Where Will You Go?

An archipelago of 1,200 coral islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, the Maldives is synonymous with overwater bungalows, crystalline lagoons, and some of the world's most pristine marine ecosystems. This is where barefoot luxury was invented, and where it continues to be perfected.

A volcanic peak rising from an impossibly turquoise lagoon, ringed by a coral necklace of motu islets, Bora Bora is one of the Pacific's most iconic landscapes. The overwater bungalow was born here in 1967, and the island remains the gold standard for romantic, remote luxury.

A surreal volcanic landscape of fairy chimneys, underground cities, and rock-carved churches rising from the high Anatolian plateau, Cappadocia is one of earth's most otherworldly destinations. Sleep in a cave carved by Byzantine monks, then float over the valley in a hot air balloon at sunrise.

Above the Arctic Circle in Sweden's far north, Swedish Lapland is a wilderness of ancient Sami reindeer trails, frozen rivers, and skies that ignite with the northern lights. This is where you sleep in a glass igloo, dog-sled through snowbound spruce forests, and spend polar nights searching the sky for aurora.

The birthplace of the modern safari, Kenya remains the benchmark against which all African wildlife experiences are measured. From the Maasai Mara's great wildebeest migration to the elephant herds of Amboseli silhouetted against Kilimanjaro, this is wildlife travel at its most cinematic.

Home to the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Zanzibar's spice-scented islands, and the roof of Africa on Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania packs more unmissable landmarks per square kilometre than almost any country on earth. It is wildlife travel and island escape combined in a single extraordinary destination.

A volcanic island of fire and ice where geysers erupt beside glaciers, black sand beaches meet the midnight sun, and the northern lights dance over steaming hot springs. Iceland is one of the world's most geologically active landscapes, and one of its most dramatic.

A kingdom of staggering fjords, Arctic archipelagos, and some of Europe's wildest coastline, Norway rewards slow travel with landscapes that shift from pastoral to genuinely primeval within an hour's drive. The fjords are UNESCO-listed for good reason, there is nothing quite like them anywhere else on earth.

A country of 188,000 lakes, ancient forests, and the purest sauna culture on earth, Finland is where Arctic wilderness meets Nordic design precision. In winter, stay in a glass-roof cabin on a frozen lake watching the northern lights; in summer, canoe through an archipelago that never fully gets dark.

One of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, Matera's ancient sassi (cave dwellings) tumble down a ravine in southern Italy's Basilicata region, looking much as they have for 9,000 years. A former city of poverty that now UNESCO World Heritage-listed and European Capital of Culture, Matera is the unlikely resurrection story of the century.

Stretching across the southern tip of South America, Patagonia is a wilderness of jagged granite peaks, turquoise glacial lakes, and Andean steppe that seems to stretch to the end of the world. Shared between Chile and Argentina, this remote region rewards those who travel far and stay long.

A sliver of Central America containing 5% of the world's biodiversity, Costa Rica pioneered ecotourism before anyone had coined the term. From cloud forest canopy walks above Monteverde to the Arenal volcano's lava fields and the Osa Peninsula's near-untouched rainforest, this is the world's most successful model of nature-first travel.

Mendoza is South America's wine capital, a prosperous Andean city sitting at the foot of the Andes where Malbec grapes thrive at altitude and boutique wine lodges embedded within working vineyards offer some of the continent's most sophisticated accommodation. The Aconcagua massif and high Andean passes add dramatic adventure to what is already a destination with serious food and wine credentials.

The Grand Canyon is the most dramatic geological exposure on Earth, a mile-deep chasm through 1.8 billion years of rock carved by the Colorado River across five million years. Beyond the rim-view crowd, a world of inner canyon hiking, Colorado River rafting, and North Rim wilderness offers accommodation experiences that transform one of the world's most visited sites into something genuinely intimate.

The Australian Outback is one of the planet's last great empty spaces, an ancient red landscape of ochre plains, impossibly blue skies, and Aboriginal rock art tens of thousands of years old. Uluru and the surrounding desert country offer a profoundly moving encounter with both geology and human history unlike anywhere else on earth.

A small island of extraordinary spiritual richness, Bali blends terraced rice paddies, ancient Hindu temples, and dense jungle with a exceptional hospitality culture that has produced some of Asia's most inventive boutique hotels. Beyond the tourist strip of Seminyak lies a landscape of immense beauty and genuine cultural depth.

Bhutan is the world's only carbon-negative country, a Buddhist Himalayan kingdom that measures national success in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, and the last truly high value, low volume destination on earth. Its dzongs (fortress-monasteries), tiger's nest monasteries, and pristine high-altitude landscapes remain among the most extraordinary in Asia.

