Trekking / Hiking in April

Acatenango is the trek people come to Guatemala for, and the reason is the volcano next door. You climb through farmland, cloud forest and finally bare volcanic sand to a high camp around 3,600 meters, and from there you look across a saddle at Volcan de Fuego, one of the most active volcanoes in the Americas. Fuego erupts every twenty minutes or so, day and night, throwing ash and glowing rock above its crater, and after dark the camp watches the orange bursts against the sky. The summit push starts before dawn on the second day for sunrise from 3,976 meters, with the whole chain of highland volcanoes floating above the cloud. It is a hard two days at altitude and in the cold, but the payoff, a live eruption seen from a facing ridge, is rare anywhere on earth.

The Annapurna Circuit crosses Thorong La at 5,416m on its way from subtropical river valleys to the Tibetan-plateau edge of Mustang, the greatest ecological transect in trekking. Honesty requires the modern framing: road construction has touched much of the original route, and the road-free heart is now the high section around the pass, Manang to Muktinath, joined by the waymarked NATT trails that restore mostly road-free walking for those who choose them. Framed that way, a ten-to-fourteen-day NATT-plus-Thorong-La trek remains world class, cheaper and more accessible than Khumbu, with no flight required and teahouses the whole way. The pass day, 1,000 meters up and 1,600 down at altitude, is the exam.

The climb to Blue Mountain Peak is Jamaica's classic hike and one of the best sunrise walks in the Caribbean. The summit stands at 2,256 meters, the highest point on the island, inside the UNESCO-listed Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park. The route runs about 11 to 14 kilometers each way from the trailhead above Penlyne Castle, climbing through cloud forest thick with tree ferns, wild coffee and endemic birds, with a notoriously steep pitch known as Jacob's Ladder near the top. Most walkers do it in the dark, leaving the lodges around one or two in the morning to reach the peak by dawn, when on a clear day you can see across the whole island and, some mornings, all the way to Cuba before the cloud closes in. The tradition is to overnight at a rustic mountain lodge such as Whitfield Hall the evening before, then push for the summit in the small hours. It is a demanding walk of roughly six to eight hours up, but no technical skill is needed, only fitness, a headtorch and a guide.

Boquete is the trailhead for the two best walks in Panama. Volcan Baru, at 3,474 meters the highest point in the country, is a hard overnight ascent: hikers usually set out around midnight and climb through the night up a rough vehicle track to stand on the crater rim at dawn, when on a clear morning you can see both the Pacific and the Caribbean at once, a rare thing to do on foot. The gentler and arguably more beautiful option is the Sendero Los Quetzales, a cloud-forest trail through Volcan Baru National Park that links Boquete with the village of Cerro Punta. It runs along old paths beside a rushing river through moss-hung forest, and from February to May it is one of the most reliable places on earth to see the resplendent quetzal, the emerald bird with the meter-long tail feathers that the ancient Maya prized above gold. Between the two you have a big-summit challenge and a world-class birding walk within a short drive of the same town, both best tackled with a local guide who knows the weather, the transport logistics between trailheads and where the quetzals are nesting.

Brownsberg is the rainforest you can actually walk into without a week-long expedition, a wooded mountain plateau at around 500 meters that puts Suriname's jungle within a half-day of the capital. The draw is a network of forest trails on foot, threading down through the canopy to three waterfalls, the Leo, the Irene and the Koemboe on the Witi creek, where the reward for a sweaty descent is a swim in a cold forest pool. From the Mazaroni plateau the forest opens onto a long view over the Brokopondo Reservoir, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, its drowned treetops still breaking the surface. The park sits on old gold-mining ground and the birdlife and monkeys are close and loud: eight primate species live here, from howlers to capuchins, alongside toucans, trogons and hundreds of other birds. Trails range from short loops to full-day walks that take in all three falls for those with the legs and an early start. Managed by the conservation foundation STINASU, Brownsberg is the honest introduction to the interior, a place to learn the forest on your feet before committing to the deeper reserves.

The Cardamoms are the largest unbroken rainforest left in mainland Southeast Asia, and trekking here funds the fight to keep it standing. This is proper jungle walking, through dense forest to hidden waterfalls, river crossings and post-Angkorian burial-jar sites, with the chance of hornbills, gibbons and, for the lucky, sign of elephant. Two models sit side by side. At Chi Phat, a village of former loggers and poachers turned guides runs multi-day treks, mountain-bike rides and river kayaking from a community base, with nights in homestays or forest hammock camps. Deeper in, a small tented camp inside a national park lets you trek with a naturalist and shadow the Wildlife Alliance rangers who patrol the trails. Either way the walking is remote, humid and genuinely wild.

Cerro Negro is a short, sharp hike with a payoff you cannot get anywhere else. The cone is the youngest volcano in Central America, born in an 1850 eruption and still active, and its slopes are loose black ash with no vegetation. You carry a board up a 45-minute to one-hour walk to the rim, taking in the raw Maribios volcano chain and the plain toward Leon, then sit or stand on a reinforced sled and slide straight down the ash face. Volcano boarding was invented here in the 2000s and remains a rite of passage on the Central American backpacker trail, with riders clocking speeds well past 50 kilometers an hour on the steepest line. The walk is manageable for anyone with reasonable fitness, and the descent takes seconds, which is the whole absurd charm of it.

