacked by hand — 60-foot hexagonal posts a glacier sheared…
East Brother Light StationOddity · ●●●●○A working 1874 Victorian lighthouse on its own tiny island in San Pablo Bay — run as a five-room inn where the…
Elkhorn SloughNature · ●●●●○Trade the coast drive for a morning and paddle a tidal slough that holds the largest raft of sea otters on the planet.
Emerald Bay via the Rubicon TrailNature · ●●●●○Tahoe's postcard — a green-glass bay with a stone Scandinavian castle and the lake's only island — earns its fame; the…
Esalen Hot SpringsOddity · ●●●●○Cliffside hot springs over the open Pacific, open to outsiders for exactly two hours in the dead of night.
Farallon Islands (by boat)Nature · ●●●●○Twenty-seven miles off the Golden Gate stand the "Devil's Teeth" — the wildest place in the Bay Area, home to the…
Fern Canyon & Gold Bluffs BeachNature · ●●●●○A creek runs down a canyon whose walls stand fifty feet high and solid green with ferns, some from plant families older…
Fitzgerald Marine ReserveNature · ●●●●○One of the richest tide-pool reefs in California, where a low tide turns a mile of rock into a live aquarium.
Forest of Nisene MarksNature · ●●●●○The epicenter of the earthquake that stopped the 1989 World Series is a small sign in the woods, and you can hike to it.
Forest ParkNature · ●●●●○A city park about five hundred acres larger than Central Park, containing a zoo, an art museum, a science centre and a…
Fort FunstonNature · ●●●●○200-foot sand bluffs at San Francisco's southwest corner where hang gliders launch off old coastal-defense batteries…
Fort Ord National MonumentNature · ●●●●○An army base where soldiers trained for three wars is now 86 miles of trail across the hills above Monterey Bay.
Fort RossOddity · ●●●●○A wooden Russian fort with an onion-domed chapel on the wild Sonoma coast, the southern edge of the Russian empire in…
General Sherman & the Giant ForestNature · ●●●●○The largest living thing on Earth by volume is a giant sequoia in the southern Sierra, and it stands in a forest full…
Golden Gate ParkNature · ●●●●○A thousand acres of made land, bigger than Central Park, holding the oldest Japanese garden in the country, a Victorian…
Great Smoky MountainsNature · ●●●●○The most visited national park in the United States, by a wide margin, and one of the most biologically diverse…
Griffith ObservatoryPoint · ●●●●○Yes, it's the most obvious landmark in Los Angeles, and yes, it's genuinely worth it, and it has been free to everyone…
Henry Miller Memorial LibraryOddity · ●●●●○A bookstore with no sign, free coffee, a ping-pong table, and a lawn where Arcade Fire has played.
Henry W. Coe State ParkNature · ●●●●○The largest state park in Northern California, 87,000 acres of empty ridgelines an hour from San Jose, and almost…
Hetch HetchyNature · ●●●●○Yosemite has a twin — a second glacier-carved valley John Muir called a "wonderfully exact counterpart" — and San…
Horsetail Fall "Firefall"Nature · ●●●●○For about two weeks each February, if the water is flowing and the sky is clear, the setting sun turns a thin waterfall…
Jughandle Ecological StaircaseNature · ●●●●○A single trail near Mendocino climbs a "staircase" of five sea terraces — each one about 100,000 years older than the…
Kelso DunesNature · ●●●●○Climb these Mojave dunes, slide back down, and the whole slope answers with a low booming hum you can feel through your…
Kernville & the Kern RiverTown · ●●●●○The Kern River drops out of the high Sierra in one of the wildest whitewater runs in the country, and the old mining…
Kings Canyon & Cedar GroveNature · ●●●●○A glacial gorge deeper than the Grand Canyon runs into the southern Sierra, and John Muir thought it beat Yosemite.
Kirby CoveNature · ●●●●○A hidden cove tucked directly beneath the Marin end of the Golden Gate Bridge — a coarse-sand beach framed by cypress…
La Brea Tar PitsPoint · ●●●●○In the middle of the city, next to the art museums, cold black asphalt still bubbles up out of the ground the same way…
La Purísima MissionPoint · ●●●●○Every other California mission is a church with some ruins around it. La Purísima is the whole thing, rebuilt board by…
Lands End & the Sutro Baths RuinsNature · ●●●●○The ruins of the largest swimming pool complex ever built, crumbling into the sea at the wildest corner of the city.
Lassen & Bumpass HellNature · ●●●●○California has its own Yellowstone and almost nobody goes: a plug-dome volcano that erupted in 1915, with a boiling…
Lava Beds National MonumentNature · ●●●●○A volcanic tableland in California's far northeast is riddled with more than 700 lava-tube caves you explore by…
Lick Observatory (Mt Hamilton)Oddity · ●●●●○The world's first permanently staffed mountaintop observatory crowns the Bay Area's highest peak — and James Lick, the…
Limekiln State ParkNature · ●●●●○The park most people blow past on the way to somewhere more famous, and the one a few of them come back raving about.
Manzanar National Historic SitePoint · ●●●●○Between the highway and the Sierra wall, the government held eleven thousand of its own citizens behind barbed wire for…
Mavericks & Pillar PointPoint · ●●●●○The wave a local surfed alone for fifteen years before the world found out, and one of the biggest breaks on earth.
McCloud Falls & Castle CragsNature · ●●●●○Three waterfalls stacked along two miles of one river under Mount Shasta — the middle one a fifty-foot curtain into a…
MendocinoTown · ●●●●○A New England village on a California headland — saltbox houses and redwood water towers on a bluff wrapped on three…
Moab — Arches & CanyonlandsNature · ●●●●○Two thousand natural stone arches in one park — more than anywhere else on Earth — and next door a canyon system so…
Montaña de Oro State ParkNature · ●●●●○One of California's largest and least-tamed state parks: eight thousand acres of golden cliffs, sea caves, and…
Monterey Bay AquariumPoint · ●●●●○Built inside a defunct sardine cannery on Steinbeck's Cannery Row, this is the aquarium that first grew a living kelp…
Morro RockNature · ●●●●○A 581-foot volcanic plug rises straight out of the water at the harbor mouth, sacred to two tribes and closed to…
Mount Diablo SummitNature · ●●●●○On the right day you can stand on this East Bay summit and see the Farallon Islands out one side and Half Dome out the…
Mount Hamilton Road (Hwy 130)Route · ●●●●○Nineteen miles and roughly 365 turns, graded gently enough for horse-drawn telescope wagons in 1876 — which is exactly…
Mount San Jacinto Peak & Cactus to CloudsNature · ●●●●○From the desert floor in Palm Springs, one of the steepest big climbs in the country rises more than ten thousand feet…
Mount ShastaNature · ●●●●○A 14,179-foot glaciered volcano stands alone above the far-north forests, visible for a hundred miles — sacred to the…
Mount Wilson ObservatoryPoint · ●●●●○On a peak above the city sits the telescope where a man looked out one night in the 1920s and found that the universe…
New York CityTown · ●●●●○A city of transplants where almost nobody is from, which is exactly why it's easy to arrive alone — and where the…
Noah Purifoy Desert Art MuseumPoint · ●●●●○An artist spent the last fifteen years of his life turning ten acres of open desert into a walk-through city of…
North BeachWander zone · ●●●●○The old Italian quarter where the Beats set up shop, and still the best neighborhood in the city to wander on caffeine…
Olympic National ParkNature · ●●●●○Three parks in one: a temperate rainforest that receives up to four metres of rain a year and grows moss in curtains, a…
Palm Springs Aerial TramwayPoint · ●●●●○In ten minutes a rotating cable car lifts you from the desert floor to an alpine forest eight thousand feet up, and the…
Palomar ObservatoryPoint · ●●●●○For twenty-six years the largest telescope on Earth sat on a mountain in the back country of San Diego County, and you…
PescaderoTown · ●●●●○A two-street farm town in the fog-and-redwood country where people drive an hour for artichoke soup and warm garlic…
Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal RookeryNature · ●●●●○Thousands of elephant seals sprawled on a beach a few feet below a boardwalk, for free, any day of the year.
Pigeon Point LighthousePoint · ●●●●○One of the tallest lighthouses on the West Coast, with a hostel in the keepers' houses and a hot tub bolted to the edge…
Pinnacles National ParkNature · ●●●●○The Bay Area's own national park is the one nobody visits: half of an ancient volcano that drifted 195 miles up the San…
Reinhardt Redwood Regional ParkNature · ●●●●○Ships entering the Golden Gate once navigated by redwoods on this Oakland ridge so huge they were visible 16 miles out…
Safari WestOddity · ●●●●○Four hundred acres of Sonoma hills run as an African savanna — giraffes, rhinos, cheetahs — with luxury safari tents…
Salt Point State ParkNature · ●●●●○Six thousand acres of Sonoma coast where the sandstone bluffs are eaten into honeycomb lacework, one of California's…
Salvation MountainOddity · ●●●●○One man spent thirty years painting a hill in the desert, with half a million gallons of paint, to say as big as he…
San Gorgonio Mountain (Old Greyback)Nature · ●●●●○The highest mountain in Southern California isn't in the Sierra. It's Old Greyback, an 11,503-foot dome above the…
Santa PaulaTown · ●●●●○A citrus town that time mostly left alone still calls itself the Citrus Capital of the World, its main street lined…
Shenandoah & the Blue Ridge ParkwayNature · ●●●●○A national park shaped like a ribbon — 170 km long and rarely more than a few miles wide — following a ridge with a…
Taft Point & Sentinel DomeNature · ●●●●○One trailhead on Glacier Point Road serves both of Yosemite's best cheap thrills: a guardrail-free ledge hanging 3,000…
Tassajara Zen Mountain CenterOddity · ●●●●○A Zen monastery and clothing-optional hot springs at the end of fourteen miles of dirt road, open to outsiders four…
The Albany BulbOddity · ●●●●○A construction landfill that turned into an unofficial sculpture park, out on a spit in the bay.
The American River ParkwayRoute · ●●●●○A paved trail runs 32 unbroken miles up a river through the middle of Sacramento, one of the longest purpose-built bike…
The Bay ModelOddity · ●●●●○A working scale model of the entire San Francisco Bay, the size of two football fields, with tides that cycle every…
The Current River & Jacks ForkNature · ●●●●○Two spring-fed rivers running clear and cold through the Missouri Ozarks, fed by some of the largest springs on the…
The Getty CenterPoint · ●●●●○A cable tram carries you up out of the traffic to a hilltop city of white stone and gardens, with world-class art…
The Grand CanyonNature · ●●●●○446 kilometres long, up to 29 wide, and about 1,800 metres deep, with two billion years of rock stacked in its walls —…
The HuntingtonPoint · ●●●●○A railroad fortune bought a Gutenberg Bible, Gainsborough's Blue Boy, and a hundred and twenty acres of gardens, and…
The Indian CanyonsNature · ●●●●○The largest palm oasis on Earth is a fifteen-mile canyon of native fan palms along a desert stream, on Cahuilla land…
The Lost Coast (King Range)Nature · ●●●●○The mountains here rise 4,000 feet straight out of the surf in under three miles — so steep and unstable that highway…
The Madonna InnOddity · ●●●●○A highway builder opened a hotel in 1958, painted nearly all of it pink, gave each of its 110 rooms a different…
The Museum of Jurassic TechnologyOddity · ●●●●○A small museum on a Los Angeles boulevard shows you an ant with a fungus bursting from its head, a sculpture carved to…
The Nā Pali Coast, KauaʻiNature · ●●●●○Twenty-seven kilometres of coastline where 1,200-metre cliffs drop straight into the Pacific in fluted green pleats —…
The Rae Lakes LoopNature · ●●●●○A forty-mile loop out of Kings Canyon climbs to a chain of alpine lakes under a spire called the Painted Lady, over a…
The Salton Sea & Bombay BeachOddity · ●●●●○California's largest lake was an accident, a river breach that flooded the desert in 1905, and its dead resort towns…
The Watts TowersPoint · ●●●●○An Italian immigrant tile-setter spent thirty-three years building seventeen steel towers in his Watts backyard out of…
Thousand Island LakeNature · ●●●●○An alpine lake scattered with rocky islets sits under Banner Peak, and it's the reflection Ansel Adams made famous.
Tomales Bay OystersPoint · ●●●●○Shuck your own oysters at a picnic table on the edge of a quiet bay, or paddle it on a dark night when the water glows…
Tomales Point & the Tule Elk ReserveNature · ●●●●○Elk on the tip of a peninsula, ocean on one side and Tomales Bay on the other, and usually no one else on the trail.
Torrey Pines State Natural ReserveNature · ●●●●○The rarest pine in North America grows wild in only two places on Earth, and one of them is a set of eroded sea cliffs…
TrinidadTown · ●●●●○A fishing village of fewer than four hundred people sits over a rock-studded harbor on the far north coast, with ten…
Vicente Flat & Cone PeakNature · ●●●●○A backpacking route from the edge of the highway to the tallest coastal mountain in the lower 48, and a redwood camp…
Wilder RanchNature · ●●●●○A perfectly preserved 1890s dairy ranch sits at the foot of a staircase of fault-lifted coastal terraces just north of…
Yellowstone & Grand TetonNature · ●●●●○The world's first national park sits on top of an active supervolcano, which is why half of Earth's geysers are here —…
Zion National ParkNature · ●●●●○A canyon cut 800 metres into red and cream Navajo sandstone, narrow enough at its head that you hike the river itself…
16th Avenue Tiled StepsOddity · ●●●○○A staircase in the far avenues that a whole neighborhood turned into a single sea-to-sky mosaic, and almost no visitor…
Alice's RestaurantPoint · ●●●○○The wooden roadhouse where Skyline meets Highway 84, and every motorcycle and road bike in the Bay Area seems to end up…
Alpine Inn (Rossotti's)Oddity · ●●●○○An 1852 roadhouse beer garden, second-oldest tavern in California, that also happens to be where the internet took its…
Alum Rock ParkNature · ●●●○○California's oldest municipal park hides the stone ruins of a Victorian health spa — mineral-spring grottoes still…
Andrew Molera State ParkNature · ●●●○○The big Big Sur park with no scenic drive-in, so the crowds thin the second you're out of the parking lot and across…
Andy Goldsworthy in the PresidioOddity · ●●●○○The largest collection of Andy Goldsworthy's land art in North America, hidden in a forest you have to walk to find.
Angels FlightOddity · ●●●○○The world's shortest railway climbs a single downtown block, has done since 1901, and costs a dollar fifty.
Angora LakesNature · ●●●○○Up a one-lane road above Fallen Leaf Lake, two small lakes sit in a granite bowl, and the resort at the top has been…
Annie's CanyonNature · ●●●○○A narrow sandstone slot canyon hides in a coastal lagoon between two beach towns, tight enough that you climb out…
Antelope Valley Poppy ReserveNature · ●●●○○In the right spring, seventeen hundred acres of high-desert hills north of LA turn solid, blazing orange with…
Apple Jack'sOddity · ●●●○○An 1870s dive bar in the La Honda redwoods, dark and creaky and unbothered, that's been watering loggers, bikers…
Arcata Marsh & Wildlife SanctuaryNature · ●●●○○The city of Arcata treats its sewage by running it through a marsh, and that marsh is now one of the best places to…
Arizona Cactus GardenOddity · ●●●○○A hidden Victorian desert garden on the Stanford campus, a thousand cacti planted for the Stanfords in the 1880s, free…
Armstrong RedwoodsNature · ●●●○○Wine country's old-growth grove: a 1,400-year-old giant named for the lumberman who couldn't bring himself to cut it…
Auburn Confluence & Foresthill BridgeNature · ●●●○○Two forks of the American River meet in a canyon below the tallest bridge in California — 730 feet of steel built for a…
Baldwin Hills Scenic OverlookNature · ●●●○○The city's favorite outdoor stairmaster is 282 steep steps up a hill in the middle of LA, and the reward at the top is…
Bean Hollow & Pebble BeachNature · ●●●○○A beach of tiny polished pebbles and cliffs eaten into honeycomb, a short walk apart, that nearly everyone drives past.
BeniciaTown · ●●●○○California's forgotten third capital keeps its 1852 capitol building intact, a waterfront main street pointed at the…
Bernal Heights SummitNature · ●●●○○A bare grassy hill in the middle of San Francisco with a full 360° of the city — downtown, both bridges, the bay, San…
Big Basin RedwoodsNature · ●●●○○California's first state park — the 1902 victory that started redwood conservation — burned almost entirely in 2020…
Big Falls (Forest Falls)Nature · ●●●○○The tallest year-round waterfall in Southern California drops some five hundred feet down a mountainside above the…
Big Pine LakesNature · ●●●○○A chain of impossibly turquoise lakes sits below the southernmost glacier in the country, colored by the rock the ice…
Big Sycamore Canyon & La Jolla Valley (Point Mugu)Nature · ●●●○○Where the Santa Monica Mountains meet the sea at the Ventura county line, a canyon of old sycamores runs inland to one…
Black Chasm CavernNature · ●●●○○A Gold Country cave holds more than ten thousand helictites — crystals that ignore gravity, twisting sideways and up…
Black Diamond MinesOddity · ●●●○○Northern California's largest coal mining district ran in these hills above Antioch — five vanished towns, a hilltop…
Black Star CanyonNature · ●●●○○A remote canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains draws hikers with a hidden waterfall and a dark reputation, though the story…
Bob Baker Marionette TheaterOddity · ●●●○○The oldest puppet theater in the country still puts on marionette shows where the puppeteers walk the characters right…
Bodega (The Birds)Oddity · ●●●○○The schoolhouse and church from Hitchcock's "The Birds," still standing in a sleepy inland town that looks eerily…
Bolsa Chica Ecological ReserveNature · ●●●○○The largest saltwater marsh on the California coast survives right across the highway from the Huntington Beach surf…
Bombay BeachOddity · ●●●○○A 1950s resort town that the dying Salton Sea left to rot has been colonized by artists, so its ruins now hold a car…
Bon Tempe & the Mt Tam LakesNature · ●●●○○Mount Tamalpais hides a chain of five reservoir lakes on its north flank — pine-ringed, trout-stocked, eagle-visited —…
Bonita FallsNature · ●●●○○A hundred-foot waterfall hides up a side canyon in Lytle Creek, unsigned and easy to miss, the second-tallest fall in…
Boonville & the Boontling LanguageOddity · ●●●○○An isolated valley town invented its own language in the 1890s, some 1,600 words of it, and spent the next century…
Bowling Ball BeachNature · ●●●○○At the right low tide, a Mendocino beach reveals rows of near-perfect stone spheres — two to five feet across — lined…
Bronson CavesOddity · ●●●○○The original Batcave is a short rock tunnel in Griffith Park, and it's been the secret entrance to a thousand movies…
Brooks IslandNature · ●●●○○A whole island in the middle of the bay — 2,500-year-old Ohlone shellmound, a 160-foot summit, and Bing Crosby's old…
Bubblegum AlleyOddity · ●●●○○A downtown alley in San Luis Obispo has both walls packed with decades of chewed gum, fifteen feet high and seventy…
Buck's of WoodsideOddity · ●●●○○The wildly kitschy Woodside diner where some of Silicon Valley's biggest deals got signed over pancakes, under a Soviet…
Buena Vista Park's Tombstone GuttersOddity · ●●●○○The rain gutters of San Francisco's oldest park are lined with broken Gold Rush-era tombstones — the leftovers from…
Butano State ParkNature · ●●●○○A whole redwood canyon folded into the hills behind Pescadero that most coast traffic drives straight past — the quiet…
Cabot's Pueblo MuseumOddity · ●●●○○One man spent decades hand-building a four-story, thirty-five-room Hopi-style pueblo out of other people's cast-offs…
Cabrillo National MonumentPoint · ●●●○○At the tip of Point Loma, where the first European stepped ashore on the West Coast, are the best tide pools in…
California Citrus State Historic ParkPoint · ●●●○○A living grove of the oranges that built Southern California survives as a state park in Riverside, rows of trees kept…
California Scenario (Noguchi Garden)Point · ●●●○○One of the country's best sculpture gardens is a free acre and a half of desert, forest, and stone tucked between two…
Carmel-by-the-SeaTown · ●●●○○A one-square-mile village of storybook cottages with no street numbers and a white-sand beach at the bottom of the main…
Carpinteria Bluffs & the Harbor Seal RookeryNature · ●●●○○On the bluffs at the edge of Carpinteria, a stretch of beach fills every winter with hundreds of harbor seals hauling…
Carquinez Scenic DriveRoute · ●●●○○The old bluff-top road between Crockett and Martinez was too landslide-prone to keep as a through road — so the middle…
Castello di AmorosaOddity · ●●●○○One man spent $40 million and fifteen years building an authentically medieval Tuscan castle in Calistoga — 107 rooms…
Castle Air MuseumPoint · ●●●○○Eighty-odd military aircraft sit out on a field in the Central Valley, an SR-71 and a B-52 among them, on the old…
Castlewood & Lone ElkNature · ●●●○○Twenty-five minutes from the Arch: a bluff trail with the Meramec River bending below it, and next door a park where…
Center for Land Use InterpretationOddity · ●●●○○A storefront in Culver City is a museum about how humans use land, and it means that as broadly and strangely as it…
Chabot Space & Science CenterPoint · ●●●○○Three historic telescopes in the Oakland hills — including a 36-inch reflector — open to the public for free every…
Charles M. Schulz MuseumPoint · ●●●○○Charles Schulz drew Peanuts in Santa Rosa for thirty years — and the museum across from his beloved ice rink holds the…
Chicano ParkPoint · ●●●○○Under the ramps of the Coronado Bridge, the concrete pylons hold the largest collection of Chicano murals in the world…
China CampPoint · ●●●○○A 19th-century Chinese shrimp-fishing village survives whole on a quiet San Rafael cove — pier, cabins, and all —…
Christ Cathedral (Crystal Cathedral)Point · ●●●○○A cathedral built entirely of glass, ten thousand panes of it, rises out of a Garden Grove parking lot, once the home…
Chumash Painted CavePoint · ●●●○○Up a narrow mountain road above Santa Barbara, a small sandstone cave holds Chumash paintings still vivid in red…
Clear Lake & Mount KonoctiNature · ●●●○○The oldest lake in North America — holding water continuously for something like half a million years — sits two hours…