Botswana has built its entire tourism identity on a single, powerful idea: fewer visitors, higher spending, greater conservation impact. The result is the finest premium safari experience in Africa, vast private concessions of unfenced wilderness, elephant populations of 130,000 animals, and the singular beauty of the Okavango Delta, the world's largest inland river delta and one of its last great wildernesses.

Joshua Tree National Park sits at the convergence of two desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado, creating a landscape of otherworldly rock formations, twisted Joshua trees, and skies that rank among the darkest in Southern California. The surrounding high desert communities have developed one of the most creative and thoughtfully designed accommodation cultures in the American Southwest.

Cambodia is home to Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument on earth and one of humanity's most extraordinary architectural achievements, surrounded by a jungle landscape dotted with boutique eco-lodges, heritage hotels, and floating villages on the vast Tonle Sap lake. Beyond the temples, Cambodia's coastline and island groups offer increasingly compelling beach retreats.

The Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar desert on earth, a vast high-altitude plateau of salt flats, volcanic geysers, flamingo lagoons, and night skies so clear that the world's largest observatory network is concentrated here. Boutique desert lodges in San Pedro de Atacama offer atmospheric accommodation at the edge of one of the planet's most alien landscapes.

Cartagena de Indias is South America's most beautifully preserved colonial city, a walled Caribbean port where 16th-century Spanish fortresses, bougainvillea-draped plazas, and candy-colored mansions have been converted into some of the continent's most atmospheric boutique hotels. Beyond the old city walls, the Rosario Islands and the Caribbean coast offer increasingly extraordinary beach and island escapes.

The Galápagos Islands are the planet's greatest laboratory of evolution, 127 islands and islets where animals evolved without natural predators and remain fearless of human visitors. Ecuador's mainland adds cloud forest reserves, the Amazon basin, and Quito's extraordinary colonial old town to create one of South America's most diverse travel itineraries.

Ethiopia is Africa's most historically layered destination, an ancient highland kingdom with its own alphabet, calendar, and Christian Orthodox tradition that predates Europe's by centuries. From the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela to the tribal cultures of the Omo Valley and the surreal landscapes of the Danakil Depression, Ethiopia offers experiences that genuinely exist nowhere else on earth.

French Polynesia spans 118 islands and atolls across a stretch of Pacific Ocean larger than Western Europe, where overwater bungalows sit above lagoons so clear you can count the coral heads below. Tahiti, Bora Bora, Moorea, and the remote Tuamotu atolls deliver some of the most extravagant and ecologically significant accommodation experiences in the world.

Santorini is the most visually iconic island in Europe, a volcanic caldera rim of whitewashed villages and blue-domed churches above a sea that is technically the crater of one of the largest eruptions in human history. Cave hotel suites carved directly into the volcanic cliff face of Oia and Imerovigli offer accommodation that is simultaneously ancient, otherworldly, and impeccably luxurious.

Kerala is India's softer, greener edge, a narrow coastal state of Arabian Sea beaches, backwater lagoons, spice-scented hill stations, and some of the country's finest food. Traditional Kerala houseboat stays on the Alleppey backwaters and boutique plantation retreats in the Wayanad and Munnar highlands offer accommodation experiences entirely unlike anywhere else in India.

Rajasthan is India at its most cinematic, a vast desert state where Mughal and Rajput history left behind a landscape of improbable forts, painted palaces, and royal haveli mansions. The conversion of these extraordinary historic structures into heritage hotels has produced some of the world's most atmospheric accommodation, from palace hotels in Jaipur and Udaipur to tented desert camps beneath the dunes of Jaisalmer.

The Komodo archipelago in Indonesia's Nusa Tenggara region is home to the world's largest living lizard, some of the richest marine biodiversity on earth, and a rugged, volcanic landscape of pink-sand beaches and emerald bays that has few rivals for raw natural drama. Liveaboard dive vessels and eco-lodges on Flores serve as the gateway to one of Asia's last true wilderness destinations.

Kyoto is the spiritual and cultural heart of Japan, a city of 1,600 Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines, and 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites that somehow functions as a living, working city rather than an outdoor museum. Beyond the imperial capital, Japan's ryokan inns, forest onsen, and mountain village guesthouses offer the world's most refined intimate accommodation tradition.