Dragon's Back is the hike that proves you can leave a city of seven million and be walking a wild coastal ridge inside half an hour. The trail runs the spine of a low mountain range at the southeast tip of Hong Kong Island, rising and falling in a series of humps that give it its name, with the surf-lined bays of Shek O and Tai Long Wan on one side and the wooded slopes of Shek O Country Park on the other. Time Magazine named it Asia's best urban hike, and the reason is the contrast: paragliders launch off Shek O Peak, the skyline of the island floats in the haze behind you, and the walk ends on the sand at Big Wave Bay where surfers ride the swell. It is a manageable half-day on a clear path, roughly four to eight kilometers depending on where you start and finish, with steady climbs rather than any scrambling, so it suits fit first-timers as much as regular walkers. The forest sections give shade, the ridge gives the views, and public transport drops you at both ends, which is why locals treat it as the default weekend escape. The cooler, drier months from October to April are the time to go, when the humidity drops and the visibility opens up.

The Edge of the World, properly Jebel Fihrayn, is the best day hike within reach of Riyadh. A wall of the Tuwaiq escarpment ends abruptly here, dropping some 300 meters to a plain that runs flat to the horizon, which is where the nickname comes from. The walk up to the rim is short and manageable, but the reward is outsized, a sheer cliff edge with nothing beyond it and, below, the traces of an old caravan route that carried trade toward the Gulf. Most people come for sunset, when the low light turns the limestone orange and the plain goes to shadow, or for sunrise and a quieter rim. Reaching the trailhead means an hour and a half of desert track, so it is a place you visit with a guide who knows the route and the rock rather than alone.

El Yunque is the only tropical rainforest managed by the US Forest Service, and it packs a huge range of walking into a compact, accessible massif just an hour east of San Juan. Warm rain falls almost daily on the Sierra de Luquillo, feeding rivers, natural swimming pools and waterfalls like La Mina and La Coca, and cloaking the higher slopes in dwarf cloud forest. Trails run from paved fifteen-minute strolls to the exhaust of your legs on the climb to El Yunque Peak at over 1,000 meters, where the vegetation shrinks to wind-stunted palms and the views open over the coast on a clear morning. The forest is loud with the two-note call of the coqui, the tiny frog that is Puerto Rico's unofficial mascot, and it is one of the last strongholds of the critically endangered Puerto Rican parrot. Guided walks, especially after dark, turn a wet green blur into a legible ecosystem, and a permit system now manages the busiest northern trailheads.

The Fouta Djallon is one of West Africa's great walking landscapes, a cool green highland of sandstone plateaus that break away in cliffs and gorges and pour off the edge in waterfalls. This is the water tower of the region, the source of the Niger, the Senegal and the Gambia, and its terraced hillsides are farmed by Fula herders and villagers whose way of life gives the trekking its character. Trails link village to village across the plateau around Labe, Dalaba and Pita, past the falls of the three cascades, through gallery forest and along escarpment rims with long views over the highlands. You walk between guesthouses and family compounds, sharing meals and paths with the people who live here, in a form of slow community trekking that has become the country's signature journey. The climate is mild by West African standards, the birdlife is rich, and the sense of a place still largely outside mass tourism is complete. For a traveler who wants real village-to-village walking in a corner of Africa few reach, the Fouta Djallon is the reason to come to Guinea.

Glendalough packs a great deal of Ireland into one glaciated valley an hour from Dublin. At the valley floor sit the ruins of a monastic city founded in the sixth century by St Kevin, its round tower and churches strung along the river, and above them a network of waymarked trails climbs through oak forest to the two lakes, the old Miners' Village and the ridge known as the Spinc. From the tops you look down the length of the valley to the lakes, with the boglands of Wicklow rolling away beyond. It is also the honeypot access point for the Wicklow Way, the long-distance trail that runs the spine of the mountains, so a day here can be a gentle lakeside loop or a lung-stretching climb, and a base for longer walking. The combination of accessible mountains, ancient ruins and proximity to the capital is why this is the walk most visitors to Dublin should make time for.

Grand Etang is the undisputed heart of hiking in Grenada, a cool, misty rainforest in the mountainous spine of the island a half-hour above the coastal heat. From the visitor center by the crater lake, the classic walk drops through forest of giant bamboo and heliconia to the Seven Sisters Falls, also called St. Margaret's Falls, a chain of cascades with pools you can swim in, reached on a muddy 40 to 45 minute descent. The tougher Mount Qua Qua trail follows the ridgeline for about three kilometers each way through cloud forest to a summit with views across the island to the sea, and the most committed carry on toward Mount St. Catherine, Grenada's highest peak at 840 meters. Mona monkeys, introduced from Africa in the plantation era, come down to the roadside, and armadillo, opossum and dozens of bird species live in the reserve. Grenada's hiking is guided by real characters, among them Telfor Bedeau, who has walked these hills for more than fifty years, so a local guide is as much storyteller as route-finder.

