Spin for somewhere to go, narrowed by continent, budget, month and the kind of trip you actually want.
Shortlist
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A random pick is a decision tool, not an oracle
Nobody actually books the first thing a generator spits out. What a spin is good for is the thing people are bad at on their own: noticing their own reaction. You get shown Tusheti and feel a small drop, you get shown Lisbon and feel nothing, you get shown the Ha Giang Loop and open a second tab. That reaction is the output. The place is just the prompt.
So use the filters to fence off the trips you could genuinely take — the month you have off, the money you have, whether you want a city or a mountain — and then spin until something makes you open a tab.
The month filter is the one that matters
Continent and budget move the list around. The month filter is the one that saves a trip. Half the places here have a window of four or five months and are genuinely unpleasant outside it: the Pamir Highway is closed by snow, the Serengeti migration is not in the Serengeti, Kerala is under the monsoon, Petra is 40 degrees at noon. When a place is filtered out by your month, it is usually filtered out for a reason worth respecting.
Where a place shows a split window — March to May and October to November — those are the shoulder months, and they are almost always the right answer. Same weather as the peak, a third fewer people, and a room that costs what it should.
What the budget bands mean
The bands are one mid-range traveller, per day, on the ground: a bed, food, local transport and the odd ticket. Flights are not in them, because a flight is a function of where you live and there is no honest way to average it. Under $60 is a place where a private room and eating out is normal. Sixty to $130 is most of Europe, Japan and the mainstream Latin America circuit. Above $130 is Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, safari, and small islands that fly everything in.
These are estimates compiled in September 2026 from a working knowledge of each place, not scraped prices. They are there to sort a list, not to build a budget. Check real numbers before you book anything.
Why the list is not only capital cities
Capitals are the least interesting answer. Everyone already knows Paris exists. The value of a generator is the place you would not have typed into a search box — Lahij, Chapada Diamantina, the Bieszczady, Lençóis Maranhenses.
Regions beat pins. Several entries are a region rather than a town — Svaneti, Kakheti, the Peloponnese — because that is the unit you actually travel in for a week.
The Caucasus is properly covered. This site is run out of Armenia, so Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan get nineteen entries between them instead of the usual one. If you spin and get Goris, that is not a bug.
What this list is and is not
It is a hand-compiled list of real places with a real reason attached to each, written in September 2026. It is not exhaustive, it is not ranked, and it reflects one set of tastes — it leans toward mountains, small towns and places where you eat well for very little. There is no entry for anywhere currently subject to a serious travel advisory, which is a deliberate omission rather than a judgement that everywhere else is safe. Check your own government's advice before you commit to anything.
Questions people ask
How many destinations are in the list?
Just under 270, across six continents, hand-written rather than scraped. Each one carries a country, a continent, the months it is best in, a rough daily budget band and the kinds of trip it suits, which is what the filters run against.
Are the budget numbers accurate?
They are bands, not prices, and they are a judgement call. They describe one mid-range traveller per day on the ground — bed, food, local transport — with flights excluded. They were compiled in September 2026 and they will drift. Use them to sort the list, then check real prices.
Why does a place I know well not show up in my month?
Because the months listed are the ones where the weather and the season line up, not the only months the place is open. Iceland in January is a real trip; it is not the trip this list is describing. Set the month filter to "any month" if you would rather judge that yourself.
Does the shortlist save if I close the tab?
No. The shortlist lives in the page while it is open and is gone when you close it — nothing is stored and nothing is uploaded. Use the copy button to keep it. If you want something that persists, the travel bucket list tracker on this site saves to your browser.
Can I use these descriptions on my own site?
They are written for this page, so copying them onto yours gives you a duplicate of a page that already exists — which is the opposite of what you want. Take the place names as prompts and write your own line about each.
