The Best Natural Wonders to Visit in June

Planning a trip for June? These 134 wonders are at or near their best this month — the season when conditions, wildlife, light, or access line up. It’s distilled from each place’s real best-time notes, and because the atlas rebuilds daily, this stays current. Open any place for the honest detail on timing and access.

Angel Falls

Canaima National Park, Venezuela

The tallest waterfall on Earth — a ribbon of water that plunges 979 metres from the rim of a flat-topped tepui, so high it dissolves into mist long before it reaches the ground.

Waterfall Latin America

Banaue & the Ifugao Rice Terraces

Ifugao, Cordillera, Philippines

Two thousand years of hand-built rice terraces climbing the Cordillera mountainsides — a living landscape of stone-and-mud paddies, fed by an intricate forest-and-irrigation system, often called the 'Eighth Wonder of the World'.

Living terraces Southeast Asia

Banff & Moraine Lake

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

The turquoise glacial lakes of the Canadian Rockies — Moraine Lake beneath the Valley of the Ten Peaks and nearby Lake Louise — where glacier-ground rock flour turns the water an electric blue-green beneath snow-capped mountains.

Lake North America

Bay of Fundy

New Brunswick & Nova Scotia, Canada

Home to the highest tides on Earth — up to 16 metres of water rising and falling twice a day, laying bare a seabed you can walk across beneath towering flowerpot rocks.

Beach & coast North America

Białowieża Forest

Poland–Belarus border

The last great primeval lowland forest of Europe — a surviving fragment of the woodland that once covered the continent, and the home of the wild European bison.

Forest Europe

Bora Bora

Society Islands, French Polynesia

The archetypal South Pacific paradise — a jagged volcanic peak ringed by a luminous turquoise lagoon and a protective coral reef, encircled by palm-fringed islets of white sand.

Island Oceania

Bryce Canyon

Utah, United States

Not really a canyon at all, but a series of vast natural amphitheatres filled with thousands of glowing orange rock spires called hoodoos — the largest concentration of these strange pinnacles on Earth.

Rock formation North America

Bungle Bungle Range

Purnululu, Kimberley, Western Australia

Hundreds of orange-and-black striped sandstone domes rising from the Kimberley outback — a beehive landscape unknown to the wider world until the 1980s.

Rock formation Oceania

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest

Southwestern Uganda

An ancient, mist-shrouded montane rainforest that shelters nearly half the world's remaining mountain gorillas — one of the planet's most moving wildlife encounters.

Forest Africa

Cappadocia

Central Anatolia, Turkey

A dreamlike landscape of 'fairy chimneys' — tapering cones and pinnacles of soft volcanic rock carved by erosion, honeycombed with ancient cave homes and churches, and famous for its dawn balloon flights.

Rock formation Middle East

Cocos Island

Pacific Ocean, 550 km off Costa Rica

A rainforest island alone in the Pacific, ringed by waters where hammerhead sharks school in their hundreds — often called the finest big-animal dive site on Earth.

Marine sanctuary Latin America

Congo Basin Rainforest

Central Africa

The world's second-largest rainforest — an immense green heart of Africa that absorbs more carbon than it emits, home to bonobos, forest elephants, and okapi.

Forest Africa

Cotopaxi

Cotopaxi Province, Ecuador

A near-perfect glacier-capped cone rising almost 5,900 metres from the Andean highlands — one of the world's highest active volcanoes, and among the most symmetrical anywhere.

Volcano Latin America

Denali

Alaska, USA

The highest peak in North America — a 6,190-metre wall of rock and ice towering over the Alaskan wilderness, so tall its base-to-summit rise is among the greatest of any mountain on Earth.

Mountain North America

Eisriesenwelt

Werfen, Salzburg, Austria

The largest ice cave on Earth — 42 kilometres of limestone passage in an Alpine cliff, its entrance chambers filled with towering formations of natural ice.

Cave Europe

Etosha Pan

Northern Namibia

A vast white salt pan the size of a small country, so large it is visible from space — ringed by waterholes where elephants, rhinos, and lions gather in the dry season.