Ometepe is one of the great volcano treks in Central America, two very different climbs on a single island in the largest lake between the Great Lakes and Titicaca. Concepcion is the harder, taller line: a roughly ten-hour round trip that starts before dawn, opens onto huge lake views, then turns steep and loose near the active summit where cold wind and scree test your nerve. Maderas is the greener, more forested option, an eight-hour climb from Balgue up through farmland and cloud forest, past pre-Columbian petroglyphs, to a crater lagoon inside the summit, with howler monkeys and parrots along the way. A local guide is mandatory on both, which is a good thing, because the trails are muddy, unmarked in places and seriously steep. For hikers who want a real objective rather than a viewpoint stroll, Ometepe delivers two.

La Soufriere is the roof of Saint Vincent and one of the more dramatic day hikes in the Caribbean, a climb up an active volcano that last erupted explosively in April 2021. The classic windward route starts in old banana lands on the Atlantic side and climbs through thick rainforest onto the exposed upper cone, ending on the rim of a huge crater that still steams and has reshaped itself with each eruption. It is a real trek, long and steep, rewarded with a view down into the caldera and out over the island and the sea. Because the volcano is active and the summit weather turns fast, a licensed guide is required, and a good one reads the mountain, the recent eruption history and the forest along the way. For hikers who want more than a beach, this is the standout land adventure of the islands.

The Main Ridge Forest Reserve is the oldest protected forest in the western hemisphere, gazetted by the British in 1776 after planters argued that clearing the hills was drying up the rains, an early act of conservation that has left Tobago with a mature tropical rainforest running the length of its northern ridge. Walking it is the island's best land experience. The famous route is the Gilpin Trace, a muddy path that drops off the ridge road into deep forest of buttressed trees, tree ferns, bromeliads and hanging vines, threaded with streams and small waterfalls. The reward is the wildlife: this is one of the Caribbean's finest birding forests, with jacamars, motmots, trogons and six kinds of hummingbird, including the near-threatened white-tailed sabrewing that survives only here and in a corner of Venezuela. You go with a local guide both because the reserve requires it and because the good guides read the forest by ear, calling in birds that you would otherwise walk straight past. A half-day walk is enough to feel how different this green, misty interior is from Tobago's beaches.

Malolotja is the best walking country in Eswatini and one of the finest stretches of montane wilderness in southern Africa. This is high-veld at its wildest: rolling grassland cut by the Komati and Nkomati gorges, quartzite ridges that are among the oldest rock on earth, and the kingdom's tallest waterfall dropping through the Malolotja gorge. The reserve is unfenced, so you share the trails with zebra, blesbok, wildebeest and the odd leopard, and it holds over 280 bird species including breeding blue swallow and bald ibis. You can day-walk to the falls or take a two-, three- or four-night slackpacking trail sleeping in wilderness camps, carrying only a daypack while your kit moves ahead. For a shorter thrill there is the Malolotja canopy tour, a series of ziplines and a suspension bridge above the Majolomba river. It is quiet, cheap and remote, a rarity this close to a capital city.

Middle Caicos is where the flat, beachy Turks and Caicos turns rugged and wild. The island's north shore rises into limestone cliffs cut with blowholes, sea caves and hidden coves, and the Crossing Place Trail runs along it for miles, retracing the old footpath islanders once used to cross between settlements. The walk links Mudjin Harbour, a cliff-ringed beach that is one of the most striking spots in the country, to secret beaches and rolling green headlands, with the open Atlantic crashing below. Inland lies Conch Bar Caves, the largest cave system in the Turks and Caicos and one of the largest in the region, a mile and a half of dark passages hung with stalactites and columns, home to four species of bat and tidal pools, once mined for bat guano and used by the Lucayans before that. A national park managed by the National Trust, the caves can only be entered with a guide. Between the cliff trail and the caves, Middle Caicos offers the country's best walking and a rare, quiet look at its natural and human history, far from the resorts of Provo.

The Mullerthal Trail is the finest walking in Luxembourg and one of the best short-distance trails in the Low Countries. Its 112 kilometers wind through the Mullerthal, the region long called Little Switzerland, past sandstone cliffs split into narrow passages, ferned gorges, waterfalls such as the Schiessentumpel, and beech woods that close over the path. The trail is built as three connecting routes plus five ExtraTours, so you can walk a single day loop out of Echternach or Berdorf or link the whole network across several days. In early 2014 it earned the Leading Quality Trails - Best of Europe label from the European Ramblers Association, a mark held by only a handful of trails on the continent and awarded for waymarking, natural scenery and the balance of forest, rock and village. The rock is the real draw: Luxembourg sandstone weathered into corridors, overhangs and stairways you climb through rather than merely walk past.