Codornices Slide & the Rose GardenPoint · ●●●○○Across the street from each other in the Berkeley hills: a WPA rose amphitheater with a Golden Gate view, and a 40-foot…
Cold Spring TavernOddity · ●●●○○A stagecoach stop from 1868 is still standing on the old road over the mountains, still serving travelers, now a rustic…
ColmaTown · ●●●○○A town where the dead outnumber the living by more than a thousand to one, built entirely to bury San Francisco's.
Coloma & the Gold DiscoveryPoint · ●●●○○The exact spot where California began: James Marshall's sawmill tailrace on the American River, where a glint in the…
Colonel Allensworth State Historic ParkPoint · ●●●○○The first California town founded, financed, and governed by Black Americans stands restored on the valley floor —…
Colorado Street BridgePoint · ●●●○○A graceful arched bridge from 1913 curves 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, beautiful enough to be a landmark…
Computer History MuseumPoint · ●●●○○The world's biggest collection of old computers, including a hand-cranked Victorian calculating engine and the actual…
Corona HeightsNature · ●●●○○A bare red-rock crown above the Castro with a full downtown panorama — and on its flank, a wall of chert polished to a…
Cosumnes River PreserveNature · ●●●○○The last major undammed river off the Sierra ends here in a sprawl of winter wetlands — and every November thousands of…
Cowell-Purisima TrailNature · ●●●○○A flat bluff-top trail south of Half Moon Bay that runs the cliff edge past working farm fields to a hidden pocket…
Cowles Mountain & Mission TrailsNature · ●●●○○The highest point in the city of San Diego is a summit hike inside the largest municipal park in California, and half…
Coyote HillsNature · ●●●○○A knot of grassy hills on the Fremont bayshore where 2,000-year-old Ohlone shellmounds meet tule marshes — and one of…
Coyote Point & CuriOdysseyNature · ●●●○○A eucalyptus-covered point jutting into the bay with a beach, a stretch of the Bay Trail, and a little wildlife center…
Crocker Art MuseumPoint · ●●●○○The oldest art museum in the West sits in a Sacramento railroad baron's 1872 mansion, gallery upstairs and a bowling…
Crystal CoveNature · ●●●○○A colony of forty-six hand-built 1930s beach cottages survives on an Orange County cove, a rustic slice of old…
Cucamonga PeakNature · ●●●○○The peak that looms over Rancho Cucamonga is the hardest and best of the Inland Empire's local summits, a near-vertical…
Cypress Tree Tunnel & KPH RadioOddity · ●●●○○A quarter-mile corridor of Monterey cypress, planted around 1930, leads to a white Art Deco radio station that took…
César E. Chávez National MonumentPoint · ●●●○○The farm-labor leader who changed California is buried in a rose garden at the union headquarters he built in the…
Deep Creek Hot SpringsNature · ●●●○○A string of natural hot pools sits in a desert canyon along the Pacific Crest Trail, a hard walk from any road, beloved…
Deetjen's Big Sur InnOddity · ●●●○○A ramshackle Norwegian village of hand-built redwood cabins with thin walls, no TVs, and a candlelit dining room that's…
Del ValleNature · ●●●○○A five-mile lake folded into the golden hills south of Livermore — the East Bay's best swimming water, and the back…
Descanso GardensNature · ●●●○○Under a canopy of native oaks in La Cañada grows one of the largest camellia forests in the hemisphere, and the reason…
Desert View Tower & Boulder ParkOddity · ●●●○○A seventy-foot stone tower and a maze of boulders carved into animals sit together off the interstate near the Mexican…
Devil's PunchbowlNature · ●●●○○On the desert edge of the San Gabriels, the San Andreas Fault has tilted whole slabs of sandstone up on end, and you…
Devil's Slide TrailNature · ●●●○○A stretch of old Highway 1 so treacherous they finally drilled a tunnel around it, now a flat cliff-edge trail you get…
di Rosa Center for Contemporary ArtPoint · ●●●○○A former vineyard turned into 200 acres of contemporary art, with sculpture out in the meadows, galleries by a lake…
Donner Memorial State ParkPoint · ●●●○○A stone monument stands with its pedestal exactly twenty-two feet tall, the depth of the snow that trapped the Donner…
Drawbridge (ghost town)Oddity · ●●●○○The Bay Area has an actual ghost town: a former hunting-resort village in the South Bay marshes, abandoned since 1979…
Eastern Columbia BuildingPoint · ●●●○○The finest Art Deco building in Los Angeles is a thirteen-story tower of glossy turquoise on Broadway, topped by a…
Echo Park LakeNature · ●●●○○A little lake just uphill from downtown grows the largest bed of lotus flowers in the country, with pedal boats shaped…
Edgewood ParkNature · ●●●○○A serpentine grassland that erupts into one of the Bay Area's best wildflower shows each spring, hidden between the…
El Corte de Madera & the Tafoni MonolithNature · ●●●○○A redwood mountain-bike preserve on Skyline hiding a sandstone monolith that weather carved into a giant honeycomb…
El Matador State BeachNature · ●●●○○The prettiest beach in Malibu is a small cove of sea stacks, arches, and caves you reach down a cliff, with barely room…
Escondido FallsNature · ●●●○○The tallest waterfall in the Santa Monica Mountains hides at the end of a Malibu canyon, reached on a walk that starts…
Etiwanda Falls & North Etiwanda PreserveNature · ●●●○○The Inland Empire's most-hiked waterfall pours off the San Gabriel foothills right above Rancho Cucamonga, close enough…
Ewoldsen TrailNature · ●●●○○The actual hike in the park everyone drives to for a ten-minute waterfall photo, and the one that earns the trip.
Fallen Leaf LakeNature · ●●●○○A mile from the South Lake Tahoe sprawl hides a glacial lake that's basically Tahoe in miniature — warmer, quieter…
Feather FallsNature · ●●●○○A 410-foot waterfall pours off a sheer cliff in the Sierra foothills above Lake Oroville, and a viewing platform hangs…
Ferndale & the Kinetic RaceTown · ●●●○○A whole town of ornate Victorian "butterfat palaces" survives on the Humboldt coast, and every spring it's where a…
Figueroa MountainNature · ●●●○○In the right spring, the slopes above the Santa Ynez wine country turn solid with lupine and poppies, and the drive up…
FiloliPoint · ●●●○○A 1917 Georgian country estate and sixteen acres of formal gardens in the Woodside hills, so photogenic it played the…
Forestiere Underground GardensOddity · ●●●○○A Sicilian immigrant spent forty years hand-digging ten acres of rooms, courtyards, and grottoes beneath Fresno — with…
Fort PointPoint · ●●●○○A Civil War fort tucked directly under the Golden Gate Bridge, with the great arch overhead built specifically so the…
Foster's BighornOddity · ●●●○○In a Delta river town, you can eat dinner in a 1931 bar under the mounted heads of some three hundred big-game animals…
Franklin Canyon ParkNature · ●●●○○There's a quiet lake and six hundred acres of oak woodland hidden in the hills dead center in Los Angeles, and you've…
Galco's Soda Pop StopOddity · ●●●○○An old Italian grocery in Highland Park stocks more than seven hundred kinds of soda, most of them ones you've never…
Galleta Meadows SculpturesPoint · ●●●○○Scattered free across the open desert around Borrego Springs are a hundred and thirty giant rusted-metal animals…
Ganna Walska LotuslandPoint · ●●●○○A Polish opera singer married six times spent forty years turning a Montecito estate into nineteen theatrical gardens…
Garrapata State ParkNature · ●●●○○No sign, no entrance, no lot. Just numbered gates on the shoulder of Highway 1 and some of the best coast north of Big…
Gaviota Wind CavesNature · ●●●○○A short, steep climb above the coast west of Santa Barbara ends at a set of sandstone caves the wind hollowed out of…
Ghost Railroad of the Santa Cruz MountainsOddity · ●●●○○A mainline railroad once tunneled straight through the Santa Cruz Mountains — mile-long bores, resort stops, whole…
Giant RockOddity · ●●●○○A seven-story boulder sitting alone in the open Mojave was the site of UFO conventions that drew thousands, and the…
Glen Canyon ParkNature · ●●●○○An actual wild canyon in the middle of San Francisco — chert cliffs, a free-flowing creek, and resident coyotes — that…
Goat Rock & the Russian River MouthNature · ●●●○○The dramatic mouth of the Russian River, where a colony of harbor seals hauls out on the sand between the river and the…
Grizzly Peak & "The Wall"Point · ●●●○○The pullouts along Grizzly Peak Boulevard serve the East Bay's definitive sunset view — and the one locals actually…
Guadalupe Dunes & the Lost City of DeMillePoint · ●●●○○Cecil B. DeMille built the largest movie set in history out here in 1923, then had the whole Egyptian city torn down…
Hakone GardensPoint · ●●●○○One of the oldest Japanese-style residential gardens in the Western Hemisphere, terraced into a Saratoga hillside since…
Half Moon BayTown · ●●●○○The coast's main town: a walkable old Main Street, a long state beach, and the harbor where the Mavericks legend lives.
Hangar OneOddity · ●●●○○One of the largest freestanding buildings ever raised, an eight-acre airship hangar so big fog forms inside near the…
Harmony (pop. 18)Town · ●●●○○A whole town of eighteen people sits just off Highway 1, named Harmony as a peace treaty, where Hearst used to stop for…
Hearst Castle & the San Simeon ZebrasPoint · ●●●○○A newspaper baron's marble hilltop palace, and the zebras from his private zoo still grazing the ranch below it, for…
Heart Rock (Seeley Creek)Nature · ●●●○○A near-perfect heart, a few feet across, is worn into the rock beside a small waterfall on Seeley Creek, and no one…
Heinold's First and Last ChanceOddity · ●●●○○An 1884 saloon built from a whaling ship's timbers, where the 1906 earthquake tilted the floor so steeply your beer…
Heisler ParkNature · ●●●○○A bluff-top park strung along the Laguna cliffs, with stairs down to some of the best tide pools in Southern California…
Hendy Woods & the HermitNature · ●●●○○Two groves of thousand-year-old redwoods sit in the middle of Anderson Valley's wine country, and a Russian hermit once…
Henry Cowell Redwoods & the Garden of EdenNature · ●●●○○Old-growth redwoods you can walk in twenty flat minutes — and downstream, the San Lorenzo River pools into genuine…
Hidden Falls Regional ParkNature · ●●●○○Twelve hundred acres of foothill oak woodland north of Auburn, laced with thirty miles of trail and a pair of creek…
Hidden VillaNature · ●●●○○A working organic farm in the Los Altos hills that opened the first youth hostel in the American West, and still rents…
Hiller Aviation MuseumPoint · ●●●○○A hangar of oddball aircraft at the little San Carlos airport, from a walk-in 747 nose to the flying cars that never…
Hollyhock HousePoint · ●●●○○Frank Lloyd Wright's first Los Angeles house crowns a hill in the middle of the city, and it's the only one of his LA…
Hollywood Forever CemeteryOddity · ●●●○○On summer nights, a few thousand people spread blankets on the lawn of a Hollywood cemetery and watch a movie projected…
Holy Jim FallsNature · ●●●○○A rough dirt road into the Santa Ana Mountains ends at a trail to a hidden waterfall named for a foul-mouthed beekeeper…
HornitosOddity · ●●●○○A Mexican-founded gold town that outlived its neighbors and then just stopped — iron-doored ruins around an empty…
Hot Creek Geological SiteNature · ●●●○○A trout stream runs straight through the floor of a live volcanic caldera — boiling turquoise pools erupt in the…
IdyllwildTown · ●●●○○An alpine arts town sits in the pines an hour above the desert, under the granite rock where modern American climbing…
Ina Coolbrith ParkPoint · ●●●○○A vertical pocket garden stacked into the Russian Hill stairways with one of the city's finest bay views — named for…
Indian Rock ParkPoint · ●●●○○A volcanic rock the size of a building sits in the middle of a Berkeley neighborhood, with staircases carved into its…
Jalama Beach & the Jalama BurgerNature · ●●●○○At the end of a fourteen-mile road that goes nowhere else sits a windswept county beach, a campground full of regulars…
Jepson PrairieNature · ●●●○○For a few weeks each spring, one of California's last great vernal-pool prairies performs its trick: as the seasonal…
John McLaren ParkNature · ●●●○○San Francisco's second-largest park — grasslands, forest, an amphitheater, and a sky-blue water tower with one of the…
JulianTown · ●●●○○An hour up into the mountains east of San Diego is a gold-rush town that ran out of gold and reinvented itself around…
Ken Kesey's La HondaOddity · ●●●○○A log cabin in the redwoods off Highway 84 where the 1960s more or less caught fire: Ken Kesey's place, where the Acid…
Kimberly Crest House & GardensPoint · ●●●○○A French château with a stone tower and terraced Italian gardens looks down over Redlands, built by citrus money and…
Knights Ferry Covered BridgePoint · ●●●○○The longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi crosses the Stanislaus at a gold-rush town most people have never…
Korean Bell of FriendshipPoint · ●●●○○A seventeen-ton bronze bell in an ornate Korean pavilion sits on a windy bluff above the Pacific in San Pedro, a…
La Jolla Cove & the SealsNature · ●●●○○A colony of wild sea lions and harbor seals hauls out on the rocks and little beaches of La Jolla, close enough to…
Ladder Canyon & Painted CanyonNature · ●●●○○In the crumbling badlands where the San Andreas Fault crosses the desert near the Salton Sea, a hike threads up a slot…
Lake Hodges BridgePoint · ●●●○○A thousand-foot ribbon of concrete just sixteen inches thick floats across a reservoir north of San Diego, and it's the…
Lake Merritt & Children's FairylandPoint · ●●●○○America's first official wildlife refuge (1870) is a saltwater lagoon in downtown Oakland — ringed by a light necklace…
Leimert Park VillagePoint · ●●●○○For most of a century this small South LA village has been the cultural heart of Black Los Angeles, compared to Harlem…
Lincoln Memorial ShrinePoint · ●●●○○The only museum devoted to Abraham Lincoln west of the Mississippi is a small limestone octagon in Redlands, its walls…
Little Lakes ValleyNature · ●●●○○The most alpine lakes you can reach for the least climbing in the whole Sierra: a nearly flat trail from the highest…
Little SaigonPoint · ●●●○○The largest Vietnamese community in the world outside Vietnam fills a stretch of Orange County, built by refugees who…
Little Yosemite (Sunol Wilderness)Nature · ●●●○○A boulder-choked gorge on Alameda Creek in the Sunol backcountry that early park boosters named "Little Yosemite" —…
Lizard's MouthNature · ●●●○○A field of wind-carved sandstone boulders on the ridge above Santa Barbara has the best view of the city, and you get…
Locke & the DeltaTown · ●●●○○The only town in America built by Chinese immigrants for Chinese immigrants still stands on a Delta levee — one wooden…
Los Angeles Central LibraryPoint · ●●●○○Downtown's third architectural treasure, alongside the Bradbury and Union Station, is the public library, and it's free…
Los Angeles County ArboretumNature · ●●●○○A hundred and twenty-seven acres of gardens in Arcadia come with about two hundred and fifty wild peacocks that wander…
Los Rios Historic DistrictPoint · ●●●○○The oldest neighborhood in California is a short, shaded street of adobe houses across the tracks from the San Juan…
Los Trancos San Andreas Fault TrailNature · ●●●○○A short loop that walks you straight down the San Andreas Fault, past a fence the 1906 earthquake shoved out of line.
Mare IslandOddity · ●●●○○The US Navy's first Pacific shipyard — 142 years of warships, from wooden paddle steamers to nuclear submarines — sits…
Marin County Civic CenterOddity · ●●●○○Frank Lloyd Wright's last great building, a long pink-and-blue arcade draped across three hills, that Hollywood keeps…
Marin Museum of Bicycling & MTB Hall of FamePoint · ●●●○○A Fairfax museum on the exact ground where mountain biking was invented, home to the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
McArthur-Burney FallsNature · ●●●○○A 129-foot waterfall that doesn't come from the creek above it — most of the water bursts straight out of the rock face…
McWay FallsPoint · ●●●○○An 80-foot waterfall that drops straight onto a beach you're not allowed to walk on.
Memorial Park (Pescadero Creek)Nature · ●●●○○San Mateo County's oldest park: a grove of genuine old-growth redwoods on Pescadero Creek with a summer swimming hole…
Mission Basilica San BuenaventuraPoint · ●●●○○The ninth of California's missions, and the last one Junípero Serra founded before he died, still stands as a working…
Mission San Antonio de PaduaPoint · ●●●○○Of all twenty-one California missions, only this one still stands alone in its original landscape — no town grew around…
Mission San Juan CapistranoPoint · ●●●○○The oldest building still in use in California is a small chapel here, the only one where Junípero Serra is documented…
Mission Santa Barbara (Queen of the Missions)Point · ●●●○○The one California mission with two matching bell towers looks down over Santa Barbara from its hill, and Franciscan…
Missouri Cave CountryNature · ●●●○○Missouri has over 7,500 recorded caves — the second-most of any state — and the best-known of them sits on Route 66…
Mitchell CavernsNature · ●●●○○The only limestone caves in California's state parks are hidden in a desert mountain range so remote you can get in…
Modesto & the American Graffiti CruiseTown · ●●●○○The cruising culture George Lucas grew up in became American Graffiti, and Modesto still cruises McHenry Avenue every…
Modjeska House (Arden)Point · ●●●○○A world-famous Shakespearean actress had one of America's top architects build her a country house in a hidden Orange…
Montgomery WoodsNature · ●●●○○An old-growth redwood grove that briefly held the world's tallest known tree — reached by a mountain road so…
Moonstone Beach (Cambria)Nature · ●●●○○A bluff-top boardwalk where you hunt for moonstones, watch otters, and drop into tide pools, all in an easy mile and a…
Moorten Botanical GardenPoint · ●●●○○A one-acre family cactus garden in Palm Springs holds three thousand kinds of desert plant and the world's first…
Morgan TerritoryNature · ●●●○○The emptiest of the East Bay's big parklands, on Mount Diablo's hidden back side — reached by a one-lane mountain road…
Mori PointNature · ●●●○○A dramatic Pacifica headland of cliffs and hidden ponds, a short walk off the highway, that most people speeding…
Moss Beach DistilleryOddity · ●●●○○A Prohibition speakeasy on a bluff over the ocean, still supposedly haunted by the jilted "Blue Lady," Northern…
Mount Davidson & the CrossOddity · ●●●○○The highest natural point in San Francisco is a eucalyptus-forested peak most residents can't name, topped by a…
Mount LagunaNature · ●●●○○An hour east of San Diego the desert gives way to a mile-high forest of vanilla-scented pines, dark enough at night…
Mount MadonnaNature · ●●●○○A redwood mountain between Gilroy and the sea, where white deer descended from a Hearst gift graze beside the ruins of…
Mount RubidouxNature · ●●●○○The hill Riverside walks up for exercise is also where the country's first outdoor Easter sunrise service was held…
Mount St. Helena & the Silverado SquatNature · ●●●○○Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon squatting in an abandoned mine bunkhouse on this mountain above Calistoga —…
Mount Sutro Cloud ForestNature · ●●●○○A hundred-year-old eucalyptus cloud forest hidden in the dead center of San Francisco, best on the exact foggy days…
Mount UmunhumNature · ●●●○○A Santa Cruz Mountains summit crowned by a five-story concrete Cold War radar cube, closed to the public for 60 years…
Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland)Oddity · ●●●○○Frederick Law Olmsted — the man who designed Central Park — laid out this Oakland cemetery in 1863, and locals treat it…
Mugu RockNature · ●●●○○That dramatic rock on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway, the one from a hundred car commercials, is Mugu Rock…
Muir Woods & Muir BeachNature · ●●●○○The most famous old-growth redwoods near the city, awe-inspiring and reservation-only crowded, with a quieter beach and…
Murphy RanchOddity · ●●●○○In a canyon above the Palisades are the graffiti-covered ruins of a compound built in the 1930s by Americans who…
Museum of International PropagandaOddity · ●●●○○A small, free San Rafael museum of a century's worth of state propaganda, one couple's unsettling collection of…
Mussel RockNature · ●●●○○The exact spot where the San Andreas Fault dives into the Pacific, now a hang-gliding launch perched on top of an old…
Musso & Frank GrillOddity · ●●●○○Hollywood's oldest restaurant has been pouring martinis in the same red booths since 1919, and the ghosts at the bar…
Musée MécaniqueOddity · ●●●○○One of the world's largest private collections of coin-operated antique arcade machines — a century of penny arcades…
Natural Bridges & West CliffNature · ●●●○○Each winter thousands of monarch butterflies hang in dripping orange clusters in a eucalyptus grove behind the beach —…
NepenthePoint · ●●●○○A clifftop terrace with a fifty-mile view that Orson Welles bought on a whim and never once slept in.
Nevada City & the South YubaTown · ●●●○○The best-preserved Gold Rush town in the Sierra foothills, all gas lamps and balconied Victorians — with the emerald…
New Almaden & Quicksilver ParkOddity · ●●●○○The Gold Rush ran on mercury, and the mercury came from here: California's oldest and richest mine, with its company…
New Camaldoli HermitageOddity · ●●●○○A working Benedictine monastery on a ridge two miles up a private road, where you can buy honey the monks made and just…
Nike Missile Site SF-51Oddity · ●●●○○The abandoned concrete bones of a Cold War missile base on a Pacifica ridge, now a windswept graffiti gallery.
Nike Missile Site SF-88Oddity · ●●●○○The only fully restored Nike missile base in the country, where docents raise an actual Cold War nuclear missile out of…
Niles (Fremont)Oddity · ●●●○○Before Hollywood, there was Niles: the small-town main street where Charlie Chaplin filmed "The Tramp," with a…
Nitt Witt RidgeOddity · ●●●○○The poor man's Hearst Castle: a hillside palace one man built by hand over fifty years out of beer cans, abalone…
North Table Mountain & Phantom FallsNature · ●●●○○For a few weeks each spring, a lava mesa above Oroville turns solid wildflower and pours waterfalls off its cliffs; by…