Savanna & plains Africa

Faroe Islands

North Atlantic (between Iceland and Norway)

A cluster of green, wind-scoured islands rising in sheer sea cliffs from the wild North Atlantic — grass-roofed villages, cascading waterfalls, and a lake that seems to hang above the ocean.

Island Europe

Geirangerfjord

Sunnmøre, Western Norway

One of the world's most celebrated fjords — a deep, narrow arm of the sea winding between sheer 1,000-metre cliffs laced with waterfalls like the Seven Sisters, with abandoned farms clinging to impossible ledges.

Fjord Europe

Giant Forest Sequoias

California, USA

Groves of giant sequoias — the largest living things on Earth by volume — including General Sherman, a single tree containing more wood than almost any other organism alive.

Forest North America

Giant's Causeway

County Antrim, Northern Ireland

Around 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, mostly perfect hexagons, stepping down into the North Atlantic — one of the most remarkable geometric formations in nature.

Rock formation Europe

Grand Teton

Wyoming, USA

A wall of jagged granite peaks erupting straight from a flat valley floor with no foothills — the most abruptly dramatic mountain front in North America, mirrored in glacial lakes.

Mountain North America

Great Barrier Reef

Queensland coast, Australia

The largest living structure on Earth — a 2,300-kilometre system of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and hundreds of islands off Queensland, so vast it can be seen from space, and among the most biodiverse places in the ocean.

Coral reef Oceania

Gunung Mulu

Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia

A Bornean rainforest hiding some of the world's greatest caves — including the largest cave chamber on Earth — plus razor-sharp limestone pinnacles rising from the jungle canopy.

Cave Southeast Asia

Iguazú Falls

Paraná, Brazil / Misiones, Argentina border

A thundering wall of water on the Brazil–Argentina border — hundreds of individual falls spread across nearly three kilometres of jungle, culminating in the vast horseshoe chasm of the Devil's Throat.

Waterfall Latin America

Ilulissat Icefjord

Ilulissat, western Greenland

A fjord choked with colossal icebergs calved from one of the fastest, most productive glaciers on Earth — a roaring, ever-changing cathedral of ice on Greenland's Arctic coast.

Glacier North America

Isle of Skye

Inner Hebrides, Scotland

A wild Hebridean island of jagged black peaks, mist-wrapped pinnacles, and sea cliffs — the most dramatic scenery in Scotland, stitched with waterfalls, lochs, and ancient rock.

Island Europe

Jeju Island

Jeju Province, South Korea

A volcanic island crowned by South Korea's highest peak, riddled with the world's finest lava-tube caves and edged by a sunrise crater rising straight from the sea.

Volcano East Asia

Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon

Vatnajökull National Park, Southeast Iceland

A glacial lagoon where huge icebergs calved from the Vatnajökull ice cap drift in still, deep water before floating out to sea — and wash up as glittering shards on the black-sand 'Diamond Beach'.

Glacier Europe

Kīlauea

Island of Hawaiʻi, United States

One of the most active volcanoes on Earth — a shield volcano on Hawaiʻi whose lava has repeatedly reshaped the island, sometimes glowing in a lava lake and, at times, spilling in rivers of fire to the sea.

Volcano North America

Kruger National Park

Mpumalanga & Limpopo, South Africa

One of Africa's greatest and most accessible game reserves — a vast bushveld wilderness the size of a small country, home to the Big Five and an extraordinary abundance of wildlife.

Savanna & plains Africa

Lake Baikal

Siberia, Russia

The deepest and oldest lake on Earth — a vast Siberian sea holding a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water, its waters so clear you can see 40 metres down, and freezing each winter into sheets of turquoise ice.

Lake East Asia

Lake Natron

Arusha Region, northern Tanzania

A caustic soda lake that burns blood-red with salt-loving microbes — lethal to most life, yet the single most important breeding ground on Earth for lesser flamingos.

Lake Africa

Manú National Park

Madre de Dios & Cusco, southeastern Peru

One of the most biodiverse places on Earth — a park descending from Andean cloud forest to lowland Amazon, with more bird species than any other protected area in the world.

Forest Latin America

Mont Blanc

French Alps (France–Italy border)

The highest peak in the Alps and western Europe — a great dome of snow and ice above Chamonix, ringed by glaciers, granite spires, and the birthplace of mountaineering.