The Nuratau Mountains rise between the Kyzylkum desert and the road east, a quiet range of dry ridges and hidden green valleys that offers the best village trekking in Uzbekistan. This is walking at human scale rather than high-altitude effort: shepherds' paths link the mountain villages of Sentob, Hayat, Asraf and Uhum, past walnut and apricot orchards, spring-fed streams and the occasional petroglyph, with the desert haze always on the horizon. The draw is the community-based tourism network built here, where you sleep in family homestays, eat what the household cooks and walk from village to village with local guides, so the trip supports the people whose land it crosses. A 72-kilometer trail strings the villages together, and shorter loops suit anyone who wants a day or two on foot between the Silk Road cities.

Nyanga is the green, mist-cooled counterpoint to Zimbabwe's lowveld safari country, a highland of montane grassland, trout streams and afromontane forest that rises to Mount Nyangani, at 2,592 meters the highest peak in the land. Trekking here runs from a two-hour scramble to the Nyangani summit to multi-day traverses linking the park's waterfalls and gorges, including the 762-meter Mutarazi Falls, the second-highest in Africa. The signature route is the Turaco Trail, a three-to-five-night guided hike that climbs Nyangani and drops into the Pungwe Gorge along wild rivers and through forest loud with samango monkeys and Livingstone's turaco. It is walking country in a big-game nation, at altitudes that stay comfortable when the rest of Zimbabwe bakes.

Pico Duarte is the roof of the Caribbean, a 3,087-meter summit that surprises people who think of the Dominican Republic as only beaches. The standard climb leaves from La Cienaga near Jarabacoa, a two-day walk up through pine forest to the high camp at Comparticion, then a pre-dawn push to the summit for sunrise above the clouds. The Cordillera Central is cool and green, with river crossings, ferns and the burnt-pine paramo near the top, and nights at altitude drop below freezing. Park rules require a licensed local guide and mules carry the gear, so this is a supported trek rather than a solo scramble. Longer routes add the Tetero Valley or link the neighboring peaks of La Pelona and La Rusilla.

The Qadisha Valley is Lebanon's finest walking country and the clearest place to see the mountains that gave the country its cedars. A deep gorge cut below the town of Bsharri, it has sheltered Christian monastic communities for well over a thousand years, and the trail down its floor and along its terraces links rock-cut monasteries and hermitages such as Deir Mar Lichaa and Qannoubine, many still tended, with the river running beneath. Above the valley head stands the Cedars of God, one of the last old groves of the Lebanon cedar at around 1,900 meters, some of the trees many centuries old. The whole valley and grove are a UNESCO World Heritage site, and long-distance walkers pick up sections of the Lebanon Mountain Trail here. Bsharri itself, birthplace of the writer Kahlil Gibran, makes the natural base. Whether you drop into the gorge for a day or link villages over several, this is deep mountain and monastic Lebanon on foot.

Santa Ana Volcano, or Ilamatepec, is the classic day hike of El Salvador, a steep climb to the country's highest summit that rewards you with one of the more surreal crater views in Central America. The trail starts high in Los Volcanes National Park, near the Cerro Verde lookout, and climbs through cloud forest and open lava fields to the 2,381-meter rim in around ninety minutes to two hours. At the top the crater drops to a milky turquoise lake, its color set by dissolved sulfur and minerals, sometimes steaming and occasionally rumbling; this is an active volcano that last erupted in 2005. The panorama takes in the perfect cone of Izalco next door, forested Cerro Verde, and the wide blue circle of Lake Coatepeque in its own collapsed caldera below. The hike itself is manageable for anyone with reasonable fitness, and national-park rules require a guide on the mountain, which keeps groups organized and safe on the exposed upper slopes.

Semuc Champey is one of those places that looks invented. In a fold of Alta Verapaz jungle, the Cahabon river disappears underground into a limestone cave, and over the top runs a 300-meter natural bridge holding a staircase of pools in every shade of turquoise and green. The classic day combines a short, steep hike up to the El Mirador viewpoint, where the whole ladder of pools opens up below the forest, with hours of swimming and pool-hopping down the terraces. Most people add the K'an Ba caves, a river cave explored on foot and by swimming with only a candle in hand, plus a rope swing and tubing on the river outside. It is remote and takes effort to reach, which is part of why the pools stay so clear and the crowds stay small.

The Gauja valley around Sigulda is the best walking in a country that is mostly flat. Over roughly an hour from Riga you reach a broad forested gorge where the river has exposed Devonian red-sandstone cliffs, and trails drop from the plateau to the water and climb the far side between three castles: the ruined Sigulda medieval castle, Krimulda across the valley, and Turaida with its restored red-brick tower. Along the way is Gutmanis Cave, the largest grotto in the Baltics, its walls carved with centuries of inscriptions. It is a day of caves, cliffs, cable-car and castle ruins rather than summits, walkable in every season, with the autumn color in the beech and oak forest as the reason many Latvians come.