Norton Simon MuseumPoint · ●●●○○One of the greatest private art collections ever assembled sits in Pasadena, holds Rembrandts and Van Goghs and a room…
Oak GlenTown · ●●●○○An hour from the desert heat of the Inland Empire, a mile up in the mountains, sits an unlikely pocket of apple country…
Ojai & Bart's BooksTown · ●●●○○A valley town under the Topatopa Mountains lights up pink at sunset, and its bookstore is a hundred and thirty thousand…
Old Faithful Geyser of CaliforniaOddity · ●●●○○One of the few geysers on Earth that erupts on a reliable clock, every few minutes, in a Calistoga field shared with…
Old Haul RoadNature · ●●●○○A gentle gravel rail-trail through the redwoods on the bed of an old logging railroad, which most Bay Area riders never…
Old Shasta (Shasta State Historic Park)Point · ●●●○○A half-mile of roofless brick storefronts with iron doors is nearly all that's left of the town that was once the…
Old Towne OrangeTown · ●●●○○The largest historic district in California is an 1880s downtown built around a traffic circle, and it's now the…
Olvera Street & El PuebloPoint · ●●●○○The oldest corner of Los Angeles is a short brick market street off the original plaza, anchored by an adobe house…
Pacific GroveWander zone · ●●●○○The Victorian beach town on the tip of the peninsula that locals quietly rate over Carmel, minus the crowds and the…
Pageant of the MastersOddity · ●●●○○Every summer in a Laguna canyon, hundreds of volunteers hold perfectly still inside giant frames so that, for a few…
Palace of Fine ArtsPoint · ●●●○○A monumental Roman rotunda reflected in a lagoon, built as a fake ruin for a 1915 world's fair and the only building…
Palo Alto BaylandsNature · ●●●○○The largest undisturbed marsh left on San Francisco Bay, flat and free at the edge of Palo Alto, laced with boardwalks…
Papua New Guinea Sculpture GardenOddity · ●●●○○A quiet grove near Stanford full of towering carved totems and a dugout canoe, made by New Guinea artists flown in to…
Partington CoveNature · ●●●○○An unmarked trail off a blind pullout that drops through a rock tunnel to a cove most people driving past never know is…
Pfeiffer BeachNature · ●●●○○Purple sand and an offshore rock with a keyhole the winter sun fires straight through, reached by a road with no sign.
Pfeiffer Falls & Valley ViewNature · ●●●○○A short redwood loop to a 60-foot fall, the easy leg-stretch inside the park most people only drive through to reach…
Picchetti Ranch & WineryOddity · ●●●○○One of the oldest surviving wineries in California still stands on the Monte Bello ridge above Cupertino — an 1870s…
Piedra BlancaNature · ●●●○○Round a bend in the Sespe backcountry above Ojai and a cluster of enormous pale sandstone domes rises out of the…
Pioneertown & Pappy and Harriet'sTown · ●●●○○In 1946 a group of Western movie stars built a fake 1880s town in the high desert to film in and live in, and it's…
Point Arena & the Stornetta LandsNature · ●●●○○The tallest lighthouse on the Pacific coast stands where the San Andreas Fault runs out to sea — beside miles of public…
Point Bonita LighthousePoint · ●●●○○The only lighthouse in America you reach by crossing a suspension bridge — out a hand-carved rock tunnel and over a…
Point DumeNature · ●●●○○A rocky headland juts out of the Malibu coast with a cove and tide pools below and, in winter, gray whales passing…
Point Fermin LighthousePoint · ●●●○○A gingerbread Victorian lighthouse from 1874 stands on the San Pedro bluffs, the twin of a lighthouse the atlas already…
Point IsabelPoint · ●●●○○One of the largest off-leash dog parks in the country — 23 acres of Richmond bayshore where a half-million dog visits a…
Point Montara Lighthouse HostelPoint · ●●●○○A working lighthouse where the old keepers' quarters are now cheap bunks a few feet from the surf.
Point Reyes Lighthouse & Chimney RockNature · ●●●○○The windiest, foggiest point on the West Coast: 308 steps down to a lighthouse on the cliff, and in winter a beach…
Point Sur LighthouseOddity · ●●●○○A working lighthouse stranded on a 361-foot volcanic rock, and the only one on the coast you can walk through, on a…
Poly Canyon (the Architecture Graveyard)Oddity · ●●●○○A canyon behind Cal Poly holds sixty years of student-built experimental structures — a shell house, a bridge house…
Port CostaOddity · ●●●○○A dead-end former grain port on the Carquinez Strait that time forgot: one street, a Victorian roadhouse, and a…
Portola Redwoods State ParkNature · ●●●○○A deep, quiet redwood canyon at the far side of the Skyline hills that takes real effort to reach, so almost nobody…
Preston CastleOddity · ●●●○○A 120-room Romanesque castle rises over the Gold Country town of Ione — built in 1894 not as a mansion but as a reform…
Pulgas Water TempleOddity · ●●●○○A Roman-style temple hidden behind a gate on a country road, built in 1934 to celebrate water arriving from 160 miles…
Purisima Creek RedwoodsNature · ●●●○○A deep redwood canyon on the coast side of Skyline that most people blow past on the way to the beach, with trails from…
Ragged Point & Black Swift FallsNature · ●●●○○The cliff where Big Sur begins or ends, with a brutal little trail down to a black-sand beach and a 300-foot waterfall…
Rancho Corral de TierraNature · ●●●○○Thousands of acres of wild coastal hills rising straight up behind the Highway 1 towns, a big empty backcountry hiding…
Rancho San Antonio & Deer Hollow FarmNature · ●●●○○The most-loved trail network on the Peninsula hides a 160-year-old working homestead in its folds — a real farm with…
Rincon PointNature · ●●●○○The most famous wave in California peels for hundreds of yards around a point on the Santa Barbara-Ventura line, and on…
Ring MountainNature · ●●●○○A Tiburon ridge with 2,400-year-old Native carvings pecked into the boulders, a wildflower found nowhere else on Earth…
Roaring Camp RailroadsOddity · ●●●○○Century-old steam locomotives haul you up some of the steepest railroad grades in North America, straight through…
Rodin Sculpture Garden (Cantor)Point · ●●●○○Rodin's Gates of Hell, and the largest collection of his bronzes outside Paris, sitting free and outdoors on the…
Rose Valley FallsNature · ●●●○○A three-hundred-foot waterfall drops in two tiers over mossy rock at the end of a short, easy trail in the mountains…
Rosicrucian Egyptian MuseumOddity · ●●●○○The largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on the US West Coast — real mummies included — built and run by a mystical…
Rosie the Riveter NHP (Richmond)Point · ●●●○○Richmond built 747 ships in four years — a Liberty ship in under five days at the record — and the national park…
Russian Ridge & Borel HillNature · ●●●○○The highest named point in San Mateo County sits on an open grass ridge above Skyline — and in April it detonates into…
Sacramento National Wildlife RefugeNature · ●●●○○On winter afternoons a cloud of snow geese lifts off a Central Valley marsh all at once, loud enough to feel, and you…
Salmon Creek FallsNature · ●●●○○A 120-foot waterfall a five-minute walk from a highway pullout at the far south end, where almost nobody bothers to…
San Bruno MountainNature · ●●●○○A wild mountain marooned in the middle of the urban peninsula, with rare butterflies and a summit view from the ocean…
San Carpóforo BeachNature · ●●●○○The wide, driftwood-strewn beach at the very bottom of Big Sur that almost nobody stops for, because there's no sign…
San Gregorio General StoreOddity · ●●●○○An 1889 general store that's really a saloon with live music, stiff Bloody Marys, and shelves of books, boots, and cast…
San Jose Flea MarketPoint · ●●●○○"La Pulga" — one of the largest open-air markets in America since 1960 — is eight lanes of produce rows, taco smoke…
San Pedro Valley & Brooks FallsNature · ●●●○○Twenty-five minutes from San Francisco, a three-tier waterfall drops 175 feet down a Pacifica canyon each winter — and…
Sand Dollar Beach & Jade CoveNature · ●●●○○The one place on 90 miles of cliff coast where you can walk a long, open beach, and dig real jade out of the surf next…
Santa Barbara County CourthousePoint · ●●●○○A working county courthouse is one of the most beautiful public buildings in the country, and you can ride an elevator…
Sawyer Camp Trail & Crystal SpringsNature · ●●●○○A paved car-free trail running straight down the San Andreas Fault, along two reservoirs, past a laurel tree older than…
Sea Ranch ChapelOddity · ●●●○○A tiny, wave-shaped chapel on the Sonoma coast that looks like a seashell grew out of the meadow, open to anyone, of…
Self-Realization Fellowship Lake ShrinePoint · ●●●○○A spring-fed lake ringed by gardens and a windmill chapel hides off Sunset Boulevard, with a portion of Gandhi's ashes…
Sespe Wilderness & the Condor SanctuaryNature · ●●●○○The largest flying land bird in North America came back from twenty-two individuals, and this wild river canyon…
Sherman Library & GardensPoint · ●●●○○A full city block in Corona del Mar hides a lush botanical garden and research library, built by one man who kept…
Shields Date GardenOddity · ●●●○○A 1924 date farm in Indio serves a date milkshake that tastes like caramel and, in its own little theater, screens a…
Sibley Volcanic PreserveOddity · ●●●○○A ten-million-year-old volcano lies in the Oakland hills — tipped on its side by the Hayward Fault so you can walk…
Sign HillOddity · ●●●○○A hillside spelling out "SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO THE INDUSTRIAL CITY" in giant concrete letters, with a trail that climbs…
Slab CityOddity · ●●●○○On the concrete slabs of a torn-down WWII base by the Salton Sea, a few hundred people live off the grid year-round in…
Solstice CanyonNature · ●●●○○An easy Malibu canyon walk ends at the ruins of a modernist ranch house built into a waterfall, burned out and left to…
Spruce Street Suspension BridgePoint · ●●●○○A wooden footbridge from 1912 hangs on steel cables over a wooded canyon in the middle of San Diego, and it sways when…
SS Palo Alto (the Cement Ship)Oddity · ●●●○○A concrete ocean tanker — built when WWI steel ran short — has been beached at the end of the Seacliff pier since 1930…
Star of IndiaPoint · ●●●○○The oldest sailing ship in the world that still actually sails is tied up on the San Diego waterfront, and once a year…
Stinson BeachNature · ●●●○○The Bay Area's classic beach day: a long arc of sand under Mount Tam, water warm enough to actually swim on a good day…
Stonewall Peak & CuyamacaNature · ●●●○○An hour east of San Diego the land climbs into a pine-and-oak mountain range, and a chain-assisted scramble tops out on…
Sue-meg State ParkNature · ●●●○○The first California park to get its name back: Sue-meg, as the Yurok have always called this headland, with a living…
Sugarloaf Ridge & the Ferguson ObservatoryNature · ●●●○○A state park in the Sonoma hills holds the largest observatory in the West built purely for the public, under some of…
Sundial BridgePoint · ●●●○○A white spar leans over the Sacramento River in Redding, holding up a glass-decked footbridge that is also a working…
Sunken CityOddity · ●●●○○A cliffside neighborhood in San Pedro slid into the ocean starting in 1929, and the broken streets and foundations are…
Sunny Jim's Sea CavePoint · ●●●○○The only sea cave in California you can reach on foot is at the bottom of a hand-dug tunnel that starts inside a La…
Sunnylands (the Annenberg Estate)Point · ●●●○○Behind a pink wall in Rancho Mirage sits the mid-century estate where presidents and kings came to talk, its gardens…
Sunset CliffsNature · ●●●○○A mile and a half of sandstone bluffs on the edge of Point Loma, cut into arches and sea caves, and about the best…
Sutro Heights ParkPoint · ●●●○○A silver baron built a clifftop estate above the Cliff House, filled its gardens with two hundred statues, and opened…
Sutter ButtesNature · ●●●○○A ring of eroded volcanic domes rises 2,000 feet straight out of the flat Sacramento Valley — often called the world's…
Sutter's FortPoint · ●●●○○The adobe fort a Swiss immigrant built in 1839 became the seed the whole city of Sacramento grew around, and it's still…
Swami's & the Self-Realization FellowshipPoint · ●●●○○A world-famous surf break named itself after the swami whose ashram sits on the bluff above it, and the ashram's…
Sweeney Ridge & the Bay Discovery SiteNature · ●●●○○The ridge where a lost Spanish expedition first laid eyes on San Francisco Bay, now a windswept hike with the whole…
Switzer FallsNature · ●●●○○A shaded creek canyon in the mountains above Pasadena drops through granite pools to a fifty-foot waterfall, past the…
Tahoe East Shore CovesNature · ●●●○○The Nevada side's granite-boulder coves are the Caribbean of the Sierra — and between the famous beach and the nude one…
Tahquitz CanyonNature · ●●●○○A sixty-foot waterfall runs down a canyon on Cahuilla land minutes from downtown Palm Springs, in a place their oldest…
Tennessee Valley & Tennessee CoveNature · ●●●○○A flat valley walk in the Marin Headlands that ends at a black-sand cove named for a gold-rush steamship that wrecked…
The Bike HutOddity · ●●●○○An unlocked garage on a farm road, stocked with snacks, coffee, and spare tubes, that runs entirely on the honor system…
The Bradbury BuildingPoint · ●●●○○Behind a plain brick front on a downtown corner is the most beautiful interior in Los Angeles, a five-story court of…
The BroadPoint · ●●●○○A major contemporary-art museum downtown, wrapped in a honeycomb shell, is free to walk into, and it holds one of Yayoi…
The Broderick-Terry Duel SiteOddity · ●●●○○Two stone pillars ten paces apart in a Daly City park mark the last great American duel, where a sitting US senator was…
The Camera ObscuraOddity · ●●●○○A building shaped like a giant camera perches on the cliff by the old Cliff House — and inside, a rotating lens quietly…
The Delta Levee Loop (Hwy 160)Route · ●●●○○Highway 160 rides the top of the Sacramento River levees for forty miles — eye-level with boat traffic, above the…
The DishNature · ●●●○○A giant Cold War radio telescope on a grassy hill, ringed by a paved loop that half of Palo Alto treats as its living…
The Donkeys of Barron ParkOddity · ●●●○○Two donkeys in a Palo Alto pasture, one of whom modeled for Shrek's Donkey.
The Donner Summit Railroad TunnelsPoint · ●●●○○You can walk straight through the abandoned summit tunnel that Chinese laborers cut through Sierra granite by hand for…
The Filbert StepsPoint · ●●●○○Where Filbert Street hits Telegraph Hill it gives up on being a street entirely: 400-odd steps through private gardens…
The Gamble HousePoint · ●●●○○The finest Arts and Crafts house in America is a wooden bungalow in Pasadena so perfectly made that architects come…
The Gateway ArchPoint · ●●●○○A 630-foot stainless steel catenary curve on the Mississippi, the tallest arch in the world — and you get to the top in…
The Getty VillaPoint · ●●●○○A recreated ancient Roman villa sits above the ocean at the edge of the Palisades, full of Greek and Roman antiquities…
The Giant DipperOddity · ●●●○○A wooden roller coaster from 1925 still rattles along the sand at Mission Beach, one of the last of its kind and a…
The Giant Dipper (Santa Cruz Boardwalk)Oddity · ●●●○○A 1924 wooden roller coaster — a National Historic Landmark still running its original half-mile of lumber — anchors…
The Glory Hole (Lake Berryessa)Oddity · ●●●○○When Lake Berryessa fills past the brim, the overflow doesn't run over a dam. It vanishes down a 72-foot hole in the…
The Hayward Fault WalkOddity · ●●●○○Downtown Hayward's sidewalks are slowly tearing themselves apart in real time — the Hayward Fault creeps right through…
The Inkwells & Lagunitas CreekNature · ●●●○○A set of dark rock pools on Lagunitas Creek that flips identity twice a year: swimming hole in summer, and in winter…
The IntegratronPoint · ●●●○○A man said aliens from Venus gave him the plans for a machine to reverse aging, and he spent eighteen years building it…
The Inverness Shipwreck (SS Point Reyes)Oddity · ●●●○○A wooden fishing boat that beached itself on the Tomales Bay mudflats decades ago and never left — listing in the…
The Last BookstorePoint · ●●●○○California's biggest used bookstore fills an old downtown bank, and upstairs the shelves curl into tunnels and arches…
The Lone Cypress & 17-Mile DrivePoint · ●●●○○A solitary cypress has clung to a bare granite headland over Carmel Bay for some 250 years — one of the most…
The Magic CastleOddity · ●●●○○Behind a hedge in Hollywood is a Victorian mansion full of magicians, and you can only get in if one of them invites…
The Methuselah TreeNature · ●●●○○An 1,800-year-old redwood stands right at the edge of Skyline Boulevard, the biggest and oldest tree in these mountains…
The MissionWander zone · ●●●○○The one part of San Francisco to walk with no plan. It's the warmest, densest, most argued-over square mile in the city.
The Mission InnPoint · ●●●○○A hotel keeper spent fifty-five years turning a small adobe boarding house into a full-block fantasia of towers, flying…
The Mystery SpotOddity · ●●●○○A tilted shack in the redwoods where balls roll uphill and people lean past falling — a 1940s roadside "gravitational…
The Old LA ZooPoint · ●●●○○The original Los Angeles Zoo closed in 1966 and was just left there, so now you can climb through the empty bear…
The Old Sacramento UndergroundOddity · ●●●○○After floods kept drowning it, Sacramento jacked its whole downtown up a full story in the 1860s, and you can still…
The Pacifica Taco BellOddity · ●●●○○The only Taco Bell with a walk-up window for surfers and a beach out the back door.
The Petrified ForestOddity · ●●●○○Giant redwoods turned entirely to stone by a volcanic eruption three million years ago, lying where they fell, near…
The Pez MuseumOddity · ●●●○○A little Burlingame storefront holding the world's largest collection of Pez dispensers, plus a museum of toys that got…
The Salk InstitutePoint · ●●●○○Louis Kahn's most famous building is a bare travertine courtyard split by a single thin line of water that runs…
The Samoa CookhousePoint · ●●●○○The last lumber-camp cookhouse in the West still feeds you the way it fed loggers in 1893: family-style at long tables…
The Sausalito HouseboatsWander zone · ●●●○○A floating neighborhood of wildly individual houseboats on the Sausalito waterfront, the mellow, arty remnant of a…
The Skunk TrainPoint · ●●●○○A logging railroad from 1885 still climbs off the Mendocino coast into the redwoods, and you can ride it in a rail…
The Tourist Club (Die Naturfreunde)Oddity · ●●●○○A Bavarian-style lodge hidden on the side of Mount Tam that pours cold beer on a sunny deck, but only for hikers, and…
The Velaslavasay PanoramaOddity · ●●●○○In a 1910 theater in West Adams, an artist revived a dead nineteenth-century art form: a painting that wraps all the…
The Venice CanalsPoint · ●●●○○A few blocks off the chaos of the Venice boardwalk is a silent neighborhood of real canals, with footbridges and ducks…
The Wave OrganOddity · ●●●○○A musical instrument you play by waiting for the tide, built out of a torn-down cemetery at the tip of a Marina jetty.
The WedgeNature · ●●●○○At the end of the Balboa Peninsula, waves fold back on themselves against a jetty and stack into freak peaks up to…
The Wende MuseumOddity · ●●●○○A museum in a Cold War National Guard armory in Culver City holds the world's largest collection of things from East…
The Wisdom TreeNature · ●●●○○One pine tree on a Hollywood ridgeline survived the fire that took everything around it in 2007, and people hike up to…
The Woodside StorePoint · ●●●○○At the bottom of Kings Mountain Road sits an 1854 general store that was also the post office, the saloon, the dentist…
Thousand Palms OasisNature · ●●●○○The San Andreas Fault pushes groundwater to the surface in the middle of the desert here, and native fan palms have…
Tilden Park Steam TrainsOddity · ●●●○○Two separate miniature railways sit side by side in the Berkeley hills — a coal-fired steam line that hauls you through…
Tomales Bay Bioluminescence PaddleNature · ●●●○○On moonless summer and fall nights, Tomales Bay glows — every paddle stroke ignites blue-green fire, fish trail comet…
Torrey Pines GliderportPoint · ●●●○○On the cliffs above Black's Beach, people have been throwing themselves off the edge under a wing since 1936, and you…
Upper Newport BayNature · ●●●○○Tucked behind the yacht harbors of Newport Beach is one of the last big estuaries in Southern California, loud with…
Urban LightPoint · ●●●○○Two hundred and two antique street lamps stand in a grid outside the art museum on Wilshire, lit every night, free to…
Uvas CanyonNature · ●●●○○A pocket canyon behind Morgan Hill stacks half a dozen waterfalls along a single one-mile loop — the South Bay's…
Vasquez RocksNature · ●●●○○The tilted sandstone slabs where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn stand an hour north of LA, shoved up on end by the San…
Victoria Beach Pirate TowerPoint · ●●●○○A sixty-foot stone tower shaped like a castle turret stands on a Laguna Beach cove, and the tide has to be out for you…
Villa MontalvoPoint · ●●●○○A senator built an Italian Mediterranean villa into the Saratoga foothills in 1912, filled it with carved Granada doors…
Weaverville Joss HousePoint · ●●●○○In a gold-rush town four hours north, the oldest continuously used Chinese temple in California still burns incense at…
Whitewater PreserveNature · ●●●○○A cold river runs year-round through a canyon on the desert's edge, and around it a former trout farm has become one of…
Wigwam Motel (VillagePoint · ●●●○○You can still sleep in a concrete teepee on Route 66 in Rialto, one of the last three survivors of a lost roadside…
Winchester Mystery HouseOddity · ●●●○○A rifle heiress spent 38 years building a mansion with staircases into ceilings and doors onto two-story drops — and…
Windansea BeachNature · ●●●○○A rocky La Jolla surf beach guarded by a little palm-frond shack from 1946 that's now an official historical landmark…
Windy HillNature · ●●●○○Two bald grassy summits on the Skyline ridge with a full-circle view: bay and valley on one side, ridges rolling to the…
Wolf House (Jack London Park)Oddity · ●●●○○The stone ruins of the dream mansion Jack London built and never got to live in, burned to the ground days before he…
Wunderlich ParkNature · ●●●○○A redwood-and-oak forest above Woodside, threaded with old horse-estate trails, that stays quiet while the famous parks…