Mountain Europe

Mount Bromo

East Java, Indonesia

A smoking volcanic cone rising from a vast 'Sea of Sand' inside an ancient caldera — one of Earth's most dramatic sunrise views, ringed by the peaks of the Tengger massif in East Java.

Volcano Southeast Asia

Mount Yasur

Tanna Island, Vanuatu

One of the world's most accessible active volcanoes — a crater that has erupted almost continuously for centuries, flinging glowing lava bombs into the night sky just metres from its rim.

Volcano Oceania

Mù Cang Chải Terraces

Yên Bái Province, northern Vietnam

Mountainsides sculpted into thousands of curving rice terraces by the Hmong people — a living landscape that turns mirror-silver in planting season and molten gold at harvest.

Living terraces Southeast Asia

Ningaloo Reef

Coral Coast, Western Australia

One of the world's largest fringing reefs — a coral wonderland that hugs the shore of Western Australia, where you can wade off the beach to snorkel with turtles, manta rays, and the giant whale shark.

Coral reef Oceania

Nyiragongo

Virunga, eastern DR Congo

A volcano cradling one of the world's largest and most active lava lakes — a churning pool of molten rock that glows red against the night sky over the Virunga mountains.

Volcano Africa

Pangong Tso

Ladakh, India

A vast high-altitude lake on the Tibetan Plateau whose waters shift through unearthly blues and greens beneath the bare, colossal mountains of Ladakh at over 4,300 metres.

Lake South Asia

Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng

Quảng Bình Province, Vietnam

An ancient limestone landscape riddled with the world's greatest cave systems — including Sơn Đoòng, the largest cave passage on Earth, big enough to hold its own jungle, river, and clouds.

Cave Southeast Asia

Plitvice Lakes

Lika, central Croatia

A staircase of sixteen turquoise lakes tumbling one into the next over natural travertine dams and countless waterfalls, threaded by boardwalks through lush forest — Croatia's oldest and most beloved national park.

Lake Europe

Salar de Uyuni

Altiplano, southwestern Bolivia

The largest salt flat on Earth — a blinding-white expanse of over 10,000 square kilometres high on the Bolivian Altiplano that becomes, after rain, the world's biggest natural mirror, reflecting the sky so perfectly that earth and heaven blur.

Desert & dunes Latin America

Serengeti

Northern Tanzania

The archetypal African plain — endless golden grassland that hosts the greatest land-mammal migration on Earth, as over a million wildebeest and hundreds of thousands of zebra move in a vast annual circle.

Savanna & plains Africa

Skeleton Coast

Northwestern Namibia

Where the world's oldest desert meets the cold Atlantic — a fog-shrouded shore of shipwrecks, immense dunes, and seal colonies, called by the Bushmen 'the land God made in anger'.

Beach & coast Africa

Sossusvlei & Deadvlei

Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia

The soaring red dunes of the ancient Namib — among the tallest on Earth — surrounding the surreal white clay pan of Deadvlei, where 900-year-old blackened trees stand skeletal against orange sand and blue sky.

Desert & dunes Africa

Svalbard

Svalbard archipelago, Arctic Ocean

A High Arctic archipelago of glaciers, jagged peaks, and frozen fjords roughly midway between Norway and the North Pole — the realm of the polar bear, under months of midnight sun and polar night.

Polar & ice Europe

The Amazon Rainforest

Amazon Basin, Brazil (and neighbouring countries)

The largest tropical rainforest on Earth — a continent-spanning sea of green threaded by the mighty Amazon River, holding a staggering share of the planet's species and helping regulate the world's climate.

Forest Latin America

The Dolomites

South Tyrol / Trentino / Veneto, Northern Italy

A range of pale limestone towers, sheer walls, and jagged spires in the Italian Alps that glow rose and gold at dawn and dusk — the famous 'enrosadira' — above green alpine meadows and turquoise lakes.

Mountain Europe

The Great Blue Hole

Lighthouse Reef, off Belize

A perfect deep-blue circle in the turquoise Caribbean — a giant marine sinkhole over 300 metres across and 120 metres deep, ringed by coral reef and famed as one of the world's great dive sites.