Gros Piton is the great walk-up summit of the Caribbean, the larger of the two lava spires that make the Pitons a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the emblem of Saint Lucia. The trail starts at the village of Fond Gens Libre, named for the freed people and escaped slaves, the Brigands, who used the mountain as a stronghold in the 18th century, and every ascent goes with a local guide from the interpretive center at the base. The climb is about 798 meters of gain over roughly two hours up, easy at first around the mountain's skirt and then relentlessly steep on rooty, rocky steps through changing forest, from dry woodland to cloud-brushed summit scrub. The reward is a 360-degree view over Petit Piton, the town of Soufriere, the reefs of the marine park and, on a clear day, the neighboring island of Saint Vincent. It is a genuine challenge rather than a technical climb, no ropes or scrambling, and finishing it is the classic Saint Lucian achievement.

Bohemian Switzerland is the sandstone wilderness of the northwest, a national park of pillars, ravines and deep forest where the Elbe crosses from Germany. Its emblem is the Pravcicka Gate, the largest natural sandstone arch in Europe, a slender rock span high above the trees that featured in the film The Chronicles of Narnia. Below it the Kamenice river runs through the Edmund and Wild Gorges, where flat-bottomed boats are poled between mossy walls, and trails link viewpoints, table mountains and the twin park on the German side, Saxon Switzerland. A 2022 wildfire closed parts of the park and access around the Gate has changed since, so a local guide who knows the current trails and rules is useful. For a day or two of hiking among some of Europe's strangest rock scenery, this is the Czech classic.

Cerro Chirripo is Costa Rica's high point at 3,821 meters, and the trek to it is the country distilled: a 14-kilometer first day climbing from San Gerardo de Rivas's coffee farms through cloud forest into paramo, a night at the Crestones Base Camp hut system, and a pre-dawn push to a summit where, on the right morning, both the Caribbean and the Pacific sit in view at once. SINAC's permit cap keeps the trail quiet and sells out months ahead, which is exactly why the local guiding cooperatives matter: they hold permits, pack horses, and pre-trek lodging in the village. No altitude anywhere else in Central America's tourist circuit compares.

Dana to Petra is Region 6 of the 675km Jordan Trail and widely cited as the Middle East's finest multi-day walk: 72 to 80 kilometers over four to five days from the stone village above Dana Biosphere Reserve, Jordan's largest nature reserve, through Wadi Malaga and Little Petra, entering Petra itself through the back door. The route drops and climbs through sandstone canyons and Bedouin grazing country, camps are wild and supported, and the finish line is a World Heritage city you walk into rather than queue for. The Jordan Trail Association stewards the route and runs an annual guided spring thru-hike; the trail itself is free to walk.

The Amphitheater is a five-kilometer-wide, 1,200-meter basalt wall in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg UNESCO World Heritage Site, topped by Tugela Falls, recorded as the world's highest waterfall at 948 meters, and reached via the Sentinel route's famous chain ladders. The trekking here scales honestly: guided three-day Amphitheater slackpacking with twelve-to-fourteen-kilometer days at one end, and the six-day Northern Traverse, roughly eighty kilometers of escarpment walking from Mont-aux-Sources toward Cathedral Peak, at the other, led by guides registered with South Africa's mountain training trust. The escarpment rim walks along the top of a wall most countries would call a national monument; here it is the trail.

The Pinnacles are one of the most striking treks in Borneo and one of the hardest days most walkers will ever do. Gunung Mulu, UNESCO-listed for its caves and karst, hides on the flank of Mount Api a field of razor-sharp limestone spires up to 45 meters tall, rising straight out of the rainforest. Reaching them is a three-day, two-night trip: a river journey and jungle walk to Camp 5, then a brutal 2.4-kilometer ascent that gains around 1,200 meters up roots, rock and ladders, using fixed ropes and rungs near the top, before turning around at a viewpoint over the spires and climbing all the way back down. It is guided-only and seriously tough, for fit, sure-footed hikers with a head for heights. Mulu rewards the effort beyond the Pinnacles too: Deer Cave releases millions of bats in a spiralling exodus at dusk, Clearwater Cave is among the longest cave systems in the world, and the Sarawak Chamber is the largest known cave chamber on earth. Come for the Pinnacles, but leave days for the caves and the canopy.

Jebel Shams gives Oman its most spectacular walking. The mountain's rim drops sheer into Wadi Ghul, a canyon deep enough to earn the name the Grand Canyon of Arabia, and the classic hike, the Balcony Walk (route W6), threads a ledge partway down the cliff with the void falling away on one side the whole way. It is about four hours there and back over uneven rock, ending at the abandoned terraced village of Sab Bani Khamis tucked under an overhang, where a hidden pool still holds water. There is no summit scramble required and the exposure is manageable, so it suits fit walkers rather than technical mountaineers, yet the drops are real and the path is unfenced. Higher up, the plateau near the summit sits above 2,900 meters and can be bitterly cold, with the occasional dusting of frost in winter. Add village walks between old stone hamlets and terraced fields, and the mountain is a two- or three-day base rather than a single stop. It is best from October to April, when the heat down in the wadis has broken.