EuropeAsiaAfricaNorth AmericaSouth AmericaOceaniaCity breakHikingBeachRoad tripCultureOff the beaten trackUnder $60 a day$60 to $130 a day$130 a day and upBest monthsDaily budgetGood forSpinningAdd to shortlistAddedNothing here yet. Spin, and add the ones you would actually book.RemoveCopy shortlistCopiedNothing matches all four filters. Loosen one — it is almost always the month doing it.{n} places match your filters.One place matches your filters. Loosen a filter to see more.Budget bands are a rough guide for one mid-range traveller — bed, food and local transport, flights excluded. Compiled September 2026. Check real prices before you book.Already on your shortlist.places shortlistedLisbon|Portugal|Seven hills, tiled facades and the cheapest good food in western Europe, with an Atlantic beach half an hour out on the train.Porto|Portugal|A working river city that never sanded itself smooth, with port lodges on one bank and the best bookshop argument in Europe on the other.Madeira|Portugal|Walk the levada channels through cloud forest in the morning and swim in a volcanic rock pool in the afternoon, in February.The Azores|Portugal|Nine green volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic with crater lakes, whales offshore and almost nobody on the trails.Seville|Spain|Orange trees, a cathedral the size of a district, and a city that genuinely does not start dinner before ten.Granada|Spain|The Alhambra is the reason you book, and the free tapas with every drink is the reason you stay a week.San Sebastian|Spain|A perfect city beach and a pintxos bar every eight metres, in a town that treats eating as its main civic activity.Picos de Europa|Spain|Limestone walls an hour from the north coast, blue cheese aged in caves, and a cable car that drops you straight into high alpine terrain.La Palma|Spain|The steepest island in the Canaries: a volcanic ridge walk above the clouds, and one of the darkest night skies in Europe.Mallorca|Spain|Ignore the resort strip. The Serra de Tramuntana is a mountain road with stone villages, cycling and coves you reach on foot.Paris|France|Obvious and still right. Go in the shoulder months, stay in an arrondissement with a market, and walk instead of ticking things off.Corsica|France|Granite mountains falling into a turquoise sea, the hardest long-distance trail in Europe, and food that is neither French nor Italian.Chamonix|France|The valley under Mont Blanc, where a cable car puts a non-climber on a glacier balcony before breakfast.Provence|France|Hill villages, Roman ruins, and markets where the produce is the point. A car turns it from a town into a region.Brittany|France|Granite coast, tidal islands, crepes and cider, and a Celtic identity that has nothing to do with the France in the brochure.Rome|Italy|A city where two thousand years are stacked in the same block. Go in November, when the queues shrink and the light is better.Puglia|Italy|The heel of the boot: whitewashed towns, olive groves, two coastlines and the best cheap pasta in the country.The Dolomites|Italy|Vertical pale rock over green meadows, a hut system that lets you walk for a week carrying almost nothing, and Austrian food in Italy.Sicily|Italy|Greek temples, an active volcano, Arab-Norman churches and street food, on an island that needs three weeks and gets given four days.Matera|Italy|A city carved into a ravine and lived in continuously for nine thousand years, abandoned in shame in the 1950s and now impossible to forget.Sardinia|Italy|Caribbean-grade water with a bronze-age interior behind it, and shepherd food that has no interest in tourists.Naples|Italy|Loud, unpolished, and the best-value great city in Europe, with Pompeii and the Amalfi coast on the local train line.Florence|Italy|Small enough to walk across in an hour, dense enough to spend a week in. Book the Uffizi ahead or do not bother.The Soca Valley|Slovenia|A river the colour of antifreeze running through a gorge, with rafting, a first world war front line and Triglav above it.Ljubljana|Slovenia|A capital the size of a market town, car-free in the middle, with the Alps and the Adriatic both under two hours away.Istria|Croatia|Venetian hill towns, truffles, olive oil and a coast that has the Italian scenery without the Italian bill.Kotor|Montenegro|A walled town at the head of a fjord-shaped bay, with a fortress climb that earns the view rather than handing it over.Durmitor|Montenegro|Glacial lakes, the deepest canyon in Europe, and a plateau where you can walk all day and meet shepherds rather than crowds.Theth and Valbona|Albania|Two remote valleys in the Accursed Mountains joined by a pass you walk in a day. Guesthouses, raki and no road worth the name.The Albanian Riviera|Albania|The Ionian coast that Greece and Italy have, twenty years ago and a third of the price, with a mountain pass down to it.Ohrid|North Macedonia|A three-million-year-old lake with a Byzantine town on its shore, swimmable water and churches that predate almost everything nearby.Sarajevo|Bosnia and Herzegovina|An Ottoman bazaar, an Austro-Hungarian high street and a siege still legible in the walls, all within ten minutes on foot.Mostar|Bosnia and Herzegovina|The bridge is the postcard. The reason to stay is the Neretva valley around it, and the dervish house at the spring at Blagaj.Belgrade|Serbia|A confluence city with the best nightlife in the region and a fortress that has