Marine sanctuary North America

The Pantanal

Mato Grosso & Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

The world's largest tropical wetland — a vast seasonal floodplain that is the best place on Earth to see jaguars in the wild, teeming with caimans, capybaras, and millions of birds.

Wetland Latin America

Tsingy de Bemaraha

Melaky, western Madagascar

A vast 'forest of stone' — a labyrinth of razor-sharp limestone pinnacles rising in grey blades from the Madagascar wilderness, hiding canyons, caves, and creatures found nowhere else.

Karst landscape Africa

Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park

Sulu Sea, off Palawan, Philippines

A pristine, remote atoll system in the middle of the Sulu Sea — nearly 100,000 hectares of coral reef, sheer walls, and open ocean that rank among the healthiest marine ecosystems on the planet.

Coral reef Southeast Asia

Uluru

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory, Australia

A colossal sandstone monolith rising abruptly from the flat red heart of Australia — glowing through fiery reds and oranges at sunrise and sunset, and a place of the deepest cultural significance to its Aboriginal custodians.

Rock formation Oceania

Yellowstone

Wyoming / Montana / Idaho, United States

The world's first national park, sitting atop a giant volcanic hotspot — home to half the planet's geysers, rainbow-rimmed hot springs like Grand Prismatic, and vast wildlife-rich valleys of bison, wolves, and bears.

Geyser North America

Zhangjiajie (Wulingyuan)

Hunan Province, China

A forest of thousands of towering quartzite-sandstone pillars rising hundreds of metres from misty subtropical forest — an ethereal landscape of floating peaks that helped inspire the world of Avatar.

Rock formation East Asia

Zhangye Danxia

Gansu Province, China

Hills painted in stripes of red, orange, gold, and green — a landscape of 'rainbow mountains' where millions of years of layered sediment have been folded and eroded into vivid bands of colour.

Rock formation East Asia

Aletsch Glacier

Valais, Switzerland

The largest glacier in the Alps — a 20-kilometre river of ice up to 900 metres thick, curving between 4,000-metre peaks in a vast frozen highway.

Glacier Europe

Aliwagwag Falls

Cateel, Davao Oriental, Mindanao

A towering 'stairway' waterfall in eastern Mindanao where the Cateel River tumbles down a long series of cascades — often described as a natural staircase of dozens of tiers dropping through rainforest.

Waterfall Southeast Asia

Antelope Canyon

Navajo Nation, near Page, Arizona, United States

A slot canyon of flowing, sculpted sandstone walls glowing orange, purple, and gold — carved by flash floods into curving corridors where, at midday, shafts of sunlight spear down like beams of light.

Canyon North America

Apo Island Marine Sanctuary

Dauin, Negros Oriental, Philippines

A small volcanic island off Negros ringed by one of the world's most celebrated community-run marine sanctuaries — famous for resident green sea turtles grazing over coral just off the beach.

Marine sanctuary Southeast Asia

Avenue of the Baobabs

Menabe, western Madagascar

A dirt road lined with towering, ancient baobab trees — vast smooth trunks rising like columns, some close to a thousand years old, glowing at sunset in one of Africa's most iconic scenes.

Forest Africa

Balicasag Island

Panglao, Bohol, Central Visayas

A tiny coral island off Bohol ringed by a protected marine sanctuary famous for its dramatic reef wall, resident sea turtles, and swirling schools of jackfish — one of the country's premier diving and snorkelling sites.

Marine sanctuary Southeast Asia

Batanes

Batanes, northernmost Philippines

The country's northernmost islands — rolling emerald hills that meet the sea in dramatic cliffs, stone villages built to withstand typhoons, and a windswept beauty utterly unlike the tropical lowlands.

Island Southeast Asia

Biri Rock Formations

Biri Island, Northern Samar, Eastern Visayas

Massive sandstone rock formations on a remote island where the Pacific Ocean meets the ferocious San Bernardino Strait — sculpted over millennia into cliffs, arches, and tidal pools battered by giant waves.

Rock formation Southeast Asia

Caño Cristales

Serranía de la Macarena, Meta, Colombia

The 'river of five colours' — a crystalline Colombian stream that erupts each season into brilliant reds, pinks, yellows, greens, and blues as a rare aquatic plant blooms across its bed of ancient rock.