Jinshanling is the Great Wall hike serious walkers come for. Northeast of Beijing on the border with Hebei, it strings dozens of Ming watchtowers along a broken ridge, some restored, many crumbling, over roughly ten kilometers of steep brick and stone. Unlike the cable-car sections nearer the city, you walk here for hours with the wall mostly to yourself, dropping into saddles and climbing back to towers with long views over the folded hills. The classic longer outing links Gubeikou to Jinshanling and on toward Simatai West, a full day of ridge walking through some of the least touched wall left. Spring and autumn are the season: clear air, low sun on the towers, and none of the summer haze.

The Everest Base Camp trek is the definitive Himalayan teahouse walk: roughly 130km round trip over twelve to fourteen days, from the Lukla airstrip through Namche Bazaar and the Sherpa villages of the Khumbu to Base Camp at 5,364m and the Kala Patthar viewpoint at 5,644m, face to face with Everest, Lhotse, and Ama Dablam. The whole route lies inside Sagarmatha National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the lodge infrastructure has no equal anywhere at this altitude: you sleep in beds and eat dal bhat every night of a walk that tops out higher than any summit in western Europe. No technical skill is required; fitness and respect for acclimatization are the entire entry fee.

Masada is the great set-piece walk of the Judean Desert, and it pairs with the springs of Ein Gedi to make one of the finest desert hiking days in the country. The classic route climbs the Snake Path, a switchbacking trail up the eastern face of the mesa in around 45 minutes, timed to reach the summit as the sun lifts over the mountains of Jordan and floods the Dead Sea below. On top spread the ruins of Herod's first-century palace-fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where a Roman siege ended the Great Revolt in 73 CE and the earthworks of the besieging legion still ring the rock. A short drive north, the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve cuts green canyons of waterfalls and pools into the cliffs, where ibex and rock hyrax come down to drink and trails run from a short family loop to a demanding day. Add a float in the mineral-heavy Dead Sea, the lowest point of dry land on Earth, and you have desert, history and water in a single walk.

Makhtesh Ramon is the largest erosion crater on Earth, a 40-kilometer gash in the Negev highlands that is not a meteor or volcanic crater at all but a landform found almost only in this desert, carved as water stripped away a soft core and left a steep-walled amphitheater of colored rock. Trails drop from the rim town of Mitzpe Ramon into a floor of rainbow sandstone, volcanic dikes, ammonite fossils and the strange prisms of the Carpentry, and the Israel National Trail threads the length of it. Nubian ibex pick along the cliffs, and the crater sits inside one of the darkest reserves in the region, so a night in the makhtesh brings a sky thick with stars. This is desert walking at its most elemental, from a two-hour rim-to-floor descent to multi-day treks that link the crater to the springs of Ein Avdat and the Nabataean ruins along the ancient Incense Route. Spring brings brief desert blooms, and the light at dawn and dusk turns the walls gold and rust.

Morne Trois Pitons National Park is Dominica's hiking heart and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its prize is the trek to the Boiling Lake, the second-largest boiling lake in the world after New Zealand's Frying Pan Lake. The route is a full, hard day: from the village of Laudat you climb over the Morne Nicholls ridge, drop through the Valley of Desolation, a steaming moonscape of sulfur vents, hot streams and mineral-stained rock, and finish at the rim of a gray-blue cauldron 60 meters across that churns and boils where a flooded fumarole vents through the crater floor. It is one of the great walks of the Caribbean, and it links into the wider network here, the Middleham Falls trail, the Freshwater and Boeri crater lakes, and Segment 4 of the 115-mile Waitukubuli National Trail, the region's first long-distance path, which threads the park on its way up the island. The forest is dense, wet and loud with mountain whistlers and, if you are lucky, the endemic sisserou parrot. This is rainforest walking with real volcanic drama underfoot, not a stroll, and a certified guide is required on the Boiling Lake route.

Mount Liamuiga is the high point of Saint Kitts and the classic day hike of the northern Leeward Islands. The trail climbs off the old sugar-estate lands through dense tropical rainforest, then thinning cloud forest, up onto the rim of a volcanic crater that drops away into a green bowl often filled with mist and a seasonal pool. The name is Kalinago for fertile land, and the whole upper mountain sits inside the Central Forest Reserve, so the walk doubles as a slow read of the island's ecology, from strangler figs and vervet monkeys to the birdsong of the canopy. It is a real hike rather than a stroll, steep and often muddy underfoot, with the round trip taking the best part of a day. Guided walks start from the village of St Pauls, usually reached in an open safari truck, and a good guide turns the climb into the story of the forest, the volcano and the estates below.