Jordan packs an extraordinary density of world-historical significance into a small country: Petra's rose-red Nabataean city, Wadi Rum's Martian desert landscape, the Dead Sea's hypnotic salt flats, and the Roman ruins of Jerash. It is one of the Middle East's most welcoming and accessible destinations, with an accommodation scene that has embraced the drama of its landscape.

Kentucky's Bourbon Trail winds through the rolling limestone hills and horse farm country of the Bluegrass State, passing distilleries that produce 95% of the world's bourbon supply amid some of the most pastoral scenery in the American South. Travelers come for whiskey tourism, equestrian heritage, and an increasingly sophisticated accommodation scene built around farm estates, bourbon-country inns, and celebrated horse country properties.

Luang Prabang is the most perfectly preserved royal city in Southeast Asia, a UNESCO World Heritage peninsula where saffron-robed monks, French colonial architecture, and ancient Lao temples coexist in unhurried harmony. Intimate boutique hotels housed in converted colonial mansions and riverside villas offer some of the most atmospheric accommodation in the region.

Louisiana's bayou country is one of North America's most ecologically and culturally singular landscapes, a vast network of slow waterways, cypress swamps, and coastal wetlands inhabited by alligators, roseate spoonbills, and communities descended from Acadian, Creole, and Native American traditions. Travelers come for food culture, Cajun and Zydeco music, and stays in a wetland world unlike anything else in the United States.

Madagascar is biology's greatest experiment, an island the size of France that split from Africa 165 million years ago, allowing evolution to take a path found nowhere else on earth. Over 90% of its wildlife is endemic: ring-tailed lemurs, fossa, 100 species of chameleon, and the famous Avenue of Baobabs. For travellers who love nature at its strangest, Madagascar is the planet's most singular destination.

Cape Cod is a 70-mile peninsula curling into the Atlantic off the Massachusetts coast, a landscape of kettle ponds, salt marshes, dune-backed beaches, and weathered shingle cottages that has drawn artists, writers, and summer visitors for over a century. The Cape's outer reaches, protected within the Cape Cod National Seashore, offer some of the most pristine coastal landscapes in the Northeast.

Morocco layers ancient medinas, Saharan sand dunes, and the snow capped High Atlas Mountains into a single country of extraordinary contrasts. From the labyrinthine souks of Fez to the silence of the Erg Chebbi dunes at dawn, it offers one of the world's most richly sensory travel experiences, and an accommodation culture of unmatched craft and beauty.

Mozambique is Africa's most underrated beach and marine destination, a 2,500-kilometer Indian Ocean coastline of powder-white beaches, dhow-sailing archipelagos, and coral reef systems that rival the Maldives in clarity and diversity. Remote island lodges and barefoot-luxury beach camps offer an intimacy and wildness that more famous Indian Ocean destinations have long since lost.

Inle Lake is one of Southeast Asia's most atmospheric destinations, a vast highland lake in Myanmar's Shan State where the Intha people live on floating villages, farm gardens suspended on the water, and navigate by standing on one leg to row. Stilted hotels and intimate boutique retreats built over the lake itself offer an accommodation experience found nowhere else on earth.

Namibia is Africa's great emptiness, a country twice the size of California with a population of fewer than three million, where the world's oldest desert meets a skeleton coast of shipwrecks and seal colonies, and where the dunes of Sossusvlei rank among earth's most extraordinary landscapes. It is also home to one of the continent's most sophisticated conservation-based tourism models.

Nepal is home to eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including Everest, and a culture of extraordinary richness built on the intersection of Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism across millennia. From the Kathmandu Valley's medieval temple squares to the high-altitude silence of the Annapurna Circuit, Nepal offers trekking, spiritual depth, and a warmth of welcome found in few other destinations.

The White Mountains of New Hampshire are New England's most dramatic high-country landscape, a compact range of rocky, windswept summits, glacier-carved notches, cascading rivers, and villages that have hosted mountain travelers since the 19th-century grand hotel era. Visitors come for hiking, fall foliage, and accommodations that range from historic summit-top lodges to remote backcountry huts.

The South Island of New Zealand concentrates some of the southern hemisphere's most spectacular scenery into a single landmass: glaciers calving into fiords, alpine lakes reflecting snow capped peaks, ancient rainforests, and wine country rolling toward a cobalt Pacific. It is a landscape built for adventure and quiet awe in equal measure.

Papua New Guinea is one of the last truly frontier destinations on earth, a vast island of rainforest-covered mountains, remote tribal cultures, and some of the world's most pristine and biodiverse marine environments. For travelers seeking genuine remoteness, extraordinary cultural encounters, and exceptional diving in an utterly untouched setting, PNG remains in a category entirely its own.