China29 places

Harbin & the Ice FestivalTown · ●●●●●Every winter, a whole city of buildings, towers, and slides is cut from blocks of frozen river and lit from within in…
Huangshan (Yellow Mountains)Nature · ●●●●●The granite peaks that Chinese landscape painting has drawn for a thousand years: jagged summits, gnarled pines rooted…
Kanas Lake & the AltaiNature · ●●●●●A milky-turquoise lake held in dark Siberian taiga at the top corner of China, where Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia…
Lhasa & the PotalaTown · ●●●●●The historic heart of Tibetan Buddhism, high on the plateau at 3,650 metres, where the vast white-and-red Potala Palace…
The Great WallPoint · ●●●●●Not one wall but many, built and rebuilt over two thousand years and running for thousands of kilometres across…
BeijingTown · ●●●●○The imperial capital, laid out on a grand ceremonial axis, where you cross the enormous walled Forbidden City the…
Chengde Mountain ResortPoint · ●●●●○The Qing emperors' summer capital: an enormous walled garden-palace of lakes, meadows, and pavilions, ringed by…
Datong — Yungang Grottoes & the Hanging TemplePoint · ●●●●○Fifty-odd caves cut into a sandstone cliff in the fifth century, holding tens of thousands of Buddhas, from a colossal…
Dunhuang & the Mogao CavesPoint · ●●●●○An oasis at the desert edge of the old Silk Road, where hundreds of cliff caves hold a thousand years of Buddhist…
Emeishan & the Leshan Giant BuddhaNature · ●●●●○One of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains, temples and monasteries climbing through cloud forest to a golden summit…
Guizhou — Miao & Dong VillagesTown · ●●●●○China's poorest, greenest province, terraced hills strung with wooden Miao and Dong villages, silver-costumed…
Hangzhou & West LakeNature · ●●●●○The lake that a thousand years of Chinese poets and painters agreed was the loveliest in the country: willow causeways…
JiuzhaigouNature · ●●●●○A remote valley in the Sichuan highlands filled with lakes so clear and so vividly coloured, turquoise, jade, cobalt…
KashgarTown · ●●●●○The westernmost city of China and one of the oldest oasis towns on the Silk Road, closer to Kabul and Bishkek than to…
Longmen Grottoes (Luoyang)Point · ●●●●○Two riverside cliffs honeycombed with over 2,000 caves and 100,000 carved Buddhas, presided over by a seventeen-metre…
Quanzhou (Zayton)Town · ●●●●○The port Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both called one of the greatest in the world — and one of the very few Chinese…
ShanghaiTown · ●●●●○China's showcase megacity, where a curved waterfront of 1920s European banks stares across the river at a wall of…
SuzhouTown · ●●●●○The old "Venice of the East": a canal city where retired scholars spent centuries building the most refined private…
The Terracotta Army, Xi'anPoint · ●●●●○An entire army of life-size clay soldiers, thousands of them, each with a different face, buried in battle formation to…
Tiger Leaping GorgeNature · ●●●●○One of the deepest river gorges on earth, where the young Yangtze roars through a two-kilometre-deep slot between snow…
Wudang MountainsNature · ●●●●○The sacred mountain of Taoism and the legendary birthplace of tai chi: misty peaks strung with Ming-dynasty temples, a…
Xiahe & Labrang MonasteryPoint · ●●●●○One of the great monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism, home to hundreds of maroon-robed monks and the world's longest…
Yuanyang Rice TerracesNature · ●●●●○Whole mountainsides carved into thousands of curved rice terraces by the Hani people over more than a thousand years…
ZhangjiajieNature · ●●●●○Thousands of sheer quartzite pillars, some 300 metres tall, rising out of the mist in a forested park in Hunan, the…
Zhangye Danxia (Rainbow Mountains)Nature · ●●●●○Hills painted in stripes, rust red, ochre, cream, and green, laid down as mineral-stained sediment, tilted on end, and…
Chengdu & the PandasTown · ●●●○○The relaxed capital of Sichuan, famous for teahouses, mouth-numbing hotpot, and the breeding base on its edge where you…
Guilin & YangshuoNature · ●●●○○The landscape from the back of the twenty-yuan note come to life: hundreds of steep, rounded limestone peaks rising…
Mount Tai (Taishan)Nature · ●●●○○The most revered mountain in China, climbed for three thousand years by emperors, pilgrims, and poets up a granite…
PingyaoTown · ●●●○○The best-preserved walled town in China: a complete Ming-era city wall enclosing a grid of grey-brick courtyard houses…

Italy26 places

FerraraTown · ●●●●●A Renaissance city built to a plan, with a genuine moated castle in the middle of it, nine kilometres of intact walls…
La Tuscia — Etruscan LazioTown · ●●●●●The country north of Rome that Italians say the rest of the world forgets: painted Etruscan tombs where 2,500-year-old…
Le Marche & UrbinoTown · ●●●●●The region Italians call "a Molise that made it": Tuscany's hills without Tuscany's crowds, a perfect Renaissance city…
LuccaTown · ●●●●●A Tuscan town that kept its complete Renaissance ramparts and then planted trees on top of them, so the defensive wall…
RomeTown · ●●●●●The Eternal City, literally: the Colosseum and Forum of the ancient empire, the Pantheon's two-thousand-year-old dome…
TriesteTown · ●●●●●Italy's least Italian city and proud of it: a grand Habsburg port facing the Adriatic with Vienna at its back, all…
TurinTown · ●●●●●Italy's first capital and the Savoy royal seat: eighteen kilometres of elegant arcades, baroque cafés that invented the…
Umbria — Orvieto, Assisi & the Hill TownsTown · ●●●●●Tuscany's quieter neighbour: stone towns standing on volcanic outcrops above oak woods, a cathedral façade in Orvieto…
Abruzzo — Gran Sasso & the Wild ApenninesNature · ●●●●○Italy's empty quarter, an hour from Rome: the highest Apennine peaks over a steppe-like plateau nicknamed "little…
Amalfi CoastNature · ●●●●○Pastel towns stacked impossibly down cliffs into a turquoise sea — Positano, Amalfi, and Ravello strung along one of…
Bologna & Emilia-RomagnaTown · ●●●●○The gastronomic heart of Italy, a region where the everyday food is arguably the country's best, anchored by Bologna, a…
FlorenceTown · ●●●●○The city where the Renaissance happened: Brunelleschi's dome over a sea of terracotta roofs, Michelangelo's David, and…
NaplesTown · ●●●●○Italy at maximum volume: the city that invented pizza, living raucously on top of Greek and Roman foundations under…
Pompeii & HerculaneumPoint · ●●●●○Two Roman towns buried alive by Vesuvius in AD 79 and dug back out, one enormous and famous, the other smaller and far…
Puglia — Lecce, the Trulli & the Salento CoastTown · ●●●●○Italy's heel: a baroque city carved out of butter-soft golden limestone, whitewashed hill towns, whole villages of…
Ravenna's MosaicsPoint · ●●●●○An unassuming town in the flatlands that was once the capital of the western Roman Empire, holding some of the…
San Vito Lo Capo & the Zingaro ReserveNature · ●●●●○The beach Sicilians themselves call the most beautiful they've ever seen: a white crescent under a headland at San Vito…
The Cinque TerreTown · ●●●●○Five impossibly pretty fishing villages of stacked pastel houses clinging to the cliffs of the Ligurian coast, linked…
The DolomitesNature · ●●●●○A whole range of pale limestone towers that turn rose and orange at sunset, standing over green meadows instead of the…
The Park of the Monsters (Bomarzo)Oddity · ●●●●○A grieving Renaissance prince spent decades filling the wood below his castle with giant stone monsters: a screaming…
The Sassi of MateraTown · ●●●●○A town of houses dug into a limestone ravine, lived in for something like nine thousand years. Seventy years ago the…
The Val d'OrciaRoute · ●●●●○The exact Tuscany of the imagination, rolling wheat and clay hills with lone cypress rows leading to farmhouses…
VeniceTown · ●●●●○The only city on earth built entirely on water: a labyrinth of canals, marble palaces, and footbridges where every…
VeronaTown · ●●●●○A first-century Roman amphitheatre still in weekly use, staging full-scale opera to twenty thousand people under the…
Civita di Bagnoregio (the dying town)Point · ●●●○○A medieval town sits alone on a crumbling pinnacle of rock, reachable only by a long footbridge, and every year a…
Mount EtnaNature · ●●●○○The most active volcano in Europe, and one you can actually climb toward, walking over black lava that was liquid a few…

India23 places

Amritsar & the Golden TempleTown · ●●●●●The holiest shrine of the Sikhs: a gilded temple seeming to float on a sacred pool, ringed by white marble, open to…
LadakhNature · ●●●●●A high-altitude cold desert on the Tibetan plateau's western edge, whitewashed gompas on ochre crags, prayer flags over…
The Sundarbans (Indian side)Nature · ●●●●●The largest mangrove forest on Earth — shared with Bangladesh, which holds the bigger share — a tidal maze of channels…
Ziro ValleyNature · ●●●●●A flat green bowl of rice paddies at 1,500 metres in Arunachal Pradesh, ringed by pine hills and farmed by the Apatani…
Ajanta & Ellora CavesPoint · ●●●●○Two of the greatest works of rock-cut architecture on earth: at Ajanta, a cliff of Buddhist cave-temples with…
DarjeelingTown · ●●●●○The old British hill station of tea and toy trains: a town tumbling down a Himalayan ridge among the world's most…
GokarnaNature · ●●●●○Goa's quieter, soulful cousin down the Karnataka coast: an old Hindu pilgrimage town backed by a string of cliff-framed…
HampiPoint · ●●●●○The ruins of one of the greatest cities of the medieval world, temples and palaces scattered for miles across a surreal…
JaisalmerTown · ●●●●○A city of golden sandstone rising out of the Thar Desert, crowned by one of the world's few forts people still live…
JodhpurTown · ●●●●○The "Blue City": a sea of indigo-washed houses spilling down from one of India's mightiest hill forts, Mehrangarh…
Meghalaya — Living Root BridgesNature · ●●●●○The wettest inhabited place on earth, where for centuries the Khasi people have trained the roots of living fig trees…
Periyar & ThekkadyNature · ●●●●○A tiger reserve in the Kerala hills where you walk rather than drive — three days on foot through the forest, sleeping…
Rann of KutchNature · ●●●●○A salt marsh the size of a small country that dries each winter into a dead-flat, blinding-white plain stretching to…
SikkimNature · ●●●●○A tiny former Himalayan kingdom wedged between Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan, rising from subtropical valleys to…
Spiti ValleyNature · ●●●●○A cold desert valley high in Himachal, quieter and rougher than Ladakh, where whitewashed monasteries stack up on…
The Kerala BackwatersNature · ●●●●○A green maze of palm-lined canals, lakes, and rice paddies along the southwest coast, where villages live on the water…
The Khajuraho TemplesPoint · ●●●●○A group of thousand-year-old Hindu and Jain temples in the middle of nowhere, their walls covered in some of the finest…
UdaipurTown · ●●●●○Rajasthan's romantic counterpoint to the desert cities: a white palace-city built around a chain of lakes, with a…
VaranasiTown · ●●●●○One of the oldest continuously lived-in cities on earth and the holiest in Hinduism, where life and death happen openly…
GoaTown · ●●●○○India's smallest state and its most famous coast: 100 km of Arabian Sea beaches, faded Portuguese churches and…
Jaipur & RajasthanTown · ●●●○○The capital of Rajasthan, a planned 18th-century city painted terracotta pink, backed by hilltop forts and palaces, and…
Rishikesh & the Himalayan FoothillsTown · ●●●○○Where the Ganges leaves the Himalaya and runs clear and cold through a town of ashrams, yoga schools, and swaying…
The Taj Mahal, AgraPoint · ●●●○○A white marble tomb a grieving emperor built for his wife, so perfectly proportioned that the most photographed…

Japan22 places

Naoshima, the Art IslandPoint · ●●●●●A small fishing island in the calm Inland Sea that a publishing magnate and a great architect turned into one of the…
Onomichi & the Shimanami KaidōRoute · ●●●●●A cat-filled hillside temple town where you rent a bike and pedal out across the Seto Inland Sea itself, island to…
The Kumano KodōRoute · ●●●●●An ancient network of pilgrimage trails winding for days through the misty cedar forests and mountains of the Kii…
The Yaeyama IslandsWander zone · ●●●●●The far southwest end of Japan — closer to Taiwan than to Okinawa's main island, and 2,000 km from Tokyo — where the…
TokyoTown · ●●●●●One of the world's largest cities, and one that works: a sprawl of distinct neighbourhoods stitched together by…
YakushimaNature · ●●●●●A near-circular island of mountains and rainforest off Japan's southern tip, drenched in rain and moss, where cedar…
Beppu, Yufuin & the Oita Onsen CountryTown · ●●●●○A city that steams. Beppu sits on more hot-spring water than anywhere else in Japan, and on a cold morning the vapour…
DaisetsuzanNature · ●●●●○Japan's largest national park, an active volcanic plateau in central Hokkaidō that the Ainu called Kamuy Mintar — the…
Kamikōchi & the Japan AlpsNature · ●●●●○A pristine highland valley in the heart of the Northern Japan Alps, where a clear turquoise river winds through marshes…
KyotoTown · ●●●●○Japan's old imperial capital, spared the wartime bombing, holding more than a thousand years of temples, Zen gardens…
Mount Fuji & HakoneNature · ●●●●○Japan's highest mountain and its great sacred symbol, a near-perfect volcanic cone that has been painted and climbed…
Mount Kōya (Koyasan)Town · ●●●●○On a mountaintop wrapped in cedar forest sits a thousand-year-old monastic town, and at the far end of its graveyard a…
NaraTown · ●●●●○Japan's first permanent capital, where more than a thousand sika deer wander freely through a park of eighth-century…
NikkōTown · ●●●●○A mausoleum complex of impossible gold and lacquer set in a cedar forest two hours north of Tokyo — and the one place…
Saga-Toriimoto — Otagi & Adashino NenbutsujiPoint · ●●●●○Walk straight through Arashiyama's famous bamboo grove without stopping, keep going uphill for forty minutes, and you…
Shimane — Izumo & MatsueWander zone · ●●●●○The prefecture with the fewest foreign visitors in Japan, on the Sea of Japan coast — holding the shrine where, in the…
The Gotō IslandsWander zone · ●●●●○An archipelago off Nagasaki where Japanese Catholics hid their faith for two and a half centuries of prohibition —…
Aomori & the Top of HonshuTown · ●●●○○The top of Honshu — three hours from Tokyo on the same bullet train everyone rides south, and one of the snowiest…
Hiroshima & MiyajimaTown · ●●●○○The city rebuilt from the world's first atomic bombing, where a skeletal ruined dome is kept exactly as the blast left…
KanazawaTown · ●●●○○A wealthy old castle town on the Japan Sea coast that came through history intact, with one of the country's three…
The Snow Monkeys of JigokudaniNature · ●●●○○In the mountains of Nagano, wild monkeys have learned to do what no other wild monkeys on Earth do: sit up to their…
The Tateyama–Kurobe Alpine RouteRoute · ●●●○○A crossing of the Northern Japan Alps by cable car, trolleybus and ropeway, over a pass where the spring snow is cut…

Mexico19 places

CalakmulPoint · ●●●●●One of the largest Maya cities ever built, capital of the Snake Kingdom and Tikal's great rival, sunk deep in a jungle…
GuadalajaraTown · ●●●●●The birthplace of mariachi, tequila, and the wide-brimmed charro hat, which is to say the place most of what the world…
IzamalTown · ●●●●●An entire town painted egg-yolk yellow, built around a colossal Franciscan monastery that the Spanish raised directly…
ZacatecasTown · ●●●●●A silver-boom city wedged into a narrow ravine at 2,400 metres, built entirely from pink cantera stone, with one of the…
Baja & the Sea of CortezNature · ●●●●○A long, wild desert peninsula between two seas, where cardón cacti march to the shore and the Sea of Cortez, so teeming…
Chichén Itzá & the YucatánPoint · ●●●●○The most famous Maya city, crowned by a perfect stepped pyramid where, twice a year, the sun casts a shadow-serpent…
Copper CanyonNature · ●●●●○A network of vast canyons deeper and larger overall than the Grand Canyon, crossed by one of the world's great railway…
Guanajuato & the BajíoTown · ●●●●○A jewel-box colonial city that silver wealth built, its rainbow houses spilling up steep ravines, its traffic hidden in…
Huasteca PotosinaNature · ●●●●○A green corner of San Luis Potosí where mineral-rich rivers run an unreal turquoise and fall over limestone in…
Laguna de Santa María del OroNature · ●●●●○A turquoise lake filling the crater of an extinct volcano, ringed by jungle-covered walls, with a handful of family…
Mazunte, Zipolite & Punta CometaTown · ●●●●○A string of small beach towns on Oaxaca's Pacific coast where a cabaña with an ocean view has cost around ten dollars —…
Mexico City & TeotihuacánTown · ●●●●○One of the world's great capitals, built on the ruins of the Aztec island city of Tenochtitlán, layering ancient…
San Francisco de CampecheTown · ●●●●○The walled city the Yucatán tourist circuit drives past — pastel streets inside genuine pirate-era ramparts, a sea wall…
San José del PacíficoTown · ●●●●○A village strung along a ridge at 2,500 m in the Sierra Sur, where the cloud comes up the valley from the Pacific and…
The Monarch Butterfly ReserveNature · ●●●●○Every winter, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies complete one of nature's most astonishing migrations, flying…
BacalarTown · ●●●○○A freshwater lagoon fifty kilometres long that runs through seven distinct shades of blue, four hours south of Cancún —…
Grutas de TolantongoNature · ●●●○○A turquoise thermal river running through a canyon in Hidalgo, with terraced hot pools built into the cliff face a…
OaxacaTown · ●●●○○Mexico's culinary and cultural heart, a graceful colonial city where the food is a religion, mezcal flows, indigenous…
Orizaba & Pico de OrizabaTown · ●●●○○A well-loved and frankly well-visited Porfirian town in a green Veracruz valley, with the highest mountain in Mexico —…

Philippines17 places

Bantayan IslandTown · ●●●●○A flat coral island off the top of Cebu with a stretch of white sand Filipinos say could rival Boracay's — and which…
CamiguinNature · ●●●●○A small volcanic island where you can dive a well-kept reef in the morning, soak in a spring-fed pool at the foot of a…
Iloilo & GuimarasTown · ●●●●○A Philippine city with walkable streets, clean air and functioning public transport — a combination Filipinos describe…
PalawanNature · ●●●●○A long, thin island of jungle-topped limestone cliffs and hidden lagoons, where you hop by boat between turquoise…
Taal VolcanoNature · ●●●●○An island in a lake, on an island in a lake, on an island — a volcano sitting inside its own crater lake, itself inside…
The Banaue Rice TerracesNature · ●●●●○Vast amphitheatres of rice terraces carved by hand into steep mountainsides by the Ifugao people, some said to be up to…
Bacolod & Negros OccidentalTown · ●●●○○The city Filipinos name when the question is food — capital of the sugar country, birthplace of chicken inasal, and the…
BatanesTown · ●●●○○The Philippines' northernmost province — closer to Taiwan than to Luzon — where the Ivatan build houses out of…
Bohol & the Chocolate HillsNature · ●●●○○An island scattered with over a thousand oddly uniform, cone-shaped hills that dry to chocolate brown in summer, home…
BukidnonWander zone · ●●●○○The answer Filipinos give when someone says they don't like beaches — a landlocked plateau province in northern…
CaramoanNature · ●●●○○A peninsula of limestone islands at the far end of Bicol that international Survivor productions have used for years —…
CatanduanesNature · ●●●○○The island that takes the Pacific first. Catanduanes sits east of everything in the Philippines, absorbs the strongest…
Dipaculao & the Aurora CoastNature · ●●●○○The Pacific side of Luzon, where the Sierra Madre runs straight into the ocean — and specifically the stretch north of…
Lake SebuTown · ●●●○○A highland lake in South Cotabato covered in lotus and fish pens, home of the T'boli and their dreamweavers — and a…
Maddela & Quirino ProvinceNature · ●●●○○A province Filipinos joke does not exist. Quirino is so far off every route that "Quirino province does not actually…
SagadaTown · ●●●○○A cold pine-forest town high in the Cordillera where the Igorot hung their dead in coffins on limestone cliffs — and…
SiquijorTown · ●●●○○A small Visayan island with a national reputation for witchcraft and folk healing, currently being recommended by…