Mount Roraima is one of the world's great treks and one of the strangest landscapes on the planet. From the savanna of the Gran Sabana the tepui rises as a two-kilometer wall of rock, and the only walkable way up is a natural rock ramp on the southwest face, the route the Pemon have always used. The standard trip is six days from the village of Paraitepui: two days across open grassland and river crossings to a base camp under the wall, a hard climb up the ramp into the cloud, and two days exploring a summit world of wind-carved black rock, crystal-strewn valleys, quartz pools and tiny endemic plants and frogs found nowhere else. Nights are cold and camps are basic, tucked into rock overhangs called hotels. A licensed guide is mandatory and independent trekking is not allowed, so you go with a Pemon crew who carry, cook and read the mountain's fast-changing weather. Few places reward the effort like this one, and almost no one is up there with you.

Pico Bonito is the great wall of rainforest behind La Ceiba, a national park that climbs from sea level to a 2,435-meter summit and stacks seven distinct life zones on the way up. Most people come to walk its lower and middle trails, which is where the park is at its best: forest paths that ladder up to lookout towers and to waterfalls like El Bejuco, tumbling through a canyon of primary jungle, with more than four hundred bird species overhead and howler monkeys, agoutis and the odd tapir track underfoot. Two very different sides give two experiences. The El Pino entrance on the west leads to birding-focused reserve trails; the Cangrejal valley on the east gives community-run rainforest walks straight off the river. The named summit itself is a serious multi-day expedition through untracked cloud forest that very few attempt, which keeps the peak wild and the day-hiker's forest quiet. This is jungle hiking with real biodiversity, a short drive from the coast.

Soomaa means land of bogs, and walking on those bogs is the signature Estonian hike. This national park of raised mires, flooded forest and four rivers is best crossed on bogshoes, wide frames that let you pad across the spongy sphagnum surface of mires thousands of years old and studded with dark pools. The park runs on five seasons rather than four: the fifth is the great spring flood, when snowmelt and rain lift the rivers by several meters and submerge the forests, and you swap boots for a canoe. Guided bogshoe walks and canoe trips both put you deep into a wilderness that feels far larger than Estonia's flat map suggests, with beavers, elk and cranes for company.

Surama is where you walk Guyana's interior with the people who know it best. The signature hike is the pre-dawn climb of Surama Mountain, a steep pull through rainforest to a ridge that opens over the savannah just as the sun breaks and the mist lifts off the Pakaraima foothills, with red howler monkeys calling and cock-of-the-rock possible on the way up. Beyond the mountain, trails run from the village across savannah and into gallery forest for a chance at giant anteater, brocket deer and hundreds of birds, and a walk to the Burro Burro river links to canoe floats where giant otters and tapir come down to drink. What sets it apart is that this is Guyana's first community-owned lodge: the Makushi villagers guide every trek, and their forest knowledge, from medicinal plants to animal sign, turns a hike into a lesson. It is walking as cultural immersion, low-impact and locally led.

Taman Negara is a walk through primary rainforest that predates the Amazon, a forest so old it survived the ice ages intact, and you feel that age the moment the canopy closes over the trail. Most trips run from Kuala Tahan, reached by a scenic riverboat up the Tembeling, and build from easy to serious. The gentle end is a climb up Bukit Teresek for a view over the forest and a walk out to one of the world's longer canopy walkways, a swaying series of rope bridges strung 40 meters up between giant trees. Night walks and river-hides give the best chance of the park's shy wildlife, from tapir and deer to, very rarely, signs of elephant and big cats, and a visit to a Batek Orang Asli camp shows how people have lived in this forest for millennia. At the hard end sits Gunung Tahan, a tough seven-day return trek to 2,187 meters for experienced, well-guided hikers only. It is humid, leech-prone and gloriously wild, the definitive rainforest trek of Peninsular Malaysia.

Troodos is where Cyprus goes vertical and green, and its nature trails are the best way to see it on foot. The signposted routes fan out around Chionistra, the summit of Mount Olympus at 1,952 meters, and each has its own character. The Artemis Trail circles the peak at around 1,800 meters through black pine and juniper with long views to both coasts, the Caledonia Trail drops along the Kryos Potamos stream to the island's highest waterfall, and the Atalante Trail starts from Troodos square and passes a drinkable mountain spring. The range is also a living museum: ten of its remote painted churches carry Byzantine frescoes protected as UNESCO World Heritage, and the lower villages are wine and orchard country. Spring brings endemic wildflowers found nowhere else on earth, autumn brings cool light and the grape harvest, and a local guide turns a walk into a reading of the geology, the plants and the mountain villages.

Ulu Temburong National Park protects a slice of primary Borneo rainforest that has never been logged, and Brunei keeps it that way by allowing access only through licensed operators and only by river. You reach it on a longboat ride up the shallow, rapid-strewn Temburong River, then climb a tall aluminium canopy walkway that lifts you around fifty meters up through the layers of the forest to look out over unbroken jungle and, at dawn, listen to gibbons and hornbills. Below, boardwalks and forest trails lead to a cool river plunge pool and, for the curious, a session standing still while tiger leeches and butterflies find you. Because entry is capped and guided, the forest stays quiet and intact, a rare thing in Borneo, and the trip doubles as a window into Iban and local Temburong life along the river.