been fought over more times than anywhere else in Europe.Transylvania|Romania|Fortified Saxon villages, the Carpathians behind them, brown bears in the forest, and a road over the mountains built by a dictator.Maramures|Romania|Wooden churches with needle spires, horse carts still doing actual work, and a hand-scythed hay landscape that has largely gone elsewhere.The Rila Mountains|Bulgaria|Seven glacial lakes in a staircase, a painted monastery in a gorge, and hut-to-hut walking for the price of a sandwich.Plovdiv|Bulgaria|A Roman theatre still used for concerts, an Ottoman old town on a hill, and a craft district that is not trying too hard.Athens|Greece|The Acropolis in the morning, a rooftop in the evening, and a food scene that got much better the decade nobody was watching.Naxos|Greece|The Cyclades without the Santorini bill: a real island with farms, a marble quarry, mountain villages and a beach for every wind direction.Crete|Greece|Big enough to be its own country. Gorges, a Minoan palace, a south coast reached by boat, and the diet everyone writes books about.Meteora|Greece|Monasteries on top of sandstone pillars. Go early, walk the monks paths between them, and skip the coach route entirely.The Peloponnese|Greece|Mycenae, Olympia, Byzantine ghost towns and empty beaches, joined by a week of driving that never gets boring.Istanbul|Turkiye|Two continents, a strait full of ferries, and a city that rewards aimlessness more than any itinerary you could write.Cappadocia|Turkiye|Rock valleys full of carved churches and underground cities. The balloons are the photo; the valley walks are the trip.The Lycian Way|Turkiye|Five hundred kilometres of coastal path past ruins nobody guards, with pensions and swimming at the end of most days.Budapest|Hungary|Thermal baths in the middle of a grand, slightly shabby imperial capital, split by a river with a good side and a better side.Krakow|Poland|The largest medieval square in Europe, a salt mine you walk down into, and Auschwitz ninety minutes away for the day you owe it.The Bieszczady|Poland|Bald grassy summits in the far south-east corner, wolves and bison in the forest, and almost no foreign visitors at all.Gdansk|Poland|A reconstructed Hanseatic waterfront, the place the second world war started, and a long Baltic beach on the tram line.Prague|Czechia|Get up at six and the old town is yours. Stay out past eleven and it belongs to the stag parties. Both are true.Bohemian Switzerland|Czechia|Sandstone arches and gorges on the German border, an hour from Prague and a different world from it.Vienna|Austria|Museums, coffee houses that expect you to linger, and the best public transport of any city on this list.The Salzkammergut|Austria|Lakes the colour of glass under limestone peaks, a salt mine older than most countries, and a village so photogenic it was cloned in China.The High Tatras|Slovakia|Proper alpine terrain in a range you can cross in three days, with mountain huts, and prices from a different decade.Berlin|Germany|The one big European capital that is still cheap, still unfinished and still argues with itself in public. Go for the city, not the sights.Saxon Switzerland|Germany|A sandstone labyrinth of towers and ladders above the Elbe, with a bridge across a chasm that is worth the early start.The Black Forest|Germany|Dark conifer ridges, cuckoo clocks made unironically, spa towns, and a driving road that sold a lot of cars.Amsterdam|Netherlands|Ride a bike, look at Vermeers, and get out to the polder or the dunes for a day so the city is not just the centre.Bruges|Belgium|A medieval town preserved because it went broke at the right moment. Stay the night, when the day trippers have all gone.Copenhagen|Denmark|Design, cycling and harbour swimming in a city that made itself pleasant on purpose, and charges accordingly.Bornholm|Denmark|A granite island in the Baltic with round churches, smokehouses, a real food culture and a beach that runs for miles.Stockholm|Sweden|A capital on fourteen islands with an archipelago of thirty thousand more behind it, all reachable by public ferry.Abisko|Sweden|Above the Arctic Circle: the Kungsleden trail in summer, and one of the most reliable places on earth to see the aurora in winter.Gotland|Sweden|A walled Hanseatic town, limestone sea stacks, and the closest thing Sweden has to a Mediterranean island.Lofoten|Norway|Granite spikes rising straight out of the sea, fishing villages on stilts, and a midnight sun that removes any reason to sleep.The Norwegian fjords|Norway|Ferries, hairpin roads and waterfalls on a scale that makes photographs useless. Expensive, and worth it once.Tromso|Norway|A university town inside the aurora zone, with whales offshore in winter and a cable car for the view of all of it.Finnish Lakeland|Finland|Thousands of lakes, a rented cabin, a wood-fired sauna and a rowing boat. That is the entire itinerary and it is enough.Tallinn|Estonia|A genuinely intact medieval core, a serious design and tech scene behind it, and a ferry to Helsinki for the day.Riga|Latvia|The densest art nouveau district in Europe, a market in five zeppelin hangars, and a pine-forest beach twenty minutes away.The Curonian Spit|Lithuania|A ninety-kilometre sand bar between a lagoon and the Baltic, with migrating dunes and villages of painted wooden houses.The Isle of Skye|United Kingdom|Basalt pinnacles, sea cliffs and a ridge for people who