Spain16 places

Aigüestortes & the Vall d'AranNature · ●●●●●Catalonia's only national park: two hundred glacial lakes scattered across granite basins beneath the twin peaks of Els…
BilbaoTown · ●●●●●The city that turned a dying steel port into a template other cities still copy: Gehry's titanium Guggenheim curled…
CádizTown · ●●●●●Arguably the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe, founded by Phoenicians around 1100 BC, packed onto a…
Extremadura — Mérida, Cáceres & TrujilloTown · ●●●●●Spain's emptiest region holds one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in the world, a medieval walled city so intact…
Galicia — the Costa da Morte & Cíes IslandsNature · ●●●●●The "Coast of Death": Spain's wild Atlantic edge, named for the ships it wrecked, where granite headlands drop into…
BarcelonaTown · ●●●●○The city where one architect's obsession reshaped a whole streetscape: Gaudí's warped stone and broken tile everywhere…
Gaudí's BarcelonaPoint · ●●●●○A basilica begun in 1882 and still unfinished, its interior a forest of branching stone columns under coloured light…
MadridTown · ●●●●○A capital with no single postcard monument and, partly because of that, one of Europe's most liveable big cities: three…
MálagaTown · ●●●●○The Costa del Sol's capital, long written off as the airport you fly into on the way to a resort, now one of…
San SebastiánTown · ●●●●○A Belle Époque city curled around one of Europe's most beautiful urban beaches, and, by many counts, the best place to…
Santiago de CompostelaTown · ●●●●○The end of the Camino, where pilgrims have walked across Europe for a thousand years to reach one cathedral, and where…
The AlhambraPoint · ●●●●○The last palace of Muslim Spain, a fortress on a hill above Granada whose inner rooms are carved into lace, held by the…
The Mezquita of CórdobaPoint · ●●●●○A vast former mosque whose interior is a hypnotic forest of red-and-white striped double arches, with an entire…
The Picos de EuropaNature · ●●●●○A wall of sheer grey limestone rising a few miles inland from the wet northern coast, close enough to the sea that…
Alhama de GranadaTown · ●●●○○A white town built along the lip of a gorge an hour from Granada, with hot water running out of the hillside below it —…
ToledoTown · ●●●○○A whole medieval city crammed onto a rock inside a loop of the Tagus, where for a few centuries Muslims, Jews, and…

France12 places

Carnac & Megalithic BrittanyPoint · ●●●●●More than three thousand standing stones marching in parallel rows across fields for four kilometres, raised by farmers…
Alsace — the Wine Road & StrasbourgTown · ●●●●○The most German corner of France: a 170 km wine road threading hillside villages of crooked half-timbered houses…
Chamonix & the Mer de GlaceNature · ●●●●○France's largest glacier, reached by a little red rack railway, with the ice cave re-carved every summer because the…
Mont-Saint-MichelPoint · ●●●●○A medieval abbey stacked on a rock in a bay with some of the fastest tides in Europe, cut off from land twice a day and…
Normandy — the D-Day Coast & BayeuxPoint · ●●●●○The beaches where the liberation of Western Europe began, quiet stretches of sand and bluff whose ordinary emptiness is…
ParisTown · ●●●●○The most visited city on earth, and still worth it: the Louvre and the Seine and the boulevards, yes, but also a city…
The Loire ChâteauxPoint · ●●●●○A river valley packed with the pleasure-palaces French kings and nobles built when a castle stopped being a fortress…
Lascaux & the Vézère CavesPoint · ●●●○○The Dordogne valley where Ice Age people painted galleries of bulls, horses, and deer seventeen thousand years ago, so…
LyonTown · ●●●○○France's eating city, built where two rivers meet, with a Renaissance old town threaded by traboules — covered passages…
Saint-MaloTown · ●●●○○A granite corsair city inside its own walls on the Breton coast, where the tide moves through some of the largest…
The Verdon GorgeNature · ●●●○○A limestone canyon up to seven hundred metres deep in the hills of Provence, with a river at the bottom the colour of…
ÉtretatNature · ●●●○○White chalk cliffs on the Normandy coast that the sea has cut into natural arches and a lone needle of rock, the…

Brazil11 places

Chapada DiamantinaNature · ●●●●●An old diamond-mining highland in the Bahian interior, now a national park of flat-topped ranges cut by canyons…
Ouro Preto & TiradentesTown · ●●●●●The richest gold town of the 18th-century Americas, left almost intact when the gold ran out: steep cobbled streets…
Rio de JaneiroTown · ●●●●●A city wedged spectacularly between jungle mountains and the sea, where a giant Christ spreads his arms over the bay…
Salvador & BahiaTown · ●●●●●The first capital of colonial Brazil and the heart of its Afro-Brazilian soul, a city of gilded churches and pastel…
BonitoNature · ●●●●○A town in Brazil's interior where the rivers run so clear you snorkel down them as if flying, drifting over white sand…
Fernando de NoronhaNature · ●●●●○A remote volcanic archipelago in the Atlantic, often crowned Brazil's most beautiful island, where jagged peaks rise…
Lençóis MaranhensesNature · ●●●●○A vast field of pristine white sand dunes that looks like a desert but isn't, because after the rains, thousands of…
The Amazon & ManausNature · ●●●●○The gateway to the greatest rainforest and river on Earth, an improbable jungle city with a grand opera house left from…
The PantanalNature · ●●●●○The world's largest tropical wetland, a vast seasonally-flooded plain teeming with more visible wildlife than the…
Iguaçu FallsNature · ●●●○○A wall of water nearly three kilometres wide where hundreds of waterfalls thunder over the jungle in clouds of spray…
ParatyTown · ●●●○○A whitewashed colonial port between the mountains and a bay full of islands, with streets of enormous uneven cobbles…

Thailand11 places

Isaan & the MekongTown · ●●●●●Thailand's north-east, a third of the country and closer to Laos than to Bangkok in language, food, and music, where…
Chiang Mai & the NorthTown · ●●●●○The old capital of the northern Lanna kingdom, a moated old town packed with teak temples, ringed by forested…
Koh Kood & Koh MakNature · ●●●●○Thailand's far-eastern islands, almost at the Cambodian border: white sand and genuinely clear water with no full-moon…
Pai & the Mae Hong Son LoopTown · ●●●●○762 curves of mountain road north-west of Chiang Mai, ridden on a rented scooter past waterfalls, hot springs and hill…
Sukhothai & Si SatchanalaiPoint · ●●●●○The first capital of Siam, abandoned and half-swallowed by forest, where you can cycle between thirteenth-century…
BangkokTown · ●●●○○A hot, frenetic megacity where gold-spired temples and the royal Grand Palace sit amid a sprawl of markets, canals, sky…
ChanthaburiTown · ●●●○○Thailand's gem-cutting capital — a riverside town four hours from Bangkok where a Gothic cathedral stands over a…
Khao SokNature · ●●●○○Limestone towers standing straight out of a green lake, slept on in floating bamboo rafthouses with no road and often…
Nakhon Si ThammaratTown · ●●●○○One of the oldest cities in Thailand, holding a temple many Thais consider the most revered in the south — in a…
Sangkhlaburi & the Mon BridgeTown · ●●●○○A Mon town at the far end of Kanchanaburi province, joined to itself by the longest wooden bridge in Thailand — and…
The Andaman CoastNature · ●●●○○Thailand's turquoise southwest coast, where sheer limestone karsts rise straight out of warm clear water off white-sand…

Peru10 places

Cusco & the Sacred ValleyTown · ●●●●●The ancient capital of the Inca empire, the "navel of the world," where Spanish colonial churches and mansions were…
Lake TiticacaNature · ●●●●●The highest navigable lake in the world, an immense sheet of deep blue water high in the Andes, where people live on…
LimaTown · ●●●●●One of the world's great food cities, a sprawling Pacific capital where clifftop bohemian districts overlook the surf…
Chachapoyas & KuélapPoint · ●●●●○Northern Peru's answer to Machu Picchu without the crowds: a massive stone citadel wrapped in cloud forest, built by…
ChoquequiraoPoint · ●●●●○There is a second Machu Picchu, larger than the first, and to reach it you have to walk for two days into a canyon.…
Huaraz & the Cordillera BlancaWander zone · ●●●●○The highest tropical mountain range on Earth — more than fifty peaks above 5,700 m packed into 180 km — reached from a…
Machu PicchuPoint · ●●●●○An Inca royal estate built on a knife-edge ridge at 2,430 metres, abandoned within a century of its construction, never…
The Nazca LinesPoint · ●●●●○Enormous figures, a hummingbird, a monkey, a spider, and straight lines running for kilometres, etched into the desert…
The Peruvian AmazonNature · ●●●●○Peru's vast, pristine slice of the Amazon, among the most biodiverse places on the planet, where you can drift the…
Arequipa & the Colca CanyonTown · ●●●○○A white volcanic-stone city under three volcanoes, and four hours north of it a canyon twice the depth of the Grand…

Vietnam10 places

The Hà Giang LoopRoute · ●●●●●A multi-day motorbike loop through the wildest, most spectacular mountains in Vietnam's far north, past limestone…
Cao Bằng & Bản GiốcWander zone · ●●●●○The largest waterfall on any national border in Asia, falling in wide limestone tiers straight down the line between…
HanoiTown · ●●●●○A thousand-year-old capital where the Old Quarter's thirty-six guild streets still sort themselves by trade, the…
Hoi AnTown · ●●●●○A beautifully preserved old trading port of ochre merchant houses and a Japanese covered bridge, strung at night with…
Mai ChauNature · ●●●●○A flat green floor of rice paddies enclosed by limestone hills three hours west of Hanoi, where White Thai villages…
Phong Nha-Kẻ BàngNature · ●●●●○A limestone massif on the Laos border holding the largest cave passage on Earth — one chamber has its own jungle, its…
Đà LạtTown · ●●●●○A pine-forested hill station at 1,500 m where Vietnam stops being hot — about ten degrees cooler than everywhere else…
Ha Long BayNature · ●●●○○Thousands of forested limestone towers rising straight out of a jade-green sea, an emerald maze of islets and caves…
Ninh BìnhNature · ●●●○○The same drowned limestone towers as Hạ Long Bay, except standing in rice fields and rivers instead of the sea — and…
The Mekong DeltaNature · ●●●○○Where the Mekong finally splits into nine arms and empties into the sea, a green, watery world of rice paddies…

Colombia9 places

CartagenaTown · ●●●●●A ravishing walled colonial city on the Caribbean, all balconied mansions dripping with bougainvillea, cobbled plazas…
The Coffee Region & CocoraNature · ●●●●●Green Andean valleys quilted with coffee farms and dotted with brightly-painted towns, above which rises the surreal…
Ciudad Perdida (Teyuna)Route · ●●●●○A terraced city built into the Sierra Nevada around 800 CE — roughly six centuries older than Machu Picchu — reachable…
Medellín & GuatapéTown · ●●●●○The city that went from the most dangerous on earth to a case study in urban repair — cable cars running as public…
Nuquí & Bahía Solano (Chocó)Wander zone · ●●●●○One of the wettest places on Earth, where rainforest runs straight into the Pacific with no road connecting any of it —…
Santa Cruz de MompoxTown · ●●●●○A UNESCO colonial town stranded on an island in the Magdalena river, which the trade route abandoned two centuries ago…
Tayrona & MincaNature · ●●●●○The place where the world's highest coastal mountain range comes down to the Caribbean — jungle running straight into…
Barichara & GuaneTown · ●●●○○A colonial town built entirely from pale gold sandstone, on a bluff above the Suárez river canyon — repeatedly named…
Caño CristalesNature · ●●●○○Often called the most beautiful river in the world, a remote jungle stream that, for a few months each year, blazes…

Ecuador9 places

The GalápagosNature · ●●●●●The islands that gave Darwin the idea of evolution, a volcanic archipelago far out in the Pacific where the wildlife…
Quito & the Avenue of VolcanoesTown · ●●●●○A high Andean capital with one of the best-preserved colonial old towns in the Americas, sitting almost on the equator…
VilcabambaTown · ●●●●○A small town in a southern Andean valley that got famous in the 1970s for the improbable ages its residents claimed to…
Baños de Agua SantaTown · ●●●○○A small town wedged in a gorge below an active volcano, where the thermal water is hot enough to bathe in at dawn and a…
Cuenca & El CajasTown · ●●●○○An Andean colonial city at 2,560 m that one well-travelled visitor ranked third-best in the world behind Buenos Aires…
MindoNature · ●●●○○A cloud-forest village two hours down the mountain from Quito, in one of the densest concentrations of bird species…
Puerto López & Isla de la PlataTown · ●●●○○A working fishing town on Ecuador's Pacific coast where you can see blue-footed boobies, snorkel a reef and watch…
The Ecuadorian AmazonNature · ●●●○○Ecuador's compact but staggeringly biodiverse slice of the Amazon, the "Oriente," where a short flight from the Andes…
The Quilotoa LoopNature · ●●●○○Three days walking between Andean villages at 3,500 m, sleeping in a different family's hostel each night, and on the…

Morocco9 places

Aït Benhaddou & the Desert RoadPoint · ●●●●●A fortified village of red-earth towers rising in tiers above a river on the old caravan road to the Sahara, so…
EssaouiraTown · ●●●●●The antidote to Marrakech: a small blue-and-white walled port on the Atlantic where the medina is laid out on a grid…
FèsTown · ●●●●●The best-preserved medieval city in the Arab world, a vast walled medina of thousands of tangled car-free lanes where…
The High Atlas & ToubkalNature · ●●●●●A wall of high mountains just south of Marrakech, home to Berber villages of flat-roofed houses on terraced slopes and…
ChefchaouenTown · ●●●●○A small mountain town in the Rif whose old medina is painted almost entirely in shades of blue, lane after lane of…
MarrakechTown · ●●●●○The great red city at the foot of the Atlas, where a huge open square erupts each night into a carnival of food stalls…
Merzouga & Erg ChebbiNature · ●●●●○The Sahara as everyone pictures it: a single wall of orange dune rising 150 metres out of flat stony desert, going soft…
RabatTown · ●●●●○Morocco's calm, walkable capital on the Atlantic, where a blue-and-white cliff-top kasbah, an unfinished medieval…
Volubilis & MeknèsPoint · ●●●●○The best-preserved Roman ruins in Morocco, a whole provincial city of arches, columns, and intact floor mosaics…

Portugal9 places

The AzoresNature · ●●●●●Nine volcanic islands a third of the way across the Atlantic: crater lakes filling collapsed calderas, hot springs you…
LisbonTown · ●●●●○A city of seven hills above the Tagus, rebuilt on a grid after one of history's most devastating earthquakes, where…
MadeiraNature · ●●●●○A volcanic island rising straight out of the Atlantic to 1,800 metres, wrapped in ancient laurel forest and threaded by…
PortoTown · ●●●●○The hard-working city that gave Portugal its name and its most famous wine, tumbling down granite banks to the Douro in…
The Douro ValleyRoute · ●●●●○The oldest demarcated wine region in the world, where the Douro river winds between hillsides terraced by hand into…
The Schist Villages (Aldeias do Xisto)Town · ●●●●○Two dozen villages built entirely from dark schist slabs, tucked into the wooded mountains of Portugal's interior…
ÉvoraTown · ●●●●○A walled town in the empty Alentejo plains with a Roman temple still standing in its centre, a chapel lined floor to…
CoimbraTown · ●●●○○Home to one of the oldest universities in the world, whose gilded Baroque library is guarded at night by a resident…
SintraPoint · ●●●○○A cool, wooded hill above Lisbon that Portuguese kings and rich romantics filled with fantasy palaces, including a…

Taiwan9 places

KaohsiungTown · ●●●●●Taiwan's big southern port, warm when Taipei is grey and drizzling, where disused dock warehouses became an arts…
TainanTown · ●●●●●The island's capital for over two centuries and still its food capital: a low, hot, temple-dense city where the local…
Green Island (Ludao)Town · ●●●●○A small volcanic island off Taiwan's southeast coast with clear-water diving, one of the world's few saltwater hot…
TaipeiTown · ●●●●○A capital where you can eat your way through a night market for a few pounds, soak in a volcanic hot spring inside the…
Taroko Gorge & HualienNature · ●●●●○A canyon cut through solid marble, so narrow in places that the walls nearly close overhead, with a road and footpaths…
JiufenTown · ●●●○○A gold-mining town stacked up a hillside above the sea northeast of Taipei, hung with red lanterns and threaded by…
Taitung & the East Rift ValleyTown · ●●●○○The quiet end of Taiwan — the Pacific on one side, the Central Mountains on the other, the cleanest air on the island…
The Pingxi Line & HoutongRoute · ●●●○○A single-track coal railway built in the 1920s, now running tourists up a green gorge past a waterfall, a village that…
Xiaoliuqiu (Little Liuqiu)Town · ●●●○○Taiwan's only coral island, twenty-five minutes off the southwest coast, where green sea turtles are common enough in…

Australia8 places

TasmaniaNature · ●●●●●Australia's wild island state, a compact world of ancient rainforest, jagged mountains, and pristine white-sand coves…
Uluru & the Red CentrePoint · ●●●●●A colossal russet monolith rising alone from the flat red heart of the continent, sacred to its Aboriginal custodians…
Kings Canyon & the West MacDonnellsNature · ●●●●○The rest of the Red Centre that isn't the Rock: a 100-metre-walled canyon you walk the rim of at sunrise, and a chain…
Ningaloo & Western AustraliaNature · ●●●●○Australia's vast, remote west, where a coral reef you can swim off the beach hosts the world's biggest fish, ancient…
SydneyTown · ●●●●○A city built around one of the world's most beautiful harbours, where the sail-like shells of the Opera House and the…
The Daintree & Tropical NorthNature · ●●●●○One of the oldest rainforests on Earth, a dense, ancient jungle of dinosaur-era plants that tumbles right down to the…
Melbourne & the Great Ocean RoadTown · ●●●○○Australia's coolest, most cultured city, a place of hidden laneways, street art, world-class coffee, and sport…
The Great Barrier ReefNature · ●●●○○The largest living structure on Earth, a coral wonderland stretching more than two thousand kilometres, so vast it can…

Canada8 places

Old Québec CityTown · ●●●●●The most European city in North America, a walled old town of cobbled lanes, stone houses, and a fairy-tale château on…
The Bay of Fundy & Atlantic CanadaNature · ●●●●●Where the highest tides on Earth rise and fall as much as a five-storey building twice a day, so that you can walk the…
Banff & the Canadian RockiesNature · ●●●●○The Canadian Rockies at their most sublime: sawtooth peaks reflected in lakes of an impossible glacial turquoise…
Cape Breton & the Cabot TrailNature · ●●●●○A road that climbs out of the sea and runs along the top of headlands for 300 km around a Nova Scotian island — best in…
ChurchillNature · ●●●●○A tiny, remote outpost on the shore of Hudson Bay billed as the polar bear capital of the world, where each autumn the…
The Yukon & the NorthNature · ●●●●○Canada's vast, empty, spectacular north: a wilderness of mountains, tundra, and wild rivers larger than most countries…
Niagara FallsNature · ●●●○○Not the tallest waterfall, but one of the most powerful, a thundering, mile-wide horseshoe of green water hurling an…
Vancouver & the CoastTown · ●●●○○One of the most beautifully-sited cities in the world, wedged between the Pacific and a wall of coastal mountains…

Egypt8 places

Aswan & Abu SimbelPoint · ●●●●●The gentle, Nubian-flavoured southern end of the Nile, where you sail feluccas between granite islands, and, further…
LuxorPoint · ●●●●●Built over ancient Thebes, the capital of pharaonic Egypt at its height, a place often called the world's greatest…
DenderaPoint · ●●●●○An hour north of Luxor, a temple to Hathor whose ceiling still carries its original paint — deep blue night skies, gold…
Mount Sinai & St Catherine'sPoint · ●●●●○The mountain where, by tradition, Moses received the Ten Commandments, climbed through the night by pilgrims and…
The White DesertNature · ●●●●○A stretch of the Sahara where the wind has carved white chalk into surreal mushrooms, towers, and animal shapes, an…
CairoTown · ●●●○○A thundering megacity of some twenty million on the Nile, where a thousand years of minarets and medieval streets, one…
The Pyramids of GizaPoint · ●●●○○The last of the ancient world's seven wonders still standing, tombs of stone raised four and a half thousand years ago…
The Red Sea ReefsNature · ●●●○○Some of the most accessible world-class coral reefs on the planet, where you can step off a Sinai beach straight onto…

Indonesia8 places

Bukit LawangNature · ●●●●●A riverside jungle village on the edge of Sumatra's great rainforest, one of the last places on Earth where you can…
BaliTown · ●●●●○A single Hindu island in the world's largest Muslim country, where daily offerings sit on every doorstep, rice terraces…
Lake TobaNature · ●●●●○An enormous lake filling the crater of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the history of the planet, with an…
Tana TorajaTown · ●●●●○A green highland in Sulawesi where death is the centre of life: elaborate multi-day funerals, the dead kept at home for…
Tanjung Puting & the OrangutansNature · ●●●●○A Borneo national park where you chug up a jungle river on a wooden liveaboard boat to watch wild and rehabilitated…
BorobudurPoint · ●●●○○The largest Buddhist temple in the world, a mountain of carved stone built around the year 800, lost under volcanic ash…
Komodo National ParkNature · ●●●○○A cluster of dry, rugged islands that are the only home of the Komodo dragon, the largest lizard on earth, set in some…
Mount Bromo & IjenNature · ●●●○○A smoking volcano cone standing in a vast sea of ash, ringed by an ancient caldera, and a nearby crater where miners…

Malaysia8 places

Borneo: Kinabalu & SabahNature · ●●●●●The Malaysian slice of Borneo, where one of Southeast Asia's highest peaks rises straight from the jungle, orphaned…
Sepilok & the KinabatanganNature · ●●●●●The best place on earth to meet an orangutan that isn't in a cage: a rehabilitation centre in Sabah where orphaned apes…
George Town, PenangTown · ●●●●○A former British trading port on an island where Malay, Chinese, Indian, and colonial worlds fused into a distinct…
Gunung MuluNature · ●●●●○A rainforest park in Sarawak with no road to it, holding the largest known cave chamber on Earth — and every dry…
Kuala LumpurTown · ●●●●○Three cuisines and three cultures sharing one city, and the food is the reason to come: Malay, Chinese and Indian…
Taiping & the Perak Small TownsTown · ●●●●○The town Malaysians name when you ask which one they actually like — a rain-soaked old tin town under the hills, built…
Kota Bharu & KelantanTown · ●●●○○The most culturally distinct corner of peninsular Malaysia — a state with its own dialect, its own food, Thai temples…
Taman NegaraNature · ●●●○○One of the oldest tropical rainforests on earth, said to have grown undisturbed for well over a hundred million years…

