This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
At the frontiers of our planet and the fringes of our imagination, off-grid luxury travel encourages us to test our physical, psychological and spiritual limits while maintaining all the hallmarks of a premium experience. It’s a format that attracts the most seasoned travellers who are looking to get more out of their trips. And it’s an accelerating trend: according to Booking.com’s 2024 travel predictions, 56% of us are looking to venture off the beaten path this year and 52% of us are willing to book a trip where the destination remains a mystery until the moment we arrive.
Those with an appetite for adventure search for new ways to test their grit, while others seek out opportunities to surrender to culture shock and embrace the unfamiliar. Some crave learning experiences — the chance to sharpen up on survival skills, hone a craft or be privy to ancient wisdom that can be carried back into their daily lives. Others are simply hungry to slow down, disconnect and rediscover the joy of the journey.
It could mean blazing entirely new trails or reimagining classic routes in unpredictable ways. Whether it’s an ephemeral experience such as a low-impact pop-up camp that’s here now and then gone in the blink of an eye or venturing to a remote location to encounter a way of life as old as the stars, these six trips all push the envelope.
1. Traverse Japan’s Kii Peninsula on foot
Kansai’s Kodō or ‘old ways’ — a meandering network of pathways that link sacred sites across the Kii Peninsula with the ancient cities of Nara and Kyoto — have been plied by pilgrims for more than 1,000 years. Today, the Kumano Kodō draws travellers who are looking to broaden their spiritual horizons while pushing their physical boundaries.
One of only two pilgrimage routes in the world to receive UNESCO World Heritage status (the other being the Camino de Santiago), the Kumano Kodō reflects the Shinto tradition of nature worship. Its seven marked trails cover some of the most secluded corners of Honshū island, from the dense camphor and cypress forests of the Kii Mountains to the windswept Pacific Coast. Shrines, temples and torii gates appear at every turn, each one intentionally placed near a tumbling waterfall or a meandering stream to encourage a moment of quiet contemplation.
Shinto shrines are dotted along the pilgrimage pathways of Japan’s ancient Kumano Kodō trail, traversing through cities of Nara and Kyoto.
Photograph by Connect Images, Awl Images
The Kumano Kodō is no walk in the park — designed to be a religious experience in itself, conditions on the trail can be arduous. The Kohechi Route bisects the Kii Peninsula from north to south, with 45 miles of isolated, vertiginous, zigzagging tracks. Favoured by the Japanese royal family, the more accessible Nakahechi Route traces earthen paths lined with traditional stone ishi-dōrō lanterns to the three Kumano Sanzan shrines: Hongu Taisha, Hayatama Taisha and Nachi Taisha.
How to do it: Walk Japan organises a nine-day Kumano Kodō pilgrimage from Osaka to Ise, staying in traditional inns and pilgrims’ lodgings along the way. Prices start at £2,200 per person based on two sharing.
2. Meet the Kalash tribe in Pakistan’s mountains
Pakistan sometimes makes the headlines for the wrong reasons, but venture here and intrepid travellers will be rewarded with vast mountain ranges, sprawling deserts and isolated communities who rarely encounter foreigners. Off-radar, remote and incredibly beautiful, this is a place for true adventuring, tuning into nature while learning local tales of the sultans and djinns still said to live in the country’s wild interior.
The Hindu Kush mountain range stretches for more than 2,000 miles and slices through eight countries, but some of its most spectacular scenery can be found in northern Pakistan. Left largely untouched by the ravages of Soviet occupation and Taliban conflicts, tribes like the 3,000 strong Kalash people inhabit landscapes of meandering mountain creeks and valleys ablaze with wildflowers, living a way of life largely unchanged for centuries. They believe everything on Earth possess a spirit, and travellers will be welcomed into their fold like family.
Elsewhere — and off-limits to visitors until only a few years ago — Pakistan’s Swat Valley has been likened to Switzerland, with its snow-capped peaks and rolling green pastures. Culturally, however, it’s world’s apart, with scatterings of Buddhist villages complete with ancient monasteries draped in prayer flags and surrounded by stupas.
How to do it: Wild Frontiers offers a 23-day Pakistan tour, taking in mountain communities and breathtaking scenery in the valleys of the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayas. Prices start from £5,725 per person, including guides, accommodation and transport. wildfrontierstravel.com
4. Venture to the World’s End on horseback
This sobriquet is no exaggeration: dangling off the edge of the map like a silver charm, Tierra del Fuego — an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, otherwise known as the ‘World’s End’ — really is the final frontier. It takes grit to venture beyond the port of Ushuaia, the departure point for cruises to the Antarctic, into the most physically demanding reaches of Patagonia.
Tierra del Fuego is Argentina’s southernmost park, home to a barren landscape teeming with ancient, geological features.
Photograph by Jan Miracky, Awl Images
Shared between Argentina and Chile, the name Tierra del Fuego was coined in 1520 by Ferdinand Magellan, who was hypnotised by the distant flames of the Indigenous Fuegian people’s camps he spied from his ship. Now largely uninhabited, this relentless landscape of ancient glaciers, barren tundra and rugged mountains is only occasionally broken by vegetation — winter’s bark and beech trees bent and contorted by the feverish winds that batter the ‘Land of Fire’.