know what they are doing. Book a bed before you go, not after.The North Coast 500|United Kingdom|Five hundred miles around the top of Scotland: single-track roads, empty beaches, distilleries and midges.Edinburgh|United Kingdom|A volcanic hill in the middle of a city, an old town of closes and stairs, and a festival in August that doubles the population.Cornwall|United Kingdom|Granite cliffs, surf beaches, a coast path that runs the whole way round, and a sub-tropical garden or two.Eryri|United Kingdom|Snowdonia, in Welsh. Slate, sheep, and a mountain range that punches far above its height in weather and atmosphere.The Lake District|United Kingdom|England compressed into a corner: sixteen lakes, its highest ground, and the walking culture that started here.London|United Kingdom|The free museums alone justify the flight. Pick two neighbourhoods and live in them rather than crossing the city all day.The Wild Atlantic Way|Ireland|Twenty-five hundred kilometres of west coast: cliffs, peninsulas, islands, and a pub with music in most towns.Connemara|Ireland|Quartzite mountains, blanket bog, a fjord, and the strongest surviving Irish-speaking region in the country.The Faroe Islands|Faroe Islands|Eighteen islands of grass-topped basalt in the north Atlantic, with tunnels under the sea and weather that changes hourly.Iceland's Ring Road|Iceland|Waterfalls, glaciers, black beaches and a lagoon of icebergs, on one loop that takes ten days done properly.The Westfjords|Iceland|The part of Iceland the ring road misses: a puffin cliff at the edge of Europe, hot pots and roads that test a rental car.The Bernese Oberland|Switzerland|The Eiger, the Jungfrau and a valley of waterfalls, joined by trains that arrive exactly when they say they will.Zermatt|Switzerland|A car-free village under the most recognisable mountain in the Alps, with high trails in summer and snow into spring.Dubrovnik|Croatia|Walk the walls at opening time. By ten the cruise ships have landed and the old town becomes a queue with a view.Vilnius|Lithuania|A baroque old town with a self-declared artists republic inside it, and prices that have not yet caught up with the quality.Yerevan|Armenia|Pink tuff buildings, a cafe culture that runs past midnight, and Ararat closing off the end of half the streets.Dilijan|Armenia|Beech forest, a monastery in the trees, and a hill town that gets called Armenian Switzerland by people who have been to both.Tatev|Armenia|A ninth-century monastery on a cliff edge, reached by the longest reversible cable car in the world over a gorge.Lake Sevan|Armenia|One of the largest high-altitude lakes anywhere, with a peninsula monastery, grilled fish and swimming at two thousand metres.Gyumri|Armenia|Armenia s second city: black tuff streets, a rebuilt centre that still shows the 1988 earthquake, and a dry, stubborn sense of humour.Areni and Vayots Dzor|Armenia|The cave with the oldest known winery on earth, a working wine road beside it, and a canyon road up to Jermuk.Jermuk|Armenia|A Soviet spa town at two thousand metres with a waterfall, mineral springs you drink from a gallery, and long walks in larch forest.Goris and Khndzoresk|Armenia|A grid-planned town under rock cones, and a cave village across a swing bridge that people lived in until the 1950s.Tbilisi|Georgia|Sulphur baths under brick domes, wooden balconies falling off old houses, and a wine culture eight thousand years deep.Kazbegi|Georgia|A church on a spur under a five-thousand-metre volcano, at the end of the military highway through the Greater Caucasus.Svaneti|Georgia|Defensive tower houses under glaciers, a four-day walk from Mestia to Ushguli, and a mountain culture that kept its own language.Tusheti|Georgia|Reached by one of the most alarming roads in the world, open three months a year, and worth every minute of the drive.Kakheti|Georgia|The wine region: qvevri buried in the ground, long tables, a toastmaster who will not let you leave, and monasteries between vineyards.Batumi|Georgia|A Black Sea resort with strange architecture, a pebble beach, and botanical gardens on the hill above the city.Kutaisi|Georgia|A budget-flight airport with a real city attached: two UNESCO cathedrals, canyons, caves and a market worth an hour.Vardzia|Georgia|A cave monastery of six hundred rooms dug thirteen storeys into a cliff in the twelfth century, and still partly in use.Baku|Azerbaijan|A walled medieval core, oil-boom mansions and flame-shaped towers, on a peninsula of mud volcanoes and burning hillsides.Sheki|Azerbaijan|A silk-road town under the Caucasus with a khan s palace of stained glass assembled without nails or glue.Lahij|Azerbaijan|A cobbled mountain village of coppersmiths where the trade is still practised in the street rather than performed for coaches.Tokyo|Japan|Thirteen cities pretending to be one. Pick three neighbourhoods, use the trains, and eat wherever there is a queue of locals.Kyoto|Japan|Sixteen hundred temples and an etiquette to match. Go at dawn or in November, and walk the eastern hills rather than the bus routes.Kamikochi|Japan|A closed valley in the Northern Alps, no private cars, clear rivers under three-thousand-metre peaks, and huts along the trail.Okinawa|Japan|Coral islands with their own kingdom, language and diet, closer to Taipei than to Tokyo and nothing like either.Hokkaido|Japan|Volcanoes, lavender fields and crab in summer; the driest powder snow on