Slovenia8 places

The Soča ValleyNature · ●●●●●A river the colour of antifreeze running the length of a valley in the Julian Alps — a green-blue so saturated that…
Lake BohinjNature · ●●●●○Half an hour past Lake Bled, inside Triglav National Park, a lake four times larger with a fraction of the people — no…
The Mangart Saddle RoadRoute · ●●●●○The highest road in Slovenia — twelve kilometres of single-lane hairpins and rough-cut tunnels climbing to a saddle at…
The Škocjan CavesPoint · ●●●●○Not a cave with formations — a canyon with a roof on it. The Reka river disappears underground here and carves a gorge…
Lake BledNature · ●●●○○The postcard of the Julian Alps: a small green lake with a church on a tiny island in the middle and a medieval castle…
Ljubljana & the Karst CavesTown · ●●●○○One of Europe's most relaxed small capitals, a car-free riverside centre of bridges guarded by dragons, within easy…
PiranTown · ●●●○○Slovenia's short Adriatic coast squeezes in one gem: a small Venetian town packed onto a point, all terracotta roofs…
The Vintgar GorgeNature · ●●●○○A wooden walkway pinned to the wall of a limestone slot fifteen minutes from Lake Bled, with the Radovna river running…

South Korea8 places

The Seoul–Busan Bike PathNature · ●●●●●A 633-kilometre cycle route from Seoul to Busan that is almost entirely separated from traffic — riverside path the…
GyeongjuTown · ●●●●○The capital of the ancient Silla kingdom for a thousand years, often called a museum without walls, where grassy royal…
Haeinsa & the Tripitaka KoreanaPoint · ●●●●○A mountain temple holding 81,258 carved woodblocks — the complete Buddhist canon, cut in the thirteenth century — kept…
Seoraksan & SokchoNature · ●●●●○Granite spires and ravines an hour inland from the East Sea, holding the most concentrated autumn colour in South Korea…
Seoul & the DMZTown · ●●●●○A hyper-modern megacity of neon, K-pop, and endless food, wrapped around granite mountains and old palaces, an hour…
Haedong YonggungsaPoint · ●●●○○Almost every Korean Buddhist temple is in the mountains. This one is bolted to a rock shelf above the sea on the edge…
Jeju IslandNature · ●●●○○A volcanic island south of the mainland built around Korea's highest mountain, ringed by black-rock coast, lava tubes…
UlleungdoTown · ●●●○○A volcanic island 120 km out in the East Sea with almost no flat ground — steep enough that the coastal road had to be…

Costa Rica7 places

Manuel Antonio & Drake BayNature · ●●●●○Costa Rica's most-loved small park, where rainforest runs right down to white beaches and sloths, capuchins and toucans…
Monteverde & ArenalNature · ●●●●○The heart of Costa Rica's famous ecotourism: a misty cloud forest dripping with life and a perfect volcano cone rising…
The Osa Peninsula & CorcovadoNature · ●●●●○Costa Rica at its wildest: a remote rainforest peninsula that National Geographic called the most biologically intense…
TortugueroTown · ●●●●○A village on a sand spit between the Caribbean and a system of freshwater canals, with no road to it — you arrive by…
Cahuita & Puerto ViejoTown · ●●●○○The side of Costa Rica that does not feel like Costa Rica — Afro-Caribbean, Creole-speaking, reggae on the beach road…
Cerro ChirripóRoute · ●●●○○Costa Rica's highest point at 3,821 m, in a landscape nobody associates with the country — frost-hollowed páramo and…
San Gerardo de Dota & the Zona de los SantosNature · ●●●○○A steep river valley at 2,200 m in the Talamanca mountains, reached over a pass Costa Ricans call the Hill of Death —…

Greece7 places

DelphiPoint · ●●●●○The ancient world's most important oracle, set on a terraced mountainside the Greeks believed was the centre of the…
MeteoraPoint · ●●●●○Orthodox monasteries built on top of sheer sandstone pillars, reached for centuries only by rope ladders and nets the…
MonemvasiaTown · ●●●●○A whole Byzantine town hidden on the seaward face of a giant rock, invisible from the mainland, reached by a single…
Skopelos & the SporadesTown · ●●●●○A Greek island that is green rather than white and blue — pine forest running down to the water on nearly every side —…
Zagori & the Vikos GorgeNature · ●●●●○A cluster of grey-stone mountain villages in the remote northwest, linked by old packhorse trails and single-arch…
NaxosTown · ●●●○○The biggest and greenest of the Cyclades, with mountain villages, long empty beaches, and a giant marble doorway…
The Acropolis & AthensPoint · ●●●○○The rock at the centre of Athens, crowned by the Parthenon, the building that has defined what "classical" means for…

Guatemala7 places

Antigua & Lake AtitlánTown · ●●●●●A ravishing colonial city of cobbled streets and pastel façades framed by volcanoes, and, a couple of hours away, a…
Semuc ChampeyNature · ●●●●●A staircase of turquoise limestone pools spilling through the jungle, formed on a natural stone bridge under which an…
TikalPoint · ●●●●●One of the greatest cities of the ancient Maya, its steep temple-pyramids thrusting up through the rainforest canopy…
El MiradorPoint · ●●●●○The largest Maya city ever built, still under the jungle — you walk five days through Petén to stand on a pyramid the…
Volcán AcatenangoNature · ●●●●○You climb a dormant volcano all afternoon, pitch a tent on the ridge at 3,600 m, and then spend the night watching the…
Xela (Quetzaltenango)Town · ●●●●○Guatemala's second city, at 2,330 m in the western highlands — where people go to actually learn Spanish, because…
YaxháPoint · ●●●○○Guatemala's third-largest Maya city, on a ridge between two lakes an hour from Tikal — with a temple you can still…

New Zealand7 places

Aoraki / Mount CookNature · ●●●●●New Zealand's highest mountain presiding over a valley of glaciers, iceberg-dotted lakes, and turquoise rivers, in one…
Auckland & the Bay of IslandsTown · ●●●●●New Zealand's biggest city, a laid-back "City of Sails" spread over harbours and old volcanoes, and gateway to the…
Rotorua & the Geothermal NorthNature · ●●●●●A steaming, sulphur-scented landscape of geysers, bubbling mud pools, and rainbow hot springs, and the heartland of…
Tongariro & the Central PlateauNature · ●●●●●Widely rated one of the world's best single-day hikes, a trek across a raw volcanic wonderland of steaming craters…
Abel Tasman & the West Coast GlaciersNature · ●●●●○The upper South Island's contrasts: a golden-sand coastal track winding past turquoise bays perfect for kayaking, and…
Dunedin & the Otago PeninsulaTown · ●●●●○A Victorian Scottish city at the end of a long harbour, with a headland an hour away that holds the only mainland…
Queenstown & FiordlandNature · ●●●●○The adventure capital of the world set on a jewel-blue lake beneath jagged peaks, and, over the mountains, the fiords…

South Africa7 places

Cape Town & Table MountainTown · ●●●●●One of the most beautifully sited cities on earth, wrapped around a flat-topped mountain that drops to the sea, where…
Johannesburg, Soweto & the Cradle of HumankindTown · ●●●●○South Africa's biggest, rawest city, where the story of apartheid and the struggle against it is told with unflinching…
Kruger National ParkNature · ●●●●○One of Africa's great game reserves, the size of a small country, where you can drive yourself past lions, elephants…
Namaqualand & the KalahariNature · ●●●●○A semi-desert that stays brown and empty most of the year, then, for a few weeks each spring, erupts into a carpet of…
The DrakensbergNature · ●●●●○South Africa's grandest mountains, a towering wall of basalt cliffs and green foothills rising to the roof of the…
The Cape WinelandsRoute · ●●●○○A region of vineyards cradled by dramatic mountains just inland of Cape Town, dotted with gabled white Cape Dutch…
The Garden RouteRoute · ●●●○○A famously scenic stretch of South Africa's southern coast, where indigenous forest, cliffs, lagoons, and beaches…

Switzerland7 places

The Aletsch GlacierNature · ●●●●●The largest glacier in the Alps, a twenty-kilometre river of ice curving between peaks, viewed from ridge-top villages…
The Matterhorn & ZermattNature · ●●●●●The most recognisable mountain in the Alps, a near-perfect rock pyramid standing alone above a car-free village, first…
Lauterbrunnen & the JungfrauNature · ●●●●○A flat green valley walled in by sheer cliffs with seventy-two waterfalls spilling off the tops, and car-free villages…
Lucerne & Lake LucerneTown · ●●●●○A medieval town on a lake ringed by mountains, with a covered wooden footbridge from the fourteenth century and cog…
GruyèresTown · ●●●○○A single cobbled street of medieval houses running uphill to a castle, with the Alps behind it, the cheese it gave its…
The Glacier Express & the Bernina LineRoute · ●●●○○A day-long train billed as the slowest express in the world, crawling across a viaduct that curves into a cliff, over…
The Rhine FallsNature · ●●●○○One of the most powerful waterfalls in Europe, where the whole Rhine pours over a wide ledge with a jagged rock…

Turkey7 places

CappadociaNature · ●●●●●A surreal landscape of soft volcanic rock eroded into "fairy chimney" spires and honeycombed with cave homes, churches…
IstanbulTown · ●●●●●The only city that straddles two continents, capital of two great empires in turn, where a fifteen-hundred-year-old…
Mount NemrutPoint · ●●●●●On a remote 2,100-metre summit, a little-known king built himself a tomb guarded by colossal seated statues of gods…
EphesusPoint · ●●●●○One of the best-preserved ancient cities in the Mediterranean, where you walk a real Roman main street of marble past…
Göbekli TepePoint · ●●●●○The oldest known monumental site on earth, carved T-shaped pillars raised around 11,600 years ago, older than…
Pamukkale & HierapolisNature · ●●●○○A hillside of blinding white terraces built up over millennia by mineral-rich hot springs, where warm turquoise water…
The Lycian CoastNature · ●●●○○A turquoise stretch of Mediterranean coast where pine-covered mountains drop into clear water, ancient Lycian tombs are…

United Kingdom7 places

The Northumberland CoastNature · ●●●●●England's emptiest good coastline: enormous pale sand beaches with a castle at the end of most of them, a tidal island…
Hadrian's WallPoint · ●●●●○The Roman Empire's northern edge, a stone wall run coast to coast across northern England around AD 122, still marching…
The Lake DistrictNature · ●●●●○A knot of green mountains and long lakes in England's northwest that invented a big part of how the modern world thinks…
Eryri (Snowdonia)Nature · ●●●○○The rugged mountain heart of Wales, crowned by Yr Wyddfa, the highest peak in England and Wales, with a Welsh-speaking…
Stonehenge & AveburyPoint · ●●●○○The most famous prehistoric monument in the world, and a bigger, stranger stone circle twenty miles north that you can…
The Giant's CausewayNature · ●●●○○Some forty thousand hexagonal basalt columns packed together at the sea's edge, so regular they look poured by hand.…
The Isle of SkyeNature · ●●●○○A big Hebridean island of jagged black peaks and green landslip terraces, where the weather changes every twenty…

Germany6 places

HamburgTown · ●●●●●Germany's great port, a brick city of canals and warehouses where an old Hanseatic trading town meets a wave-shaped…
BerlinTown · ●●●●○A capital that spent the twentieth century at the centre of its worst events and now confronts that history in the…
The Black ForestNature · ●●●●○The dark, densely wooded hills of Germany's southwest corner, home of the cuckoo clock, the gateau, and a landscape of…
Neuschwanstein CastlePoint · ●●●○○The pale turreted castle that half the world pictures when it hears "fairy-tale castle," built by a reclusive Bavarian…
The BasteiNature · ●●●○○A stone bridge from 1851 threading between free-standing sandstone pinnacles nearly two hundred metres above the Elbe…
The Middle Rhine ValleyRoute · ●●●○○The stretch of the Rhine where the river carves a steep gorge past a castle roughly every few kilometres, vineyards…

Iceland6 places

Jökulsárlón (the glacier lagoon)Nature · ●●●●○Icebergs the size of houses break off a glacier and drift across a lagoon that didn't exist a century ago, then wash up…
Landmannalaugar (the rainbow mountains)Nature · ●●●●○Mountains streaked red, green, and blue rise over a valley where a hot river runs warm enough to bathe in, and for most…
Reykjavík & the Golden CircleTown · ●●●●○The world's northernmost capital — small enough to cross on foot, with a concrete church like a basalt organ pipe on…
The South Coast & Ring RoadNature · ●●●●○The stretch of Route 1 where Iceland unloads everything at once: waterfalls you can walk behind, a beach of black sand…
The WestfjordsNature · ●●●●○The peninsula almost nobody drives to — a clenched fist of fjords in Iceland's northwest, connected to the rest of the…
GjáinNature · ●●●○○A small green valley hidden in the middle of a black volcanic plain — waterfalls, basalt columns and moss packed into a…

Iran6 places

Chogha ZanbilPoint · ●●●●○A colossal mud-brick ziggurat rising from the plain of southwestern Iran, built by the little-known Elamite…
IsfahanTown · ●●●●○The jewel of old Persia, built around one of the largest public squares on earth and lined with tiled blue mosques, a…
PersepolisPoint · ●●●●○The ceremonial capital of the mighty Persian Empire, a terrace of colossal columns and stairways carved with…
ShirazTown · ●●●●○The Persian city of poets, roses, and nightingales, where a mosque's stained-glass windows scatter the morning sun into…
TehranTown · ●●●●○Iran's sprawling, mountain-backed capital, where the old shahs' mirror-tiled palaces and a dazzling vault of crown…
YazdTown · ●●●●○A honey-coloured desert city of mud-brick lanes and rooftops bristling with windcatchers, ancient towers that funnel…

Kenya6 places

Nairobi & Mount KenyaTown · ●●●●●The only capital city on earth with a full national park on its doorstep, where lions and rhinos roam against a skyline…
AmboseliNature · ●●●●○The classic image of Africa: herds of great elephants crossing a dusty plain with the snow-capped dome of Kilimanjaro…
Samburu & the Northern FrontierNature · ●●●●○A hot, semi-arid land north of the highlands, drier and wilder than the famous parks, home to a cast of desert-adapted…
The Maasai MaraNature · ●●●●○The classic African savanna of the imagination, endless golden grassland dotted with acacias and big cats, and the…
The Swahili Coast & LamuTown · ●●●●○An ancient trading culture where Africa met Arabia and India across the monsoon-borne Indian Ocean, its oldest living…
Lake Nakuru & the Rift LakesNature · ●●●○○A shallow soda lake in the floor of the Great Rift Valley that can turn pink with vast flocks of flamingos, ringed by a…

Netherlands6 places

MaastrichtTown · ●●●●●The Netherlands' oldest city and its least Dutch: a Roman river crossing turned Burgundian town on the Belgian and…
RotterdamTown · ●●●●●The Dutch city with no old town, because the Luftwaffe erased it in a single afternoon in 1940 — and the one that…
UtrechtTown · ●●●●●Amsterdam's canals without Amsterdam's crowds, and with a twist the capital doesn't have: the Oudegracht runs a full…
Amsterdam's Canal RingWander zone · ●●●●○A city built as a set of concentric canal rings four centuries ago, still lined with narrow leaning merchant houses…
De Hoge Veluwe & the Kröller-MüllerNature · ●●●●○A national park of heath and pine you cross on free white bikes left out for anyone, with one of the world's great Van…
The Wadden Sea & Mudflat WalkingNature · ●●●●○The largest unbroken system of tidal mudflats on Earth, where at low water you can walk for hours across the sea floor…

Nicaragua6 places

Granada & OmetepeTown · ●●●●○A gorgeous, colourful colonial city on the shore of a vast lake, looking out to a fairy-tale island formed by two…
León & the VolcanoesTown · ●●●●○A hot, gritty, intellectual colonial city crowned by the largest cathedral in Central America, and the launchpad for…
Little Corn IslandNature · ●●●●○A Caribbean island seventy kilometres off Nicaragua with no cars, no roads worth the name, and a north shore where the…
Jiquilillo & AposentilloNature · ●●●○○The empty end of Nicaragua's Pacific coast — a long grey beach north of Chinandega backed by one of Central America's…
Matagalpa & the Northern HighlandsTown · ●●●○○The cold, wet, green Nicaragua — coffee mountains two hours north of Managua where the lodges sit inside working…
Somoto Canyon & EstelíNature · ●●●○○A slot canyon at the headwaters of the Coco river, near the Honduran border, that outsiders only formally documented in…

Panama6 places

The Panama Canal & Panama CityTown · ●●●●●One of the engineering wonders of the modern world, where you can watch giant ships climb a staircase of water between…
Bocas del ToroNature · ●●●●○A laid-back Caribbean archipelago of jungle-covered islands, over-water bungalows, and mellow beach bars, where you hop…
Boquete & the Chiriquí HighlandsTown · ●●●●○A cloud-forest town at 1,200 m on the flank of Panama's only volcano, where the temperature sits around 20 °C at dawn…
Isla Coiba & Santa CatalinaNature · ●●●●○A prison island so feared that nobody developed it, so its forest and reef survived intact — now a UNESCO marine park…
San Blas (Guna Yala)Nature · ●●●●○Hundreds of low palm islands on Panama's Caribbean side, most of them uninhabited and some barely bigger than the hut…
El Valle de AntónTown · ●●●○○A town built inside a volcanic caldera — one of the largest anywhere that people actually live in, six kilometres…

Poland6 places

WrocławTown · ●●●●●Poland's most cheerful big city: a rebuilt market square of colour-blocked merchant houses, a dozen islands stitched…
Białowieża ForestNature · ●●●●○One of the last surviving fragments of the primeval lowland forest that once blanketed Europe, and the home of the…
Kraków & WieliczkaTown · ●●●●○Poland's old royal capital, one of the few big Polish cities the war left standing, with a vast medieval square, a…
Warsaw's Old TownTown · ●●●●○A picturesque medieval old town that is barely eighty years old, rebuilt brick by brick from paintings and rubble after…
Zakopane & the TatrasNature · ●●●●○Poland's only alpine range, packed into a small border massif of granite peaks and glacial lakes, with a wooden…
ToruńTown · ●●●○○A red-brick Gothic town on the Vistula that the war never touched — Copernicus was born in it, it has been making the…

Tanzania6 places

ZanzibarTown · ●●●●●A spice island in the Indian Ocean where an ancient Swahili trading town of carved doors and winding lanes gives way to…
Gombe & Lake TanganyikaNature · ●●●●○The forested slopes above Lake Tanganyika where Jane Goodall began her famous study of wild chimpanzees, and where you…
Mount KilimanjaroNature · ●●●●○The highest mountain in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain on earth, a snow-capped volcano you can walk to…
The Ngorongoro CraterNature · ●●●●○A vast, unbroken volcanic caldera whose sheer walls enclose a self-contained world of grassland, lake, and forest…
The SerengetiNature · ●●●●○The name means "endless plains," and that is exactly it: a sea of golden grassland stretching past the horizon, host to…
The Southern CircuitNature · ●●●●○Tanzania's vast, wild, little-visited south, huge parks the size of small countries where you can watch wildlife along…

Czechia5 places

BrnoTown · ●●●●●The Czech second city that gets a fraction of Prague's visitors: a star fortress on one hill facing a neo-Gothic…
OlomoucTown · ●●●●○A handsome Moravian university town that feels like Prague without the crowds, with a giant Baroque plague column big…
Karlovy VaryTown · ●●●○○A belle-époque spa town strung along a wooded river valley, where the ritual is to stroll grand colonnades sipping warm…
PragueTown · ●●●○○A Gothic and Baroque city that came through the twentieth century almost unscathed, stacked along a river with a…
Český KrumlovTown · ●●●○○A medieval town wrapped inside a tight double bend of the Vltava, under a castle with a painted tower — and a river the…

Jordan5 places

JerashPoint · ●●●●○One of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities anywhere, where you walk an intact colonnaded main street rutted by…
PetraPoint · ●●●●○A whole city carved into rose-coloured sandstone cliffs by an ancient desert trading people, entered through a long…
Wadi RumNature · ●●●●○A desert of red sand and towering sandstone and granite mountains, so otherworldly it stands in for Mars in the movies…
Madaba & Mount NeboPoint · ●●●○○A town whose churches hold the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land, laid out in Byzantine mosaic on a floor, beside…
The Dead SeaNature · ●●●○○The lowest point on the surface of the earth, a salt lake so dense you cannot sink, where the novelty is bobbing on…

Laos5 places

Luang PrabangTown · ●●●●○A serene old royal town on a finger of land between the Mekong and a tributary, full of gilded temples and…
The Plain of JarsPoint · ●●●●○Hundreds of huge, ancient stone jars scattered across highland meadows, carved by an unknown people for reasons no one…
Nong Khiaw & the Nam OuTown · ●●●○○A village where the Nam Ou cuts between limestone walls, three hours upriver from Luang Prabang — with a viewpoint…
The 4000 Islands (Si Phan Don)Nature · ●●●○○Where the Mekong braids into a scatter of river islands just before Cambodia, a sleepy, hammock-slung backwater of rice…
Vang ViengTown · ●●●○○Limestone towers standing straight out of a river valley — and the most instructive cautionary tale in Southeast Asian…