Peru layers Inca civilization, Spanish colonial grandeur, Andean highland culture, and the western Amazon basin into a single extraordinary country. Machu Picchu needs no introduction, but Peru's deeper appeal lies in the lesser-known: the floating islands of Lake Titicaca, the adobe canyon of Colca, and the cloud forest jungle lodges of the Madre de Dios river system.

Rwanda has undergone a transformation that is genuinely extraordinary to witness, from the horror of 1994 to one of Africa's most progressive, clean, and efficiently governed nations in three decades. At its heart lies the Virunga volcanoes, where habituated mountain gorilla families offer one of wildlife travel's most profound encounters. Rwanda has also created Africa's most sophisticated conservation-linked luxury lodge scene.

The Seychelles archipelago, 115 islands scattered across the western Indian Ocean, contains some of the world's most beautiful beaches, the last remaining inland tropical rainforest on a coral atoll, and a marine environment of extraordinary richness. Its [overwater bungalows](/categories/overwater-bungalows) and private island resorts define luxury Indian Ocean travel.

The Cape region of South Africa combines one of the world's most beautiful cities with dramatic mountain scenery, exceptional wine country, diverse marine wildlife, and the fynbos biome found nowhere else on earth. Cape Town's location, mountain, city, two oceans, is among the most striking urban settings in the southern hemisphere.

The South Carolina Lowcountry is a slow-moving world of tidal marshes, moss-draped live oaks, barrier islands, and antebellum history stretching along the coast between Savannah and Charleston. Travelers come for the seafood, the silence of the ACE Basin, and accommodations that feel embedded in one of the most hauntingly beautiful landscapes in the American South.

The South Dakota Badlands are among the most disorienting and beautiful landscapes in North America, a 244,000-acre expanse of eroded buttes, pinnacles, and canyons rising from the mixed-grass prairie like the ruins of a civilization built by geology itself. Beyond the national park, the Black Hills, Wind Cave, and the surrounding Lakota lands offer a layered experience of landscape, wildlife, and history.

Sri Lanka packs the cultural density of a subcontinent into an island the size of Ireland. Ancient rock fortresses, UNESCO-listed sacred cities, Ceylon tea highlands, elephant gathering grounds, blue whale ocean, and surf beaches exist within a few hours' drive of each other, and an emerging boutique hotel scene has turned the island's colonial bungalows and tea estate lodges into some of Asia's most atmospheric accommodation.

The mountainous north of Thailand offers a world apart from the country's famous beaches, ancient Lanna kingdoms, hill tribe villages, misty jungle valleys, and some of Southeast Asia's most creative boutique hotels set among rice fields and teak forests. Chiang Mai is its cultural heart; the Golden Triangle its wild edge.

Uganda is the primate capital of Africa, home to roughly half of the world's remaining mountain gorillas, as well as chimpanzees, golden monkeys, and the extraordinary biodiversity of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and Kibale National Park. Intimate gorilla trekking lodges perched in the mist-forest canopy above Bwindi offer some of Africa's most exclusive and emotionally powerful wildlife accommodation.

Vietnam stretches 1,650 kilometres from the Chinese border to the Gulf of Thailand, concentrating an extraordinary range of landscapes, cultures, and cuisines into a single S-shaped country. Hạ Long Bay's karst limestone islands are the iconic image, but the ancient town of Hội An, the rice terraces of Sapa, and the imperial grandeur of Huế reward those who travel the full length of the country.

The Shenandoah Valley and surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains form one of the Eastern United States' most beloved landscapes, a rolling expanse of farmland, hardwood forest, and ancient ridge lines threaded by Skyline Drive and the Appalachian Trail. Travelers come for the fall foliage, Civil War history, farm-to-table dining, and a growing culture of vineyard stays and restored farmhouse inns.

Wisconsin's Northwoods is a vast lake-and-forest landscape stretching across the northern third of the state, a region of over 15,000 lakes, old-growth hemlock and pine remnants, wild rivers, and a distinctive resort cabin culture that has defined Midwestern summer escapes for more than a century. Travelers come for fishing, canoe country, and stays in lakeside lodges that feel unchanged from a simpler era.

Zanzibar is a spice island archipelago off Tanzania's coast where centuries of Arabic, Persian, Indian, and African trade winds have created a culture of unique complexity, most visible in Stone Town's UNESCO-listed medina and the intricate carved doorways of its merchant houses. Its white sand beaches and coral reef waters complete one of East Africa's most complete safari-and-beach combinations.