the planet in January.Seoul|South Korea|Palaces next to hardware markets, mountains inside the city limits, and a food scene that runs twenty-four hours.Jeju|South Korea|A volcanic island with a crater to climb, lava tubes underneath, a coastal trail all the way round, and women who free-dive for a living.Taipei|Taiwan|Night markets, hot springs at the end of the metro, and mountains visible from the middle of the city.Taroko Gorge|Taiwan|Marble walls a kilometre deep with a road cut into them, temples on ledges, and trails that are properly exposed.Hong Kong|Hong Kong|A dense vertical city where seventy per cent of the land is country park, with trails and beaches thirty minutes from the towers.Hanoi|Vietnam|A thousand-year-old capital with a lake in the middle, coffee with egg in it, and the best street food in south-east Asia.The Ha Giang Loop|Vietnam|Three or four days of limestone karst on the Chinese border, on a motorbike or behind a driver, past villages of a dozen ethnic groups.Hoi An|Vietnam|A preserved trading port of lanterns and tailors, with a beach and rice paddies in cycling distance of the old town.Phong Nha|Vietnam|The biggest cave passages on earth, a national park of jungle and karst, and a village that has stayed small on purpose.Luang Prabang|Laos|Monks collecting alms at dawn between French colonial shopfronts, at the meeting of two rivers, in a valley of low mountains.Bangkok|Thailand|Temples, river boats, malls with ice rinks and a street food culture that survived every attempt to clean it up.Chiang Mai|Thailand|A moated old city of temples with mountains behind it, cooking schools, and a rhythm slower than anywhere south of it.Koh Lanta|Thailand|A long, quiet Andaman island with west-facing beaches, old-town stilt houses and none of the full-moon circuit.Siem Reap|Cambodia|Angkor is the largest religious structure ever built, and the outer temples with trees through them are the ones you remember.Kampot|Cambodia|A sleepy riverside town of shuttered shophouses, pepper farms, a hill station in the clouds and nothing you must do.Bali|Indonesia|Busy where it is famous and empty forty minutes away. The interior — rice terraces, water temples, volcanoes — is the real island.Flores and Komodo|Indonesia|Dragons on one island, three coloured crater lakes on another, and diving in between that ranks with anywhere on earth.Lake Toba|Indonesia|The caldera of a supervolcano, with an island the size of Singapore inside it and a Batak culture unlike the rest of Indonesia.Sabah|Malaysia|Orangutans, the highest peak in south-east Asia, and reef islands, all reachable from one city in Borneo.Penang|Malaysia|A UNESCO shophouse town where Chinese, Malay and Indian food have been competing on the same street for two centuries.Singapore|Singapore|Expensive to sleep in, cheap to eat in. Hawker centres, a botanic garden, and the best stopover in Asia.Palawan|Philippines|Limestone islands out of the water in a lagoon-filled bay, and an underground river you take a boat into.Siargao|Philippines|A teardrop island of coconut palms, a reef break that made its name, and rock pools that fill at high tide.Kathmandu|Nepal|Three medieval royal cities in one valley, stupas the size of hills, and the staging post for everything above it.The Annapurna Circuit|Nepal|Two weeks from subtropical valleys to a pass at five and a half thousand metres, sleeping in teahouses the whole way.Ladakh|India|High-altitude desert of monasteries and prayer flags between the Himalaya and the Karakoram, open only in summer.Kerala|India|Backwater houseboats, tea plantations in the hills, Kathakali theatre, and the best vegetarian food in the country.Rajasthan|India|Desert forts, painted cities and step wells, on a circuit that is well-trodden precisely because it delivers.Meghalaya|India|The wettest place on earth, with bridges grown from living fig roots over gorges and caves nobody has finished mapping.Rishikesh|India|Where the Ganges leaves the mountains: ashrams, white water, and a bridge full of cows above a valley of pilgrims.Sri Lanka's hill country|Sri Lanka|Tea estates, a train ride through them that deserves its reputation, and a sunrise climb up Adam's Peak.Galle|Sri Lanka|A Dutch-walled fort town on a promontory, with ramparts you walk at sunset and beaches either side of it.The Maldives|Maldives|The guesthouse islands changed this place: you can now stay on a local island for a tenth of the resort price and dive the same reefs.Bhutan|Bhutan|A daily fee keeps numbers low. What you get is fortress monasteries, a cliff temple, and valleys with no advertising in them.Samarkand|Uzbekistan|Timurid tilework on a scale that does not photograph: a square of three madrasas that is the reason people come to central Asia.Bukhara and Khiva|Uzbekistan|Two intact silk road cities, one still lived in and one a walled museum, three hours apart on a fast train.Song-Kol|Kyrgyzstan|A lake at three thousand metres reached on horseback, with yurt camps, no road worth the name and an enormous sky.Almaty|Kazakhstan|A leafy city with four-thousand-metre peaks at the end of the bus route, and a canyon a few hours east that looks like Utah.The Pamir Highway|Tajikistan|The second-highest road in the world, along the Afghan border, over passes at four and a half thousand metres.The Gobi|Mongolia|Singing sand dunes, flaming cliffs full of dinosaur eggs, and a week of driving