Norway5 places

Geirangerfjord & NærøyfjordNature · ●●●●●Sea inlets carved 500 metres deep by ice and walled by rock that rises a kilometre straight out of the water, with…
Tromsø & the Northern LightsTown · ●●●●●A university city on an Arctic island 350 km inside the polar circle, sitting under the auroral oval — the band where…
Bergen & PreikestolenTown · ●●●●○A harbour lined with leaning wooden trading houses that have burned and been rebuilt on the same medieval footprint for…
Åndalsnes & RomsdalenTown · ●●●●○A small town at the head of a fjord where the mountains stand straight up out of the water — reached by one of Europe's…
The Lofoten IslandsNature · ●●●○○Granite peaks a thousand meters high rise straight out of the Arctic sea, and red fishermen's cabins on stilts cling to…

Austria4 places

ViennaTown · ●●●●○The capital of a vanished empire that still lives like one, all imperial boulevards and gilded concert halls, where the…
HallstattTown · ●●●○○A postcard village wedged between a lake and a cliff, sitting on a salt mine so old that an entire Iron Age culture is…
The Grossglockner High Alpine RoadRoute · ●●●○○A 1930s mountain road of thirty-six hairpins that climbs to a balcony staring straight at Austria's highest peak and…
The Wachau ValleyRoute · ●●●○○Forty kilometres of the Danube between two small towns, terraced with vineyards that have been worked since the Middle…

Belgium4 places

BrusselsTown · ●●●●○A capital that is easy to underrate, with one of the most ornate market squares in Europe, whole neighbourhoods of Art…
GhentTown · ●●●●○Bruges's bigger, grittier neighbour and, for many, the better one: a medieval Flemish city just as handsome but full of…
BrugesTown · ●●●○○A medieval Flemish trading city that grew rich, then fell asleep for centuries when its harbour silted up, and woke to…
Westvleteren & the Hop CountryPoint · ●●●○○The one beer you cannot buy anywhere else — brewed by monks who refuse to distribute it — at the end of a bike ride…

Cambodia4 places

AngkorPoint · ●●●●●The temples of a vanished empire spread across the jungle near Siem Reap: the largest religious monument on earth, a…
Phnom PenhTown · ●●●●○Cambodia's riverfront capital, where a golden royal palace and a lively market sit a short distance from the prison and…
Preah VihearPoint · ●●●●○An 11th-century Khmer temple strung along the very edge of a cliff, 500 metres above the plains, reached by a road so…
Kampot & the CoastTown · ●●●○○A sleepy river town of faded colonial shophouses backed by a misty mountain, famous for a pepper prized in the world's…

Croatia4 places

Split & Diocletian's PalaceTown · ●●●●●A Roman emperor's retirement palace that never became a ruin, because people simply moved in and never left — so its…
DubrovnikTown · ●●●○○A walled marble city jutting into the Adriatic, once an independent merchant republic that outmanoeuvred bigger powers…
IstriaTown · ●●●○○Croatia's northern peninsula, quietly Italian in feel, with a Venetian fishing town stacked on a headland, a nearly…
Plitvice LakesNature · ●●●○○Sixteen lakes stacked in a wooded canyon, each spilling into the next over natural stone dams, the water an unreal…

Georgia4 places

SvanetiNature · ●●●●●A remote region high in the Caucasus where medieval stone defensive towers still stand in every village beneath snow…
Kakheti Wine CountryRoute · ●●●●○The heartland of Georgian wine, where people have been making it in buried clay vessels for some eight thousand years…
Stepantsminda & the Kazbegi MountainsTown · ●●●●○A village at the end of the Georgian Military Highway, under a 5,047 m glaciated peak, with a 14th-century church alone…
TbilisiTown · ●●●○○A crossroads capital in the Caucasus where wooden-balconied houses lean over cobbled lanes, a fortress looks down from…

Ireland4 places

ConnemaraNature · ●●●●○The wild, boggy west of Galway, where the Irish language is still spoken day to day, quartzite mountains rise out of…
The Dingle PeninsulaNature · ●●●●○A finger of Kerry reaching into the Atlantic where the road hugs cliffs above beaches nobody is on, drystone beehive…
Newgrange & the Boyne TombsPoint · ●●●○○A grass-covered stone mound built around 3200 BC, older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, engineered so that…
The Cliffs of Moher & the BurrenNature · ●●●○○A wall of black cliffs dropping some two hundred metres straight into the Atlantic, next to the Burren, a grey…

Kyrgyzstan4 places

Karakol & the Ala-Köl TrekNature · ●●●●○A four-day loop out of a scruffy Silk Road town: up through spruce forest to a glacial lake the colour of antifreeze at…
Osh & the Southern Silk RoadTown · ●●●●○One of Central Asia's oldest cities, a Silk Road crossroads in the fertile Ferghana Valley, where a sprawling ancient…
Song-Köl & the JailoosNature · ●●●●○A high mountain lake on a treeless plateau at three thousand metres, where Kyrgyz herders bring their animals and yurts…
Lake Issyk-Kul & the Tian ShanNature · ●●●○○One of the world's largest and deepest mountain lakes, a vast blue sheet of slightly salty water that never freezes…

Sri Lanka4 places

Galle & the South CoastTown · ●●●●○A walled colonial port on the south coast, its ramparts enclosing a mix of Dutch, Portuguese, and Sri Lankan streets…
Sigiriya & the Cultural TrianglePoint · ●●●●○A sheer rock rising two hundred metres from the jungle, its summit once crowned by a king's palace reached through the…
Arugam BayTown · ●●●○○A surf town on Sri Lanka's east coast that is busy exactly when the rest of the island is being rained on — and the one…
Kandy & the Hill CountryTown · ●●●○○The last royal capital, wrapped around a lake and guarding a temple that holds a tooth of the Buddha, and the gateway…

Albania3 places

Theth & the Accursed MountainsNature · ●●●●○A stone-tower village at the end of a rough road deep in the Accursed Mountains, where families ran on ancient clan law…
BeratTown · ●●●○○The "city of a thousand windows," where tiers of white Ottoman houses climb a steep hillside stacked so their rows of…
The Albanian RivieraNature · ●●●○○A stretch of Ionian coast where mountains drop straight into turquoise water, still cheaper and rougher than the Greek…

Argentina3 places

Argentine PatagoniaNature · ●●●●●The end of the world's greatest hits: a colossal glacier that calves house-sized ice into a milky lake with a crack…
Buenos AiresTown · ●●●●○A grand, faded-glamour capital often called the Paris of South America, where tango was born in the port barrios, café…
Mendoza & the High AndesRoute · ●●●○○Argentina's wine capital, where sun-drenched vineyards spread beneath the snow-capped Andes, pouring the country's…

Armenia3 places

Geghard & GarniPoint · ●●●●○A medieval monastery partly hacked out of the living rock of a cliff, its inner chapels carved directly into the…
Lake Sevan & DilijanNature · ●●●●○One of the largest high-altitude lakes in the world, a vast blue expanse in the Armenian highlands with a medieval…
YerevanTown · ●●●●○One of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, built largely from local pink volcanic stone, with cafés…

Azerbaijan3 places

BakuTown · ●●●●○A Caspian boomtown where a walled medieval old city of caravanserais and a mysterious stone tower sits beneath a…
Gobustan & the Mud VolcanoesOddity · ●●●●○A stony semi-desert south of Baku carved with thousands of prehistoric rock drawings, next to a field of cold mud…
ShekiTown · ●●●●○An old Silk Road town in the green foothills of the Greater Caucasus, home to a small summer palace whose windows are…

Bangladesh3 places

The SundarbansNature · ●●●●○The largest mangrove forest on earth, a vast tidal labyrinth of channels and half-submerged trees at the mouth of the…
Cox's BazarNature · ●●●○○Often called the world's longest natural sea beach, an unbroken sweep of sand running well over a hundred kilometres…
Dhaka & the RiversTown · ●●●○○One of the most densely packed cities on earth, a roaring, river-bound megacity of countless cycle rickshaws, Mughal…

Belarus3 places

Belovezhskaya PushchaNature · ●●●●○The Belarusian half of Europe's last great primeval lowland forest, home to wild European bison, and the quiet lodge in…
Brest FortressPoint · ●●●○○The ruined 19th-century fortress on the Polish border where a Soviet garrison held out against the German invasion in…
MinskTown · ●●●○○A capital almost entirely destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt from scratch as a showcase of Stalinist city…

Benin3 places

GanviéTown · ●●●●○A whole town of tens of thousands built on stilts over a lagoon, where the streets are water, everyone travels by…
OuidahPoint · ●●●●○The spiritual home of voodoo, where a temple full of sacred pythons sits near a haunting slave route that ends at a…
Pendjari National ParkNature · ●●●○○One of the last strongholds of wildlife in West Africa, a remote savanna park in Benin's far north that shelters some…

Bhutan3 places

The Bumthang ValleysNature · ●●●●○The spiritual heartland of Bhutan, a group of high central valleys thick with the country's oldest and holiest temples…
Thimphu & PunakhaTown · ●●●●○The world's only capital with no traffic lights, gateway to a Buddhist kingdom that measures itself by Gross National…
The Tiger's Nest (Paro Taktsang)Point · ●●●○○A whitewashed monastery clinging to a sheer cliff face nine hundred metres above the valley floor, reached by a steep…

Bolivia3 places

La Paz & TiwanakuTown · ●●●●●The highest seat of government in the world, a breathtaking city that spills down a steep Andean canyon so that you…
Salar de UyuniNature · ●●●●●The largest salt flat on Earth, an endless blinding-white plain that becomes, when a thin film of rainwater covers it…
Sucre & PotosíTown · ●●●●○Bolivia's elegant white colonial capital, a city of whitewashed mansions and a mild climate, paired with nearby Potosí…

Bosnia & Herzegovina3 places

SarajevoTown · ●●●●●A city in a steep valley where a single street carries you from Ottoman bazaar to Austro-Hungarian boulevard in a few…
Blagaj TekijaPoint · ●●●○○A white Sufi dervish house built right against the foot of a cliff, where a river bursts full-grown out of a cave in…
Mostar & the Stari MostTown · ●●●○○A graceful Ottoman stone bridge arching high over a green river, blown up during the war and rebuilt stone by stone…

Botswana3 places

The Kalahari & Makgadikgadi PansNature · ●●●●○A landscape of almost unimaginable emptiness: vast white salt pans, the bed of a long-vanished super-lake, stretching…
The Okavango DeltaNature · ●●●●○A river that never reaches the sea, spilling instead into the Kalahari to form a vast maze of channels, islands, and…
Chobe National ParkNature · ●●●○○A park famous for its enormous elephant herds, where the best seat is a boat on the river at sunset as hundreds of…

Bulgaria3 places

PlovdivTown · ●●●●○One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe, where a Roman theatre still stages performances, painted…
Rila MonasteryPoint · ●●●●○Bulgaria's grandest monastery, set deep in forested mountains, its courtyard ringed by tiers of black-and-white striped…
The Buzludzha MonumentOddity · ●●●●○A colossal concrete flying saucer marooned on a Balkan mountaintop, built by the Communist Party in 1981 and left to…

Chile3 places

Torres del PaineNature · ●●●●●Patagonia's crown jewel: three sheer granite towers soaring above a turquoise glacial lake, at the heart of a national…
Santiago & ValparaísoTown · ●●●●○Chile's contrasting central duo: a modern, orderly capital pressed against a wall of snow-capped Andes, and, over the…
The Atacama DesertNature · ●●●○○The driest desert on Earth, where some weather stations have never recorded rain, a high, otherworldly landscape of…

Cuba3 places

HavanaTown · ●●●●○A gorgeous, crumbling time-capsule of a city, where 1950s American cars cruise past grand faded colonial mansions…
TrinidadTown · ●●●●○A perfectly-preserved colonial town of pastel houses and cobbled streets that sugar wealth built and time forgot, where…
ViñalesNature · ●●●●○A lush green valley where Cuba's finest tobacco is grown by hand as it has been for centuries, dotted with red-earth…

Denmark3 places

CopenhagenTown · ●●●○○A flat, bike-mad harbour capital where you can swim in the middle of the city, eat some of the world's most celebrated…
Møns KlintNature · ●●●○○Six kilometres of brilliant white chalk cliffs dropping into the turquoise Baltic on a quiet island, backed by old…
Skagen & GrenenNature · ●●●○○The northern tip of Denmark, where two seas crash into each other along a sandbar you can walk to and stand with a foot…

El Salvador3 places

El Cuco & the Eastern BeachesTown · ●●●○○Ask Salvadorans which beach in the country is actually the best and a name comes back that is not the famous one — a…
El Tunco & the Surf CoastNature · ●●●○○The most accessible surf on this coast and a string of long right-hand points — including one rated among the best in…
The Ruta de las Flores & VolcanoesRoute · ●●●○○A winding highland road linking a string of colourful little coffee towns famous for their murals, weekend food fairs…

Estonia3 places

Lahemaa National ParkNature · ●●●○○An easy escape from Tallinn into deep Estonian nature: pine forest, boulder-strewn coast, elegant old manor houses, and…
SaaremaaNature · ●●●○○Estonia's largest island, a slow, flat world of junipers, wooden windmills, and small stone churches, with a field of…
TallinnTown · ●●●○○One of the best-preserved medieval towns in northern Europe, a walled tangle of merchant houses, spires, and gate…

Ethiopia3 places

LalibelaPoint · ●●●●●A cluster of medieval churches carved downward out of solid rock, entire buildings hewn from the living stone below…
The Danakil DepressionNature · ●●●●●One of the hottest and lowest places on earth, an alien landscape of neon-yellow sulphur springs, salt flats worked by…
The Simien MountainsNature · ●●●●○A jagged wall of peaks and plunging escarpments in the Ethiopian highlands, often called the roof of Africa, where…

Finland3 places

Finnish LaplandNature · ●●●○○Finland's Arctic north, a land of snow forests and reindeer where winter brings the northern lights and a…
Helsinki & SuomenlinnaTown · ●●●○○A calm, sea-facing capital of clean design and public saunas, with a short ferry out to Suomenlinna, an 18th-century…
The Finnish LakelandNature · ●●●○○The heart of Finland is water: thousands of lakes threaded with forest and islands, where the national ritual is a…

Ghana3 places

Cape Coast & Elmina CastlesPoint · ●●●●○Whitewashed forts on a palm-fringed shore whose beauty masks a terrible history: these were holding prisons of the…
Kakum National ParkNature · ●●●○○A rare surviving tract of West African rainforest where a series of rope-and-plank bridges are strung between the…
Mole National ParkNature · ●●●○○Ghana's largest wildlife refuge, a stretch of northern savanna where you can walk on foot with a ranger and, from the…

Hungary3 places

BudapestTown · ●●●●○A grand imperial capital split by the Danube into hilly Buda and flat Pest, sitting on hot springs that feed sprawling…
Lake BalatonNature · ●●●○○The largest lake in Central Europe, so central to a landlocked country that Hungarians call it their sea, warm and…
Tokaj Wine CountryRoute · ●●●○○The hills where one of the world's original great sweet wines is made, from grapes deliberately left to shrivel with…

Iraq3 places

Babylon & BaghdadPoint · ●●●●○The ruins of Babylon, one of the most famous cities of the ancient world, home to the legendary Hanging Gardens and the…
Erbil & Iraqi KurdistanTown · ●●●●○A great mounded citadel rising over a modern city, claimed as one of the longest continuously inhabited places on…
Ur & the Mesopotamian MarshesPoint · ●●●●○The great ziggurat of Ur, a stepped brick temple-mountain from one of humanity's first cities, on the edge of the…

Kazakhstan3 places

MangystauNature · ●●●●○A remote desert region by the Caspian where the earth turns alien: white chalk canyons, valleys of strange eroded…
Almaty & the Tian ShanTown · ●●●○○Kazakhstan's green former capital, sitting right under the snow peaks of the Tian Shan, in the region where the apple…
AstanaTown · ●●●○○A brand-new capital conjured out of the bare steppe in a single generation, a showcase of wild futuristic architecture…

Latvia3 places

RigaTown · ●●●●○The biggest of the Baltic capitals, pairing a Hanseatic old town with entire streets of extravagant Art Nouveau…
The Gauja Valley & SiguldaNature · ●●●○○A green river valley of sandstone bluffs, forest, and old castles that Latvians call their Switzerland, threaded with…
The Latgale LakesNature · ●●●○○The quiet, lake-strewn southeast corner of Latvia, poorer and more mixed than the rest, where blue lakes, Orthodox and…

Lebanon3 places

BaalbekPoint · ●●●●○The largest Roman temple complex ever built, where columns the height of a seven-storey building still stand and a…
The Cedars & the Qadisha ValleyNature · ●●●●○A deep holy gorge where hermits and Christian communities carved monasteries into the cliffs, above it a surviving…
BeirutTown · ●●●○○A battered, brilliant Mediterranean capital that has been destroyed and rebuilt more times than almost any city…

Lithuania3 places

The Hill of CrossesPoint · ●●●●○A low mound near Šiauliai carpeted in hundreds of thousands of crosses, planted over generations as a stubborn act of…
VilniusTown · ●●●●○One of the largest and finest Baroque old towns in Northern Europe, with a bohemian breakaway "republic" of artists…
The Curonian SpitNature · ●●●○○A thread of sand barely a few kilometres wide running a hundred kilometres down the Baltic, with some of the highest…

Madagascar3 places

Andasibe & the Eastern RainforestsNature · ●●●●○An accessible eastern rainforest where the eerie, whale-like song of the indri, the largest living lemur, echoes…
The Baobabs & TsingyNature · ●●●●○Western Madagascar's twin wonders: a dirt road lined with giant, ancient baobab trees glowing at sunset, and, further…
Nosy Be & the NorthNature · ●●●○○Madagascar's main beach island, a laid-back tropical escape of white sand, warm turquoise water, and the scent of…

Malawi3 places

Lake MalawiNature · ●●●●○A vast, clear freshwater lake, the "lake of stars," so full of colourful fish found nowhere else that snorkelling in it…
Liwonde National ParkNature · ●●●●○Malawi's finest wildlife park, a conservation success story along a broad river where, thanks to a dramatic rewilding…
Mount MulanjeNature · ●●●●○A colossal granite massif rising abruptly out of the tea plantations of southern Malawi, its sheer walls and plateaus…

Mali3 places

DjennéPoint · ●●●●○The largest mud-brick building in the world, a magnificent, spiky-walled Great Mosque that is re-plastered by the whole…
The Dogon CountryNature · ●●●●○A dramatic sandstone escarpment where the Dogon people built villages into the cliffs and terraces, keeping one of…
TimbuktuTown · ●●●●○The name that stands, in many languages, for the most remote place on earth, once a fabled Saharan city of gold, salt…

Mauritania3 places

Chinguetti & the AdrarTown · ●●●●○A near-abandoned medieval caravan town half-buried in the encroaching Sahara, where families still guard crumbling…
The Iron Ore TrainRoute · ●●●●○One of the longest and heaviest trains on earth, a two-and-a-half-kilometre snake of open ore wagons crossing the…
The Richat Structure (Eye of the Sahara)Nature · ●●●○○A vast geological bullseye in the Sahara, concentric rings of rock nearly forty kilometres across, so perfectly formed…

Mauritius3 places

Chamarel & the InteriorNature · ●●●○○The green, mountainous heart of Mauritius, where volcanic soil forms a hillside of surreal rainbow-striped dunes, a…
Le Morne & the LagoonsNature · ●●●○○A dramatic basalt mountain plunging into a turquoise lagoon at the island's tip, its beauty shadowed by a poignant…
RodriguesNature · ●●●○○Mauritius's small, far-flung sister island, a slow, unspoiled world of a huge shallow lagoon, hilly Creole villages…

Moldova3 places

Orheiul VechiPoint · ●●●●○A cave monastery carved into a limestone cliff above a looping river gorge in the Moldovan countryside, still used by…
The Mileștii Mici Wine CellarsOddity · ●●●●○An underground wine cellar so vast you tour it by car, more than a hundred and fifty kilometres of tunnels lined with…
TransnistriaOddity · ●●●●○A sliver of land along the Dniester that broke away from Moldova in the early 1990s and declared itself a country…

Mongolia3 places

Karakorum & the Orkhon ValleyNature · ●●●●○The grassy valley that was the cradle of steppe empires and the site of Genghis Khan's capital, where a walled…
The Altai Eagle HuntersTown · ●●●●○In Mongolia's far western mountains, ethnic Kazakh herders still hunt from horseback with trained golden eagles, a bond…
The Gobi DesertNature · ●●●●○A vast cold desert of gravel plains, singing sand dunes, and red cliffs where the first dinosaur eggs were found…

Montenegro3 places

Durmitor & the Tara CanyonNature · ●●●●○A high massif of jagged peaks and glacial lakes above one of the deepest river canyons on earth, where the Tara has cut…
The Bay of KotorTown · ●●●●○A deep, twisting bay that looks like a fjord but is really a drowned river canyon, walled in by grey mountains, with a…
Ostrog MonasteryPoint · ●●●○○A white Orthodox monastery built directly into a vertical cliff face high above a valley, looking as though it has been…

Mozambique3 places

Ilha de Moçambique & the QuirimbasTown · ●●●●○A tiny coral island that was once the capital of Portuguese East Africa, its faded stone town of churches, forts, and…
The Bazaruto ArchipelagoNature · ●●●●○A cluster of Indian Ocean islands ringed by turquoise lagoons and towering sand dunes, where traditional dhows sail…
MaputoTown · ●●●○○A warm, faded, thoroughly lived-in capital on the Indian Ocean, where crumbling Portuguese-colonial and Art Deco…

Myanmar3 places

BaganPoint · ●●●●○A dusty plain beside the Irrawaddy studded with thousands of brick temples and pagodas built by the kings of a medieval…
Inle LakeNature · ●●●●○A calm highland lake where fishermen row standing on one leg, wrapping the other around the oar, and whole villages of…
YangonTown · ●●●○○Myanmar's largest city, a humid sprawl of mouldering colonial mansions and busy tea shops gathered around the vast…