River Latin America

Chapada Diamantina

Bahia, northeastern Brazil

A highland wilderness of table mountains, deep canyons, and waterfalls in the Brazilian interior — with caves holding pools so clear the light turns them electric blue.

Canyon Latin America

Charyn Canyon

Almaty Region, Kazakhstan

A dramatic red-rock canyon on the steppes of Central Asia, its most famous stretch — the Valley of Castles — a maze of towering sculpted spires often likened to a smaller Grand Canyon.

Canyon Central Asia

Cliffs of Moher

County Clare, western Ireland

A wall of sheer sea cliffs rising up to 214 metres straight from the wild Atlantic on Ireland's west coast — layered in ancient rock, alive with seabirds, and often wreathed in Atlantic mist and spray.

Rock formation Europe

Colca Canyon

Arequipa Region, southern Peru

One of the deepest canyons on Earth — more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon — carved by the Colca River through the Peruvian Andes, and among the surest places in the world to watch giant Andean condors soar.

Canyon Latin America

Columbia Icefield

Alberta & British Columbia, Canada

The largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains — a vast frozen plateau feeding glaciers that flow toward three different oceans, reached along one of the world's great mountain highways.

Glacier North America

Creux du Van

Jura Mountains, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

A vast natural rock amphitheatre in the Swiss Jura — a horseshoe of sheer 150-metre limestone cliffs curving nearly a kilometre and a half around a green forested hollow.

Rock formation Europe

Dune du Pilat

Arcachon Bay, Gironde, southwestern France

The tallest sand dune in Europe — a vast wave of pale sand over 100 metres high, poised between a great pine forest and the Atlantic on France's southwest coast.

Desert & dunes Europe

Fish River Canyon

ǁKaras, southern Namibia

Africa's largest canyon — a 160-kilometre gash up to 550 metres deep and 27 kilometres wide, where a river winds in vast loops through some of the oldest rock on the continent.

Canyon Africa

Geysir & Strokkur

Haukadalur geothermal field, Southwest Iceland

The geothermal valley that gave the world the word 'geyser' — where the reliable Strokkur spout blasts boiling water 15–20 metres skyward every few minutes amid steaming vents and mineral pools.

Geyser Europe

Golden Mountains of Altai

Altai Republic, southern Siberia

Where Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and China meet — glaciated peaks above turquoise rivers and steppe, holding the most complete sequence of vegetation zones in the region.

Mountain Central Asia

Gotland & the Raukar

Baltic Sea, southeastern Sweden

Sweden's largest island, rimmed by raukar — weathered limestone sea stacks that stand along the shore like a gallery of stone figures carved by the Baltic.

Rock formation Europe

Gros Morne

Newfoundland, Canada

A dramatic Newfoundland wilderness of landlocked fjords and bare orange mountains — where a slice of the Earth's mantle lies exposed at the surface, helping prove the theory of plate tectonics.

Mountain North America

Guilin & the Li River Karst

Guangxi, southern China

The landscape of Chinese scroll paintings brought to life — thousands of rounded limestone peaks rising from green plains and the winding Li River, mirrored in still water beneath drifting mist.

Karst landscape East Asia

Gullfoss

Hvítá river, Southwest Iceland

Iceland's most famous waterfall — the glacial Hvítá river plunges in two dramatic stepped tiers into a rugged canyon, throwing up spray that catches the sun in near-constant rainbows.

Waterfall Europe

Hell's Gate

Naivasha, Great Rift Valley, Kenya

A dramatic Rift Valley gorge of red cliffs, rock towers, and steaming geothermal vents — one of the few African parks you can explore on foot or by bike among the wildlife.

Rock formation Africa

Hinatuan Enchanted River

Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines

A short, astonishingly deep spring-fed river of sapphire and jade water that surfaces from an underground karst system and flows straight to the sea — its clarity and colour the product of geology, not legend.

River Southeast Asia

Huanglong

Sichuan Province, China

A valley paved with thousands of terraced travertine pools in gold, turquoise, and blue — a three-kilometre cascade of mineral basins climbing toward snow peaks.