between ger camps with nothing else in between.Petra|Jordan|Walk in through the siq at seven, before the coaches, and keep going past the treasury — the monastery is an hour up and half as busy.Wadi Rum|Jordan|Sandstone towers out of red sand, Nabatean inscriptions, and a night in a Bedouin camp with no light pollution at all.Muscat and the Wahiba Sands|Oman|A capital with no skyscrapers, wadis you swim in, a fjord coast to the north and dunes two hours inland.Dubai|United Arab Emirates|Best treated as a long stopover: the creek and the old souks in the morning, the desert in the afternoon, and skip the rest.Busan|South Korea|A port city built up a mountainside, with the biggest fish market in the country and a temple on the rocks above the sea.Marrakech|Morocco|A medina that is a genuine maze, a square that changes function three times a day, and the Atlas visible from the roof terraces.The High Atlas|Morocco|Mule tracks between Berber villages up to the highest peak in north Africa, two hours from Marrakech.Chefchaouen|Morocco|A blue-painted town in the Rif mountains, small enough to learn in a day and pleasant enough to stay three.Essaouira|Morocco|A windy Atlantic fort town of gulls and blue boats, with kitesurfing, a fish grill on the port and no hassle.Fes|Morocco|The oldest continuously functioning university in the world, a tannery that has not changed in nine hundred years, and nine thousand alleys.Merzouga|Morocco|Where the road runs out and the Erg Chebbi dunes start: a camel out, a camp, and a sky nobody is ready for.Tunis and Sidi Bou Said|Tunisia|Carthage on the suburban train, a blue and white clifftop village, and one of the great medinas with almost no queue.Cairo and Giza|Egypt|The pyramids are on the edge of a city of twenty million, which is the part nobody tells you. The new museum is worth a full day.Luxor|Egypt|More of ancient Egypt in one town than anywhere else: Karnak on the east bank, the Valley of the Kings on the west.Dahab|Egypt|A former Bedouin fishing village on the Sinai coast where the reef starts at the beach and nobody is in a hurry.Siwa Oasis|Egypt|Ten hours from Cairo near the Libyan border: salt lakes, a mud-brick fortress, palm groves and its own Berber language.Lalibela|Ethiopia|Eleven churches cut downwards out of solid rock in the twelfth century, still in daily use by the people who inherited them.The Simien Mountains|Ethiopia|An escarpment of eroded towers with gelada troops on the edge of it, walkable hut to hut at three to four thousand metres.Zanzibar|Tanzania|A Swahili stone town of carved doors and spice history, with sandbar beaches and dhow sailing on the east coast.The Serengeti|Tanzania|The migration is two million animals moving in a circle, and where it is depends entirely on the month you go.Kilimanjaro|Tanzania|The highest walk-up mountain on earth: no ropes, five climate zones in six days, and altitude that ends most attempts.The Masai Mara|Kenya|The northern end of the same ecosystem as the Serengeti, at its most dramatic when the herds cross the Mara river.Lamu|Kenya|A Swahili island with no cars, donkeys doing the carrying, and a fourteenth-century town that has never stopped being lived in.Volcanoes National Park|Rwanda|An hour with a mountain gorilla family, on a permit that costs more than the flight and funds the reason they still exist.Bwindi|Uganda|Gorilla tracking through genuinely impenetrable forest, at roughly half the Rwandan permit price and twice the walk.Victoria Falls|Zambia|A mile-wide curtain of water. In April it is deafening and invisible in spray; in September you can swim on the lip of it.Cape Town|South Africa|A flat-topped mountain in the middle of a city, penguins on one beach, vineyards behind it, and a cold, honest ocean.The Garden Route|South Africa|Seven hundred kilometres of coast, forest and lagoon between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, easy to drive and hard to rush.The Drakensberg|South Africa|Basalt amphitheatres three kilometres high, San rock paintings under overhangs, and a border pass into Lesotho.Sossusvlei|Namibia|Orange dunes three hundred metres high around a white clay pan of dead camelthorn trees. Be there for first light or not at all.The Okavango Delta|Botswana|A river that never reaches the sea, spreading into a wetland the size of a small country, explored from a dugout canoe.Madagascar|Madagascar|Ninety per cent of the wildlife exists nowhere else, the roads are terrible, and both of those facts are the trip.Cape Verde|Cabo Verde|Ten volcanic islands off west Africa with reliable trade winds, serious hiking on Santo Antao and music everywhere else.Cape Coast|Ghana|Slave forts on the Atlantic that every visitor should stand inside, and a rainforest canopy walkway an hour inland.Dakar|Senegal|A peninsula city of music, wrestling and Atlantic surf, with Goree island offshore and the Sahel starting behind it.Reunion|Reunion|An active volcano, three collapsed calderas reachable only on foot, and the most intense hiking on any island this size.Mauritius|Mauritius|Lagoon beaches on the outside, a mountainous sugar-and-tea interior nobody bothers with, and Creole food worth the trip.Seychelles|Seychelles|Granite boulders on white sand, which is the cliche, plus a guesthouse economy that has made it possible without a resort budget.New York City|United States|Walk one avenue from end to end and you will