6 essays tagged “wilderness”.
Ushuaia, Antarctica
Antarctica is the most genuinely empty continent on earth. The only realistic access is by ship across the Drake Passage from Ushuaia, Argentina. The 10-day cruise — penguins, ice, the Drake itself, the cold ocean — is one of the most distinctive trips available in modern travel.
December 30, 2024
Longyearbyen, Norway
Svalbard is the High Arctic — a Norwegian archipelago at 78° north, with more polar bears than people, a small settlement at Longyearbyen, and a coastline accessible only by sea. The Arctic in its more genuine form, with the difficulties that implies.
July 12, 2024
Hobart, Australia
Tasmania is Australia's island state, the size of Ireland, with one of the largest temperate-wilderness reserves on earth and a small population concentrated on the eastern coast. The walking, the food, and the genuine emptiness are the reasons to come.
April 15, 2024
Uyuni, Bolivia
The Salar de Uyuni is a 10,500-square-kilometre salt flat at 3,650 m altitude in southwest Bolivia. In dry season it is a hexagonally-cracked white plain extending to the horizon; in wet season, a thin layer of water turns it into the largest mirror on earth.
March 4, 2023
El Chaltén, Argentina / Chile
Patagonia is, at its heart, the experience of being very small in a very large landscape. The wind shapes everything. The granite spires rise on a planetary scale. The travel logistics are demanding. The reward is one of the last genuinely big-empty regions left on earth.
November 19, 2022
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Mongolia is, by population density, the emptiest country on earth. The steppe and the Gobi Desert stretch for thousands of kilometres of grassland and arid plain. The nomadic-herder culture, with its felt gers (yurts) and seasonal migrations, remains the country's defining cultural form.
August 15, 2022