Living terraces East Asia

Kakadu

Northern Territory, Australia

Australia's largest national park — a vast monsoonal landscape of floodplains, waterfalls, and stone country, alive with crocodiles and millions of birds, and holding some of the world's oldest rock art.

Wetland Oceania

Komodo National Park

Lesser Sunda Islands, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

A cluster of rugged islands that shelter the Komodo dragon — the largest lizard on Earth — above water, and some of the world's richest coral reefs below, including a beach tinted pink by red coral.

Marine sanctuary Southeast Asia

Königssee

Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany

A deep, emerald, fjord-like lake hemmed by sheer alpine cliffs in Berchtesgaden National Park — so clean that only silent electric boats are allowed to cross it.

Lake Europe

Lake Bled

Upper Carniola, Slovenia

A serene glacial lake with a tiny church-topped island at its heart, cupped beneath a clifftop castle and the peaks of the Julian Alps — one of the most picture-perfect scenes in Europe.

Lake Europe

Lake Como

Lombardy, northern Italy

A deep, inverted-Y-shaped glacial lake beneath the southern Alps, ringed by steep wooded mountains, cliff-clinging villages, and centuries of grand lakeside villas.

Lake Europe

Lake Malawi

Malawi, Mozambique & Tanzania

A vast Rift Valley lake holding more fish species than any other lake on Earth — hundreds of brilliantly coloured cichlids found nowhere else, in water clear as glass.

Lake Africa

Lake Nakuru

Great Rift Valley, central Kenya

A shallow soda lake in Kenya's Rift Valley, famous for shimmering pink shorelines of flamingos and as a stronghold sanctuary for both black and white rhinos.

Lake Africa

Lake Titicaca

Peru–Bolivia border, Andes

The highest large navigable lake on Earth — a vast, luminous inland sea at 3,812 metres in the Andes, ringed by snow peaks and dotted with floating reed islands.

Lake Latin America

Lauterbrunnen Valley

Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

A glacier-carved Alpine valley walled by sheer cliffs down which seventy-two waterfalls pour — including the free-falling Staubbach and the thundering Trümmelbach inside the mountain.

Waterfall Europe

Lofoten Islands

Nordland, Arctic Norway

A chain of dramatic Arctic islands where jagged granite peaks rise straight from the sea above white beaches and red fishing villages — improbably mild for its latitude, and lit by the midnight sun and the northern lights.

Island Europe

Martvili Canyon

Samegrelo, western Georgia

A narrow limestone canyon in western Georgia where a turquoise river winds between sheer mossy walls, past small waterfalls — once the private bathing place of Georgian nobles.

Canyon Europe

Meteora

Thessaly, central Greece

A cluster of colossal, sheer rock pillars soaring from the plains of Thessaly — a surreal geological forest of stone towers, several capped by centuries-old monasteries built where the cliffs seem to touch the sky.

Rock formation Europe

Moalboal Sardine Run

Moalboal, Cebu, Central Visayas, Philippines

A vast resident school of sardines swirls in the shallows off Panagsama Beach on Cebu's west coast — a living silver tornado you can reach by swimming a few strokes from shore.

Marine sanctuary Southeast Asia

Mount Elbrus

Kabardino-Balkaria, Caucasus, Russia

The highest peak in Europe — a twin-coned dormant volcano wrapped in 22 glaciers, rising 5,642 metres above the Caucasus range.

Volcano Europe

Mount Etna

Sicily, Southern Italy

Europe's largest and most active volcano — a snow-capped, constantly rumbling giant looming over eastern Sicily, whose frequent eruptions have built astonishingly fertile slopes of vineyards and orchards.

Volcano Europe

Mount Kazbek & Gergeti

Kazbegi, Greater Caucasus, Georgia

A glacier-clad 5,000-metre volcano in the Greater Caucasus, above which a lone medieval church stands on a green ridge — one of the most iconic mountain scenes in the Caucasus.

Mountain Europe

Mount Kilimanjaro

Northern Tanzania

The highest mountain in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain on Earth — a snow-capped volcanic giant rising alone from the savanna to 5,895 metres, climbable without technical gear yet crowned with vanishing equatorial glaciers.