understand the place better than any list of attractions can teach you.New Orleans|United States|The one American city that feels like it belongs somewhere else: Creole food, brass bands, and a graveyard above ground.Utah's national parks|United States|Five parks in a loop of red rock — arches, hoodoos, slot canyons and a canyon you walk up a river to reach.The Grand Canyon|United States|The rim is a viewpoint. The trip is walking below it, where the scale finally stops being abstract.Yosemite|United States|Granite walls, waterfalls that peak in May, and high country above the valley that ninety per cent of visitors never see.The Pacific Coast Highway|United States|Big Sur, redwoods, sea otters and fog, on a road that is worth doing slowly and northbound for the pullouts.Denali|United States|One road, ninety miles, into a six-million-acre park with no trails, where the bus is the only way in and the animals are the point.Glacier National Park|United States|The Going-to-the-Sun road over the continental divide, grizzly country either side, and a short season that fills fast.Big Bend|United States|A Chihuahuan desert park on a bend in the Rio Grande, with mountains in the middle and some of the darkest sky in America.Chicago|United States|The best architecture in the country, seen from a boat on the river, with a lakefront that acts like a coastline.Kauai|United States|The oldest Hawaiian island: a canyon, a coast reachable only on foot or by boat, and rain that makes all of it green.Charleston|United States|Antebellum streets, low-country cooking, and a history the city has only recently started telling honestly.Banff and Jasper|Canada|Turquoise lakes under the Rockies, joined by the Icefields Parkway, which is a strong candidate for the best drive anywhere.Vancouver Island|Canada|Old-growth rainforest, storm watching in winter, a surf town on the west coast and orcas in the strait.Quebec City|Canada|The only walled city north of Mexico: French-speaking, absurdly pretty, and at its best under snow.Newfoundland|Canada|Fjords cut into a plateau, icebergs drifting past in June, and the oldest European settlement in the Americas.The Yukon|Canada|Gold-rush history, the Dempster highway to the Arctic Ocean, and a summer where the sun barely goes down.Mexico City|Mexico|Aztec ruins under a cathedral, the best museum in the Americas, and food from a street cart that outranks most restaurants.Oaxaca|Mexico|Seven moles, mezcal made in villages, Zapotec ruins on a levelled hilltop, and the most serious Day of the Dead in the country.The Yucatan|Mexico|Mayan cities in the jungle and cenotes to swim in between them. Stay inland and drive to the coast, not the other way round.Baja California Sur|Mexico|A desert peninsula between two seas, with grey whales in the lagoons and a gulf coast Cousteau called an aquarium.Chiapas|Mexico|Highland Maya towns, a canyon a kilometre deep, and Palenque in the jungle with howler monkeys in the canopy above it.Lake Atitlan|Guatemala|Three volcanoes around a crater lake, with a dozen Mayan villages on the shore, each with its own character and dress.Antigua|Guatemala|A colonial grid of ruined churches under a volcano that erupts on a schedule you can watch from a rooftop.Caye Caulker|Belize|The second-largest barrier reef in the world, a sand street, no cars, and a blue hole a boat ride away.The Osa Peninsula|Costa Rica|The most biologically intense place on the planet by some measures: tapirs, scarlet macaws and a park you walk into.Ometepe|Nicaragua|Two volcanoes joined by an isthmus in the middle of a freshwater lake, with petroglyphs and almost no development.Bocas del Toro|Panama|A Caribbean archipelago of wooden houses on stilts, mangroves, surf on the exposed side and calm water everywhere else.Havana|Cuba|Crumbling grandeur, live music that is not staged for anyone, and a country that is genuinely difficult to travel — plan for that.Puerto Rico|United States|A Spanish colonial old town, a rainforest with a waterfall, and a bioluminescent bay best on a moonless night.Torres del Paine|Chile|Three granite towers over a turquoise lake, on a circuit walked in four days or eight, in weather that does what it likes.The Atacama|Chile|The driest desert on earth: salt flats, geysers at dawn, flamingos and the clearest observing skies in the southern hemisphere.Chiloe|Chile|An island of wooden shingle churches, stilt houses and its own mythology, reached by ferry into fog most mornings.Valparaiso|Chile|A port of painted houses on forty-two hills, connected by Victorian funiculars and covered in the best street art in the Americas.El Chalten|Argentina|A village built for walking, with Fitz Roy at the end of the street and every trailhead within ten minutes of your bed.Bariloche|Argentina|Lakes and araucaria forest under Andean peaks, with chocolate shops, a circuit drive and ski slopes in August.Buenos Aires|Argentina|Parisian boulevards, a cemetery like a city, steak, tango that is not for tourists if you find the right hall, and late nights.Mendoza|Argentina|Malbec at the foot of Aconcagua, with bike-and-bodega days on the flat and a road up to four thousand metres behind it.Salta and Jujuy|Argentina|Coloured rock, cactus-covered gorges, Andean villages at three thousand metres and a salt flat on the Bolivian border.Iguazu Falls|Argentina|Two hundred and seventy-five waterfalls in a horseshoe of jungle. Stand