Namibia3 places

The Skeleton Coast & SwakopmundNature · ●●●●○A bleak, fog-shrouded shore where the great dunes of the Namib run straight into the cold Atlantic, littered with the…
Etosha National ParkNature · ●●●○○A vast, shimmering salt pan so large it dominates the landscape, ringed by waterholes where, in the dry season, the…
SossusvleiNature · ●●●○○A landscape of towering rust-red sand dunes, among the highest on earth, marching across the ancient Namib desert, and…

Nepal3 places

Everest & the KhumbuNature · ●●●●●The trek to the foot of the highest mountain on earth, through the homeland of the Sherpa, past monasteries and prayer…
The Kathmandu ValleyTown · ●●●●●A single valley holding three former royal cities and some of the holiest sites in Hinduism and Buddhism, a dense…
Annapurna & PokharaNature · ●●●●○The gateway to some of the world's greatest and most accessible mountain trekking, where a relaxed lakeside town sits…

Nigeria3 places

KanoTown · ●●●●○One of the great cities of the Sahel, an ancient Hausa trading hub whose old town of earthen walls, vast markets, and…
The Osun-Osogbo Sacred GrovePoint · ●●●●○A dense forest along a sacred river, dotted with shrines and fantastical sculptures to the Yoruba gods, one of the last…
LagosTown · ●●●○○One of Africa's biggest and most electric cities, a roaring megacity of some twenty million where fortunes are chased…

North Macedonia3 places

Lake OhridTown · ●●●●○One of the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe, ringed by mountains, with a mellow old town of Byzantine churches…
Matka CanyonNature · ●●●○○A steep river canyon with an emerald reservoir at the bottom, cliffside medieval monasteries, and a boat ride to a cave…
SkopjeTown · ●●●○○A capital of two clashing faces: a genuine Ottoman old bazaar on one bank, and on the other a government-built fantasy…

Oman3 places

Dhofar & SalalahNature · ●●●●○The far south of Oman, where a summer monsoon does something no other Arabian desert sees, turning the hills lush green…
Muscat & the Hajar MountainsTown · ●●●●○A refreshingly low-rise, white-washed capital on the Gulf of Oman, gateway to jagged mountains hiding deep canyons…
The Wahiba SandsNature · ●●●○○A sea of tall red-and-gold dunes rolling to the horizon, where you sleep in a Bedouin desert camp under the stars, an…

Pakistan3 places

LahoreTown · ●●●●○The cultural heart of Pakistan, a Mughal capital of vast red-sandstone mosques and forts, a labyrinthine walled old…
Mohenjo-daroPoint · ●●●●○One of the world's first cities, a Bronze Age metropolis on the Indus laid out on a grid with brick houses, public…
Taxila & GandharaPoint · ●●●○○The ruins of an ancient centre of learning where Greek and Buddhist worlds fused, producing the serene Gandhara…

Romania3 places

The TransfăgărășanRoute · ●●●●○A dizzying mountain road built by a dictator's army across the highest wall of the Carpathians, hairpinning up to a…
The Danube DeltaNature · ●●●○○Where the Danube finally reaches the Black Sea and dissolves into one of the best-preserved wetlands in Europe, a maze…
Transylvania & the Saxon TownsTown · ●●●○○A green upland of medieval German towns and fortified farm-churches under the Carpathians, marketed hard on a Dracula…

Russia3 places

KazanTown · ●●●●●The capital of Tatarstan, where a mosque and an Orthodox cathedral stand inside the same white kremlin walls, street…
Lake BaikalNature · ●●●●●The oldest and deepest lake on Earth — 25 million years old, 1,642 metres down — holding around a fifth of all the…
St PetersburgTown · ●●●●○A capital built from nothing on a swamp by imperial decree, laid out in canals and pastel baroque along the Neva…

Rwanda3 places

Volcanoes National ParkNature · ●●●●○The misty, volcano-cradled forest where Dian Fossey made mountain gorillas known to the world, and where trekking up…
KigaliTown · ●●●○○One of Africa's cleanest, safest, and most orderly capitals, spread over green hills, and home to a memorial that…
Lake Kivu & Nyungwe ForestNature · ●●●○○A big, calm lake fringed with beaches and terraced hills, beside one of the oldest rainforests in Africa, where a…

Saudi Arabia3 places

AlUla & HegraPoint · ●●●●○Saudi Arabia's answer to Petra: monumental tombs carved into desert sandstone outcrops by the same Nabataean people…
The Empty Quarter (Rub' al Khali)Nature · ●●●●○The largest continuous sand desert on earth, an ocean of dunes hundreds of metres high stretching to the horizon across…
Diriyah & RiyadhTown · ●●●○○On the edge of the capital, the restored mud-brick town where the Saudi state was born, a warren of earthen palaces and…

Senegal3 places

Dakar & Gorée IslandTown · ●●●●○West Africa's most vibrant capital, thrumming with music and markets on the continent's westernmost point, with a short…
Saint-LouisTown · ●●●●○A crumbling, characterful old colonial town on a narrow island at the mouth of the Senegal River, once the capital of…
The Sine-Saloum DeltaNature · ●●●○○A vast maze of mangrove channels, tidal flats, and islands where two rivers meet the Atlantic, some of them built up…

Serbia3 places

BelgradeTown · ●●●●○A blunt, energetic capital where the Sava meets the Danube under an old fortress that has been fought over and…
Novi Sad & Fruška GoraTown · ●●●○○Serbia's easygoing second city, spread along the Danube beneath a huge star-shaped fortress that hosts one of Europe's…
The Šargan Eight & Mokra GoraRoute · ●●●○○A narrow-gauge heritage railway that loops through the mountains in a figure eight to climb a steep grade, paired with…

Slovakia3 places

Spiš Castle & LevočaPoint · ●●●●○One of the largest castle complexes in Central Europe, a vast sprawl of pale ruined walls on a bare hill above the Spiš…
BratislavaTown · ●●●○○A small, easygoing capital on the Danube, overshadowed by nearby Vienna and all the better for it, with a compact old…
The High TatrasNature · ●●●○○A compact wall of sharp granite peaks, the highest in the Carpathians, packed with glacial tarns and mountain huts…

Sweden3 places

Stockholm & the ArchipelagoTown · ●●●○○A capital built across fourteen islands where the lake meets the Baltic, opening straight out into an archipelago of…
Swedish LaplandNature · ●●●○○The Swedish Arctic, where the sun doesn't set for weeks in summer and doesn't rise for weeks in winter, home to the…
Visby & GotlandTown · ●●●○○One of the best-preserved medieval walled towns in northern Europe, ringed by a nearly complete stone rampart, on a…

Tunisia3 places

El DjemPoint · ●●●●○A gigantic Roman amphitheatre, one of the largest and best-preserved in the world, rising with astonishing completeness…
The Tunisian SaharaNature · ●●●●○Tunisia's slice of the Sahara: palm oasis towns, Berber granary-fortresses, a vast mirage-shimmering salt lake, and the…
Tunis, Carthage & Sidi Bou SaidTown · ●●●●○The capital and its coast pack in three worlds: a labyrinthine medieval medina, the scattered ruins of Carthage, the…

Turkmenistan3 places

Ancient MervPoint · ●●●●○The eroded remains of what was once among the largest cities in the world, a great Silk Road oasis reduced to walls…
AshgabatTown · ●●●●○A capital rebuilt almost entirely in gleaming white marble, with gold-domed ministries, giant monuments, and empty…
The Darvaza Gas CraterOddity · ●●●●○A wide pit in the Karakum desert that has been on fire for decades, a roaring crater of flame nicknamed the Door to…

Uganda3 places

Bwindi Impenetrable ForestNature · ●●●●○A dense, ancient rainforest cloaking steep mountains, home to roughly half the world's remaining mountain gorillas…
Murchison FallsNature · ●●●●○Where the entire Nile is squeezed through a gap in the rocks just seven metres wide and explodes through in a violent…
The Source of the Nile, JinjaNature · ●●●●○Where the world's longest river begins, the point at which the White Nile flows out of Lake Victoria to start its…

Ukraine3 places

KyivTown · ●●●●○The ancient capital on the Dnipro, mother-city of the Slavic Orthodox world, its skyline gold with monastery domes, and…
LvivTown · ●●●●○Ukraine's most Central European city, a Habsburg-era old town of cobbled squares, coffee houses, and layered Polish…
The Ukrainian CarpathiansNature · ●●●●○The green wooded mountains of Ukraine's far west, home to the Hutsul highlanders and their steep-roofed wooden…

United Arab Emirates3 places

The Liwa OasisNature · ●●●●○Where the UAE's malls and skylines give way to the real Arabia: a crescent of oasis villages at the foot of towering…
Abu DhabiTown · ●●●○○The UAE's calmer, wealthier capital, home to one of the most beautiful modern mosques in the world and an outpost of…
DubaiTown · ●●●○○A city that rose from a small pearling and trading port to a skyline of record-breaking towers in a single generation…

Uzbekistan3 places

BukharaTown · ●●●●○The most complete medieval city in Central Asia, a living Silk Road town of madrasas, minarets, and covered trading…
SamarkandTown · ●●●●○The great crossroads of the Silk Road, where the conqueror Timur built a capital of colossal turquoise-domed mosques…
KhivaTown · ●●●○○A walled desert city that looks almost too perfect to be real, a compact maze of mud-brick minarets, madrasas, and…

Venezuela3 places

Angel Falls & the TepuisNature · ●●●●○The tallest waterfall on Earth, a ribbon of water plunging almost a kilometre off the sheer edge of a flat-topped…
Los RoquesNature · ●●●●○A scattering of tiny coral islands and sandbars in impossibly clear turquoise water far off the Venezuelan coast, one…
Mérida & the AndesNature · ●●●○○A lively Andean university town in the mountains of western Venezuela, base for adventure in high páramo and snow…

Zambia3 places

South LuangwaNature · ●●●●○The birthplace of the walking safari, a wild, uncrowded park along a meandering river where you explore on foot with an…
Livingstone & Devil's PoolNature · ●●●○○The Zambian side of Victoria Falls, where in the low-water months you can swim to a natural rock pool right on the very…
The Lower ZambeziNature · ●●●○○A stretch of the great Zambezi where the wildlife gathers along the river beneath an escarpment, and you drift past…

Zimbabwe3 places

Great ZimbabwePoint · ●●●●○The largest ancient stone structure in sub-Saharan Africa, the ruined capital of a powerful medieval kingdom, its great…
Hwange National ParkNature · ●●●○○Zimbabwe's largest game reserve, a vast wilderness of teak forest and grassland famous for its enormous elephant herds…
Victoria FallsNature · ●●●○○The Zambezi crashing over a kilometre-and-a-half-wide cliff into a narrow gorge, throwing up a column of spray visible…

Afghanistan2 places

Bamiyan & Band-e-AmirNature · ●●●●○A high Silk Road valley where two colossal Buddhas once stood carved into the cliff until the Taliban dynamited them…
HeratTown · ●●●○○An ancient Silk Road city in western Afghanistan, long a jewel of Persian and Timurid culture, with a great tiled…

Algeria2 places

Algiers & the CasbahTown · ●●●●○A dazzling white city tumbling down to the Mediterranean, crowned by the Casbah, a steep, ancient labyrinth of…
Tassili n'Ajjer & the HoggarNature · ●●●●○Deep in the Algerian Sahara, a plateau of surreal eroded rock holds one of the greatest galleries of prehistoric art on…

Angola2 places

Namibe & TundavalaNature · ●●●●○Southern Angola's raw drama: the Namib desert running straight into the Atlantic, ancient plants that live for a…
Kalandula FallsNature · ●●●○○One of the largest waterfalls in Africa by volume, a broad horseshoe of falling water in the Angolan interior, almost…

Bahrain2 places

Manama & the Dilmun SitesTown · ●●●○○A relaxed island capital built on one of the oldest trading civilisations in the Gulf, the ancient land of Dilmun…
The Tree of LifeOddity · ●●●○○A single large tree standing alone in the Bahraini desert, hundreds of years old, thriving with no obvious source of…

Belize2 places

The Maya Interior & CavesPoint · ●●●●○Beyond the reef, Belize's jungle interior hides Maya cities lost in the forest and, most hauntingly, a cave where you…
The Barrier Reef & Blue HoleNature · ●●●○○The second-largest barrier reef in the world, a wonderland of coral, turtles, and rays off a string of laid-back…

Burkina Faso2 places

The Sindou Peaks & BanforaNature · ●●●●○A wind-carved ridge of narrow stone spires and blades rising from the savanna, near a green corner of Burkina Faso with…
Ouagadougou & FESPACOTown · ●●●○○A dusty, friendly Sahel capital with an outsized cultural life, home to the largest film festival in Africa, which…

Cameroon2 places

Mount Cameroon & the CoastNature · ●●●○○The highest peak in West and Central Africa, an active volcano that rises straight from the Atlantic coast, its slopes…
Waza National ParkNature · ●●●○○The best-known wildlife park in Cameroon, a stretch of Sahel savanna in the far north where elephants, giraffes, lions…

Chad2 places

The Ennedi MassifNature · ●●●●○A vast sandstone labyrinth in the middle of the Sahara, where erosion has carved soaring natural arches, towers, and…
Zakouma National ParkNature · ●●●●○A conservation comeback story in the heart of Africa, a remote savanna park where elephants, once slaughtered in their…

Republic of the Congo2 places

Odzala-Kokoua National ParkNature · ●●●●○Deep in the Congo Basin, the second-largest rainforest on Earth, a park where you track western lowland gorillas…
BrazzavilleTown · ●●●○○A surprisingly relaxed capital on the great Congo River, gazing across the water at its huge, frenetic twin Kinshasa…

Dominican Republic2 places

Santo DomingoTown · ●●●●○The oldest continuously-inhabited European city in the Americas, where Spanish colonisation of the New World began, its…
Samaná & the North CoastNature · ●●●○○The Dominican Republic's lush, less-developed northern coast, where thousands of humpback whales come each winter to…

DR Congo2 places

The Congo River & KinshasaTown · ●●●●○One of the world's great rivers and one of Africa's largest, most electric cities face each other here: the mighty…
Virunga & NyiragongoNature · ●●●●○Africa's oldest national park, a place of staggering drama: a volcano cradling one of the world's largest permanent…

Gabon2 places

Ivindo & the Rainforest InteriorNature · ●●●●○The green heart of Gabon: a vast tract of pristine equatorial rainforest hiding thundering waterfalls and a legendary…
Loango National ParkNature · ●●●●○Where the rainforest meets the Atlantic in the most surreal way: elephants and buffalo strolling on the beach, hippos…

Greenland2 places

East Greenland & Scoresby SoundNature · ●●●●○The wildest edge of the Arctic: the largest fjord system on Earth, a labyrinth of iceberg-filled channels and sheer…
The Ilulissat IcefjordNature · ●●●●○A fjord choked with icebergs the size of buildings and city blocks, calved from one of the fastest-moving glaciers on…

Guinea2 places

The Fouta DjallonNature · ●●●○○A cool, green highland plateau of sandstone cliffs, deep valleys, and waterfalls, so full of rivers that it feeds three…
The Nimba MountainsNature · ●●●○○A green, forested mountain range straddling three countries, so rich in creatures found nowhere else, including a toad…

Guyana2 places

Kaieteur FallsNature · ●●●●○One of the most powerful single-drop waterfalls on Earth, where a jungle river plunges over a sheer cliff nearly five…
Georgetown & the CoastTown · ●●●○○A faded, ramshackle colonial capital of grand wooden buildings and bustling markets, a Caribbean-flavoured city on the…

Honduras2 places

CopánPoint · ●●●●○The Athens of the Maya world: a smaller ruin than Tikal, but unmatched for the artistry of its stone carving, with…
The Bay IslandsNature · ●●●●○A string of Caribbean islands sitting on the world's second-largest barrier reef, famous as one of the cheapest and…

Ivory Coast2 places

Abidjan & Grand-BassamTown · ●●●●○West Africa's slickest, most cosmopolitan city, spread across lagoons and skylines with a buzzing music and food scene…
The Yamoussoukro BasilicaPoint · ●●●●○One of the largest churches in the world, a colossal domed basilica modelled on St Peter's in Rome, rising improbably…

Jamaica2 places

The Blue Mountains & KingstonNature · ●●●●○Misty green peaks that grow one of the world's most prized coffees, rising above Kingston, the gritty, vibrant capital…
Negril & the WestNature · ●●●○○Jamaica's mellow west end, home to a legendary seven-mile stretch of white sand and, around the point, low limestone…

Kuwait2 places

Failaka IslandPoint · ●●●○○A low island off Kuwait City layered with the ruins of a Greek settlement founded in the wake of Alexander the Great…
Kuwait CityTown · ●●●○○A wealthy, low-key Gulf capital where the iconic blue-globed water towers stand over a modern waterfront, and a…

Liberia2 places

Monrovia & the Surf CoastTown · ●●●○○A rough, resilient capital named after an American president, born from the return of freed slaves to Africa, on an…
Sapo National ParkNature · ●●●○○Liberia's largest protected rainforest and the second-largest remaining block of primary forest in West Africa, a…

Libya2 places

Leptis MagnaPoint · ●●●●○One of the most spectacular and complete Roman cities anywhere, a vast marble metropolis on the Libyan coast, lavished…
The Akakus & the FezzanNature · ●●●●○A desert range in Libya's deep southwest where the sand and rock rise into soaring natural arches and pinnacles, their…

Niger2 places

The Aïr & TénéréNature · ●●●●○One of the Sahara's most sublime landscapes: a range of dark volcanic mountains rising from a golden ocean of dunes…
The Last Giraffes of KouréNature · ●●●●○The last wild giraffes in all of West Africa, a small, recovering herd of a pale, distinctive subspecies that roams…

Papua New Guinea2 places

The Highlands & Sing-singsTown · ●●●●○The most culturally and linguistically diverse place on Earth, where hundreds of distinct peoples speaking over eight…
The Islands & the ReefsNature · ●●●●○Some of the richest coral reefs and most thrilling wreck diving on Earth, scattered across remote tropical islands…

Paraguay2 places

The Gran ChacoNature · ●●●●○One of South America's last great wildernesses, a vast, hot, thorn-forest plain teeming with wildlife and dotted…
The Jesuit MissionsPoint · ●●●○○The romantic red-stone ruins of a lost utopian experiment, the Jesuit "reductions," where in the 17th and 18th…

Qatar2 places

DohaTown · ●●●○○A Gulf capital that turned its oil and gas wealth toward culture, anchored by one of the world's finest museums of…
Khor Al Adaid (the Inland Sea)Nature · ●●●○○A place where the sea reaches deep inland to meet the desert, an arm of the Gulf lapping at the foot of tall crescent…

Sierra Leone2 places

Freetown & the Peninsula BeachesTown · ●●●●○A hilly, hectic capital founded as a home for freed slaves, backed by forested mountains that tumble down to a string…
Tiwai IslandNature · ●●●○○A small forested island in a jungle river, one of the most biodiverse spots in West Africa for its size, home to a…

Singapore2 places

Haw Par VillaOddity · ●●●●●A theme park built by the Tiger Balm millionaires in 1937 to teach Chinese morality through a thousand painted concrete…
The Hawker CentresPoint · ●●●●●Open-air food halls where a hundred specialist stalls each cook one dish, perfected over decades, for a few dollars — a…

Sudan2 places

Jebel Barkal & KarimaPoint · ●●●●○A lone flat-topped mountain rising from the Nile-side desert, held sacred for thousands of years as a home of the god…
The Pyramids of MeroëPoint · ●●●●○More pyramids than all of Egypt, steeper, smaller, and standing almost alone in the rolling sands of the Sudanese…

Suriname2 places

ParamariboTown · ●●●●○A UNESCO-listed old town of black-and-white Dutch-colonial wooden buildings, in one of the most extraordinarily diverse…
The Rainforest InteriorNature · ●●●●○One of the most forested countries on the planet, an almost entirely pristine wilderness of rainforest and rivers where…

Tajikistan2 places

The Pamir HighwayRoute · ●●●●○One of the world's great road journeys, a rough ribbon of tarmac and gravel climbing over passes above four thousand…
The Fann MountainsNature · ●●●○○A compact range of sharp peaks and impossibly coloured turquoise lakes within reach of the capital, some of the finest…

Togo2 places

Koutammakou (the Batammariba)Town · ●●●●○A landscape of extraordinary fortress-like mud tower-houses, sculpted homes with turrets, granaries, and rooftop…
LoméTown · ●●●○○A relaxed, palm-lined seaside capital on the Gulf of Guinea, best known for the Akodessewa fetish market, a startling…

Trinidad & Tobago2 places

TobagoNature · ●●●●○Trinidad's small, sleepy sister island, all palm-fringed beaches, coral reefs, and forested hills, crowned by what is…
Trinidad: Carnival & the Pitch LakeTown · ●●●●○The island that invented the steel drum and threw one of the world's greatest street parties, home to an epic Carnival…

Uruguay2 places

MontevideoTown · ●●●●○One of Latin America's most laid-back and livable capitals, a city of faded belle-époque elegance strung along a…
Colonia del SacramentoTown · ●●●○○A dreamy little old town of cobbled lanes and colonial houses on a point in the River Plate, fought over for centuries…

Yemen2 places

Old Sana'aTown · ●●●●○One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth, a walled old town of tall gingerbread-like tower houses…
SocotraNature · ●●●●○An isolated Indian Ocean island so evolutionarily strange it is called the Galápagos of the Arabian Sea, where…

Haiti1 place

The Citadelle LaferrièrePoint · ●●●●○A colossal stone fortress crowning a mountain peak, built by the newly-free people of the only nation ever born from a…

Kosovo1 place

Prizren & GjakovaTown · ●●●●●Two Ottoman towns in Europe's least-visited country: Prizren stacked below a hilltop fortress with a river running…