Mountain Africa

Mount Kinabalu

Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia

The highest peak in Southeast Asia's island world — a granite giant on Borneo, ringed by one of the richest concentrations of plant life on Earth, from giant Rafflesia flowers to carnivorous pitcher plants.

Mountain Southeast Asia

Mount Teide

Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

Spain's highest peak and the third-largest volcano on Earth measured from its base — a 3,715-metre cone rising from a vast caldera of frozen lava, often floating above a sea of cloud.

Volcano Europe

Nahanni & Virginia Falls

Northwest Territories, Canada

A remote subarctic wilderness of deep river canyons, hot springs, and Virginia Falls — a thundering cataract twice the height of Niagara — reachable only by float plane or canoe deep in Canada's north.

Waterfall North America

Ngorongoro Crater

Ngorongoro Highlands, Northern Tanzania

The world's largest intact volcanic caldera — a 20-kilometre-wide, 600-metre-deep collapsed crater that has become a natural amphitheatre teeming with one of the densest concentrations of large wildlife on Earth.

Volcano Africa

Niagara Falls

Ontario, Canada / New York, United States

Not the tallest falls, but among the most powerful on Earth — three waterfalls on the Niagara River between the Great Lakes, where a colossal volume of water plunges over a cliff in a permanent roar of mist.

Waterfall North America

Okavango Delta

Northern Botswana

A river that never reaches the sea — the Okavango spills into the Kalahari to form a vast, ever-shifting inland delta of channels, islands, and lagoons that draws Africa's great wildlife into the heart of a desert.

Wetland Africa

Pamukkale

Denizli Province, southwestern Turkey

The 'Cotton Castle' — a dazzling white hillside of terraced travertine pools formed by mineral-rich hot springs, where warm turquoise water spills over blindingly white stone terraces.

Hot spring Middle East

Picos de Europa

Asturias, Cantabria & León, northern Spain

A compact range of sheer limestone peaks rising to 2,600 metres barely 20 kilometres from the Atlantic — glacier-carved gorges, karst towers, and Spain's first national park.

Mountain Europe

Preikestolen

Rogaland, southwestern Norway

A sheer, flat-topped cliff jutting 604 metres straight above the Lysefjord — 'Pulpit Rock,' one of the most spectacular and vertiginous natural viewpoints in the world.

Rock formation Europe

Prometheus Cave

Imereti, near Kutaisi, western Georgia

A vast karst cave near Kutaisi, its huge chambers hung with stalactites and curtains of stone, explored on lit walkways and, in part, by boat along an underground river.

Cave Europe

Rainbow Mountain (Vinicunca)

Cusco Region, Peruvian Andes

A high Andean ridge striped in bands of red, gold, green, and turquoise — mineral-stained sediments laid bare at over 5,000 metres, one of the most colourful mountains on Earth.

Mountain Latin America

Ras Muhammad

Southern Sinai, Egypt

At the very tip of the Sinai Peninsula, a marine national park where sheer coral walls plunge into the Red Sea — one of the world's great diving and snorkelling destinations.

Marine sanctuary Africa

Redwood Forests

Northern California, USA

Cathedral groves of coast redwoods — the tallest living things on Earth — rising over 100 metres in cool, fog-fed forests along the northern California coast.

Forest North America

Rwenzori Mountains

Uganda–DR Congo border

The 'Mountains of the Moon' — Africa's highest range not born of volcanism, carrying equatorial glaciers above a surreal bog world of giant heathers and lobelias.

Mountain Africa

Santorini Caldera

Cyclades, Aegean Sea, Greece

A flooded volcanic crater ringed by 300-metre cliffs of banded ash and lava — the drowned remains of one of the largest eruptions in human history.

Volcano Europe

Saxon Switzerland

Saxony, eastern Germany

A labyrinth of free-standing sandstone towers, table mountains, and deep ravines above a bend in the River Elbe near Dresden — the birthplace of free climbing.

Rock formation Europe

Shiretoko

Hokkaido, northern Japan

A wild peninsula at the edge of Japan where drift ice arrives each winter — feeding an extraordinary food chain of brown bears, salmon, sea eagles, and whales.