on the Argentine walkways, look from the Brazilian side.Rio de Janeiro|Brazil|Granite peaks in the middle of a city, beaches with their own social codes, and a forest in the urban area.Salvador|Brazil|The capital of Afro-Brazilian culture: candomble, capoeira, a baroque old town on a cliff and a drum line most evenings.Lencois Maranhenses|Brazil|A desert of white dunes that fills with rainwater lagoons between June and September, and is empty sand the rest of the year.Chapada Diamantina|Brazil|A plateau of table mountains, waterfalls and caves with underground lakes, in a former diamond region gone quiet.The Pantanal|Brazil|The largest wetland on earth and by far the best place in South America to actually see a jaguar.Cusco|Peru|An Inca capital with a Spanish city built on its walls, at three and a half thousand metres. Give it two days before you walk anywhere.The Cordillera Blanca|Peru|The highest tropical mountain range in the world, with a turquoise lake day walk and a four-day circuit behind it.Arequipa and Colca|Peru|A white volcanic-stone city under three volcanoes, and a canyon twice the depth of the Grand Canyon with condors in it.Lima|Peru|Worth more than the night people give it: pre-Inca pyramids in the suburbs, a cliff-top run, and the best restaurants on the continent.The Uyuni salt flat|Bolivia|Ten thousand square kilometres of white hexagons. Dry from June, a perfect mirror after rain in January and February.La Paz|Bolivia|A city in a canyon at three and a half thousand metres, with cable cars as public transport and El Alto on the rim above it.Quito|Ecuador|The best-preserved colonial centre in the Americas, on the equator, with a volcano you can get up in a day behind it.The Galapagos|Ecuador|Animals that never learned to be afraid of people. Land-based island hopping costs a fraction of a cruise and sees most of it.Banos|Ecuador|A spa town at the mouth of the Amazon basin with waterfalls, hot springs, and an active volcano directly above it.Medellin|Colombia|A valley city of spring weather and cable cars into the hillside barrios, with coffee farms and a painted town nearby.Cartagena|Colombia|A walled Caribbean city of balconies and bougainvillea, hot at any hour, with islands an hour offshore.Tayrona|Colombia|Jungle running down to boulder-strewn Caribbean beaches, walked in from the gate, with the Sierra Nevada rising behind it.The Cocora Valley|Colombia|Sixty-metre wax palms on green ridges in the coffee region, walked as a muddy loop from a jeep stop.Montevideo|Uruguay|A low, calm capital with a long promenade, an old town of art deco, and a market that is essentially a room full of grills.Punta del Diablo|Uruguay|A fishing village turned low-key beach town on the Brazilian border, with dunes, a national park and no resorts.Sydney|Australia|A harbour that does most of the work, ocean pools cut into the rock, and a coast walk from Bondi that everyone should do once.Tasmania|Australia|Temperate rainforest, an alpine plateau, some of the cleanest air measured anywhere, and a very strange museum in Hobart.The Great Ocean Road|Australia|Limestone stacks, surf breaks, koalas in the roadside gums and a rainforest section that most day trips skip.Kakadu|Australia|Twenty thousand years of rock art under escarpments, wetlands full of birds and crocodiles, and a dry season that defines the trip.Ningaloo Reef|Australia|A fringing reef you swim to from the beach, with whale sharks between March and July and no crowd at all.Uluru|Australia|Not a rock to climb but a place to walk around, at the base, at dawn, listening to what the traditional owners actually say about it.Byron Bay|Australia|The easternmost point of the mainland: a lighthouse walk, dolphins in the bay, and a hinterland of volcanic ridges behind.Melbourne|Australia|Laneways, coffee taken seriously, a gallery and sport culture, and four seasons in any given afternoon.Queenstown|New Zealand|The adventure capital, which is true and also sells it short: the Remarkables, a lake, and trailheads in every direction.Fiordland|New Zealand|Sheer walls dropping into black water, seven metres of rain a year making the waterfalls, and the Milford track through it.Abel Tasman|New Zealand|Golden beaches and clear water joined by a coast track you can walk one way and kayak back along.The Coromandel|New Zealand|A peninsula of pohutukawa trees, a beach where you dig your own hot pool at low tide, and a cathedral-shaped sea cave.Rotorua|New Zealand|Geysers, mud pools and a sulphur smell you stop noticing, in the centre of Maori cultural life on the North Island.Wellington|New Zealand|A compact harbour capital of wooden houses on hills, a national museum worth a day, and reliably serious wind.Fiji|Fiji|Three hundred islands: the Yasawas for beaches and backpacker boats, the highlands of Viti Levu for the part nobody photographs.Samoa|Samoa|Beach fales you sleep in with the sides open, waterfalls into swimming holes, and a village culture still organised around chiefs.Vanuatu|Vanuatu|Eighty islands, a volcano you stand on the rim of at night, blue holes in the jungle, and a wreck dive off the beach.Moorea|French Polynesia|A green cathedral of a mountain over two bays, with rays in the lagoon and none of Bora Bora s pricing.Rarotonga|Cook Islands|One circular island you can cycle round in a morning, with a cross-island track over the middle and a lagoon all the way round.