The Overland Track is a 65km, six-day traverse from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair through the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, run under one of the world's most structured trekking permit systems: in the booked season walking is one-way north to south, capped at 34 independent departures a day, and the summer permits sell out within hours of their July release. The discipline is the point; the track never feels crowded, and side trips to Mount Ossa, Tasmania's highest point, and a string of waterfalls stretch the fit. Licensed operators run parallel guided models from full-pack camping treks to the only private-hut lodge walk on the track, which is as close as trekking gets to first class.

The Jomolhari trek is Bhutan's classic high walk, a route to the base of a 7,300 meter peak that Bhutanese revere as the abode of a protective goddess. From the road head above Paro the trail follows the Paro Chhu up through blue-pine and rhododendron forest to the yak-herder camps and army post at Jangothang, the base-camp meadow at around 4,000 meters, where the north face of Jomolhari rises straight ahead. Walkers spend a rest day here for acclimatisation and side hikes to glacial lakes and ridgelines with blue sheep and, higher up, the chance of a Himalayan griffon overhead. Longer versions cross high passes to Lingzhi and Laya. This is real mountain country, cold and thin-aired, and it stays quiet because Bhutan caps visitor numbers and everyone walks with a guided camp crew.

The Kokoda Track is the great walk of the South Pacific, a 96-kilometer single-file path across the Owen Stanley Range that carries as much history as it does hardship. In 1942 this was the front line of the Kokoda campaign, where Australian and Papua New Guinean forces fought the Japanese advance on Port Moresby in the mud and cloud forest, and the trek still moves between named battle sites, Isurava, Brigade Hill, Templeton's Crossing, with memorials along the way. It runs eight to ten days over a relentless series of ridges and river valleys, through villages that host trekkers and supply the porters who make the walk possible. A guide is effectively required, both for the terrain and because the villages along the route are on customary land. Most walkers come for the war history, the physical challenge, or the family connection to men who fought here, and finish at the Kokoda plateau under the same range they have just crossed.

The hike to Paro Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest, is the walk that defines Bhutan. The monastery clings to a granite cliff about 900 meters above the Paro valley floor, at roughly 3,120 meters, on the spot where Guru Rinpoche is said to have flown in on a tigress and meditated in the eighth century. The trail climbs through blue-pine forest hung with prayer flags to a teahouse viewpoint, then drops and climbs a final stone staircase across a waterfall to the monastery gate. It is a half-day out and back, four to six hours, steep but non-technical, and the payoff is one of the most photographed sights in the Himalaya. Because everything in Bhutan is guided, you walk with a licensed guide who can read the murals and shrines inside once you reach the top.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang is the world's greatest cave region, and the way in is on foot: multi-day jungle treks through UNESCO-listed karst where the campsites are inside the caves themselves, tents pitched on underground beaches beneath dolines that pour jungle light into caverns big enough to hold city blocks. Oxalis Adventure, the sole licensed operator for Son Doong, the largest cave passage on earth, also runs the more attainable Hang En and Tu Lan treks with a safety team trained by British cave experts; Jungle Boss runs licensed routes to Do Quyen waterfall and the Hang Pygmy system. This is expedition trekking where the destination happens to be underground, and nothing else in Southeast Asia resembles it.

Socotra is one of the most biologically isolated places on earth, an island cut off from the mainland for so long that about a third of its plant species grow nowhere else, which is why people call it the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean. The signature is the dragon blood tree, Dracaena cinnabari, a slow-growing umbrella of a tree that bleeds red sap and forms whole forests on the misty Diksam plateau and at Firmihin. Alongside it grow bulbous bottle trees and desert roses clinging to bare rock. The way to see it is on foot, over several days, walking the plateau and the wadis and sleeping in simple camps, with side trips to the white sand and turquoise of the Detwah lagoon near Qalansiyah, the limestone chambers of Hoq Cave, and the freshwater pools and frankincense of the Homhil reserve. There are almost no other tourists, the guiding is entirely local, and the landscape looks like nowhere else. It is a hard place to reach and a harder country to enter, but for its own sake Socotra is one of the most extraordinary trekking destinations anywhere.

Tsehlanyane is the most accessible good walking country in Lesotho, a national park in the northern Maloti with a proper network of marked trails rather than the open cross-country navigation the highlands usually demand. From the valley floor on the Hlotse River, routes range from the gentle Lower Trail to the Black Pool, an easy riverside walk, up to the demanding 16-kilometer Circular Route that climbs above 2,600 meters for long views over the Maluti range and down onto the che-che bush, one of the last indigenous woodlands left in a country that is otherwise almost treeless. The park is quiet, the air is thin and clean, and you share the paths with little more than the odd herd boy and his dogs. Most walkers base themselves at Maliba Lodge, Lesotho's only five-star mountain ecolodge, which sits at the trailheads and provides local guides who know the routes and can arrange the same trails on horseback. It is an easier, greener introduction to the Mountain Kingdom than the abseils and passes elsewhere, and a good base for multi-day walks deeper into the range.