Forest East Asia

Siargao & Sugba Lagoon

Surigao del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines

A tear-drop island of surf, palm forest, and mangrove — home to the famous Cloud 9 reef break, the glassy Sugba Lagoon, tidal rock pools, and one of the largest mangrove reserves in the country.

Island Southeast Asia

Sohoton Cove & Jellyfish Sanctuary

Bucas Grande, Surigao del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines

A hidden lagoon system on Bucas Grande Island, entered through a sea cave passable only at low tide, sheltering stingless jellyfish, karst-walled coves, and cliffs you can leap from into deep clear water.

Marine sanctuary Southeast Asia

Song-Köl

Naryn, central Kyrgyzstan

A vast alpine lake on a high Tian Shan plateau, ringed by summer pastures where nomadic herders raise their yurts — a serene, roadless world of grass, water, and sky at 3,000 metres.

Lake Central Asia

Tatra Mountains

Poland–Slovakia border

The highest range of the Carpathians — a compact alpine world of granite spires, glacial lakes, and deep valleys, home to bears, wolves, lynx, and the rare Tatra chamois.

Mountain Europe

The Asir Mountains

Asir Province, southwestern Saudi Arabia

A green, misty mountain range in Saudi Arabia's southwest — terraced highlands and juniper forests, cooled by monsoon cloud, that overturn every expectation of the desert kingdom.

Mountain Middle East

The Atacama Desert

Northern Chile

The driest nonpolar desert on Earth — a surreal high-altitude landscape of salt flats, sculpted dunes, geyser fields, and flamingo-dotted lagoons, under some of the clearest night skies anywhere.

Desert & dunes Latin America

The Azores

Azores archipelago, Atlantic Ocean

A remote archipelago of green volcanic islands rising from the mid-Atlantic — crater lakes, hot springs, hydrangea-lined roads, and some of the best whale watching on Earth.

Island Europe

The Black Forest

Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany

A vast range of dark, fir-cloaked hills in southwest Germany, cut by waterfalls and mirror lakes and giving rise to the Danube — the storybook forest of German legend.

Forest Europe

The Blue Grotto

Isle of Capri, Campania, Italy

A sea cave on the island of Capri where sunlight passing through an underwater opening fills the whole cavern with an unearthly, glowing electric-blue light.

Cave Europe

The Calanques

Between Marseille and Cassis, Provence, France

A string of steep white-limestone inlets on the Mediterranean coast near Marseille — hidden turquoise coves walled by sun-bleached cliffs, reached on foot or by boat.

Beach & coast Europe

The Gobi Desert

Southern Mongolia (and northern China)

A vast cold desert of gravel plains, singing sand dunes, and flaming red cliffs — a land of extremes where dinosaur fossils weather out of the rock and Bactrian camels cross the steppe.

Desert & dunes East Asia

The High Coast

Gulf of Bothnia, northeastern Sweden

A rugged Baltic coast of forested hills, cliffs, and islands that is still visibly rising out of the sea — the site of the greatest land uplift measured anywhere on Earth.

Beach & coast Europe

Tinuy-an Falls

Bislig, Surigao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines

A broad, multi-tiered curtain of water often called the 'Niagara of the Philippines' — up to 95 metres wide, spilling in white sheets through the rainforest of eastern Mindanao, frequently crowned by a midday rainbow.

Waterfall Southeast Asia

Trolltunga

Vestland, western Norway

The 'Troll's Tongue' — a thin slab of rock jutting horizontally into empty air some 700 metres above a fjord lake, at the end of one of Norway's most demanding day hikes.

Rock formation Europe

Verdon Gorge

Provence, southeastern France

Europe's most spectacular canyon — 25 kilometres of limestone walls plunging up to 700 metres to a river the colour of turquoise glass.

Canyon Europe

Yosemite Valley

Sierra Nevada, California, United States

A glacier-carved granite valley of sheer cliffs and thundering waterfalls in California's Sierra Nevada — home to the monoliths of El Capitan and Half Dome, and groves of giant sequoias, the largest trees on Earth.

Mountain North America

Þingvellir (Thingvellir)

Þingvellir National Park, Southwest Iceland

A rift valley where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are visibly pulling apart — a landscape of fissures, lava plains, and clear spring-fed water that is also the birthplace of Iceland's parliament.

Rock formation Europe