Marked trails within the 243sq-mile Tierra del Fuego National Park deliver views of the Beagle Channel and the mineral-infused Laguna Esmeralda. But the real adventure begins where the park’s boundaries end. Best explored gaucho-style in the saddle, the combination of extended valleys and hills is a dream for keen equestrians, blending uninterrupted canters with the thrill of the downhill gallop. Wild guanacos share the trails and Andean condors spin overhead as travellers make their way from estancia (cattle ranches) to estancia.
How to do it: Black Saddle arranges horseback expeditions across the Argentinean Tierra del Fuego in partnership with Jakotango. Tours are lead by Marcos Villamil, who rode the length of Argentina before guiding in Patagonia for two years. Prices start from £3,780 per person.
3. Be a castaway in the Outer Hebrides
An arc of remote islands off the western coast of Scotland, the Outer Hebrides are one of Europe’s last virgin habitats. It’s a place where the rules of nature must be obeyed, and where some daring travellers come to push themselves both physically and mentally.
The Isle of Scalpay forms part of the Outer Hebrides, a collection of remote islands off Scotland’s western coast.
Photograph by Andrew Ray, Alamy
Each of the 70 islands has its own personality and geographical peculiarities, ranging from unspoilt mountains to moors and machair grasslands. Shell-sand beaches, skerries, sea lochs and sheltered harbours have been sculpted over millennia by the wild Atlantic waves. The islands that are populated offer thrill-seekers activities such as freediving and coasteering (a hybrid of swimming, traverse climbing and cliff jumping), and it’s possible to walk or cycle the Hebridean Way, a 200-mile cross-island track between Vatersay and Lewis.
Untamed islands such as Taransay — which has been free of permanent residents since 1974, and famously hosted the BBC’s Castaway 2000 reality show — offer a window into off-the-grid living and self-sufficiency. Modern-day castaways must conform to an existence dictated by the rhythms of the ocean, diving for scallops and foraging for mussels before cooking their meals over an open fire, and learning traditional Hebridean survival skills such as tanning fish skins and fashioning nets.
How to do it: Led by survival and outdoors experts, RVIVAL’s three packages, Wild Waters, Survive & Thrive and Taste the Wild, each focus on a different aspect of life in the Outer Hebrides, with accommodation in luxury bell tent camps. Prices start at £6,600 per person for a three-night experience.
6. Find solitude in the Mongolian taiga
In an interconnected world, true seclusion is a rare privilege. Landlocked Mongolia — where everyday life on the eternal steppe is a celebration of solitude — promises travellers a chance to unplug and unwind. Many plunge into the unforgiving deserts of the Gobi in search of silence, but few press on into the taiga in the far north.
Part of the Earth’s largest land biome, the boreal forest that spills over from Russia knows no borders. The seemingly impenetrable fortress of pine and larch trees stands sentry over moss-cloaked marshes, framed by the Khoridol Saridag Mountains, an eerie range of phosphorite peaks gilded with snow. The Mongolian taiga is remote in the purest sense of the word: the area is largely road-free, accessible only by horse (or on skis in the winter).
Located 560 miles northwest of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, Lake Khövsgöl is the ideal entry point into the taiga. Draped like a blue satin sheet over the tundra, the lake’s shore is where visitors cross paths with the Dukha or Tsaatan, semi-nomadic peoples who navigate across the vastness to herd their reindeer. The allure of stillness versus the urge to keep moving, the appeal of seclusion versus the impulse for human connection — the taiga brings these tensions to the surface. Those looking to immerse themselves in Dukha culture will be made to feel very welcome and taught the tribe’s generations-old practices around the likes of animal tracking and eagle hunting.
How to do it: Black Tomato Blink Camps — fully customised pop-up luxury camps — can be erected virtually anywhere in the world, including in the Mongolian taiga. Prices are available on request.
6. Sign up for a mystery safari in Africa’s Eden
While the idea of an African safari might be familiar, there are alternative ways to explore pockets of the Mother Continent that still remain relatively untouched. Mysterious and unexpected, Africa’s Eden, located around the Zambezi and Kavango River basins, channels the golden age of travel, when voyages were guided by blind curiosity, and is a holy grail for those prepared to take the ultimate leap of faith.
The exact location of this adventure remains a closely guarded secret, only unveiled as the journey unfolds. A common theme — water — threads its way through this diverse slice of the sub-Sahara. Activities that revolve around rivers, deltas and waterfalls prompt travellers to connect with this life-giving element like never before, and glean a new appreciation for the little things.
Ranging from romantic tented camps and boutique hotels to stylish safari lodges, Hidden Africa offers a range of luxury accomodation options.
Photograph by Secret Safari
Paddle across the world’s largest inland delta, the Okavango, on a mokoro canoe in search of hippos, lechwe and black rhinoceros. Raft on the croc-infested Zambezi River, and explore lush rainforests nourished by the mist from Victoria Falls. Trek across the Makgadikgadi Pan, a lunar-like salt plain the size of Denmark governed by a mob of meerkats; and in Hwange National Park, observe Africa’s largest population of elephants. Each location is reached by bush plane, with a series of luxury game lodges, treehouses and camps en route.
How to do it: The Secret Safari by Hidden Africa takes place once a year, with the 10-night itinerary changing with each iteration. Prices start from £19,290 per person, and the size of the group is capped at 12 participants to ensure an intimate experience. hiddenafrica.com
Published in the Luxury Collection 2024, distributed with the October 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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