Vietnam
Tram Chim National Park
Flooded grasslands stretching to the horizon, where Vietnam is coaxing its cranes home.
The Plain of Reeds runs flat to the skyline in every direction — no trees but the melaleuca groves, no buildings, just water, lotus and the sound of thousands of wings. Somewhere in that expanse is the space being kept for the Sarus crane, the world's tallest flying bird, whose return this wetland is working to earn.
Tram Chim National Park in Dong Thap Province protects the Plain of Reeds, a seasonally flooded grassland in the Mekong Delta and a Ramsar site of world importance, with more than 230 recorded bird species filling its lotus ponds and channels. The eastern Sarus crane — two metres of red-headed grace whose courtship dances once defined the park — all but vanished as the region's hydrology changed; a reintroduction programme is now under way, and the park manages its floods to rebuild the crane's dry-season feeding grounds. Boats cross the wetland from lotus to open water, best in first light, when the plain is all wingbeats and sky.
Family
Boat rides through lotus-filled wetland under an enormous sky — gentle, accessible wildlife spectacle, with every sighting the season's own gift.
Solo
A first-light boat into the Plain of Reeds, flat horizon in every direction and silence broken only by wingbeats — meditative birdwatching at its finest.
- More than 230 bird species fill a Ramsar-listed flooded grassland that runs flat to the horizon.
- The park is rebuilding the Sarus crane's feeding grounds — a reintroduction is under way.
- Dawn on the water is all wingbeats and light — the plain wakes in sound before colour.
- Lotus ponds and melaleuca groves break a horizon that belongs entirely to water and sky.
Grilled field eel done the Dong Thap way — the wetland's richest catch.
Lotus-seed sticky rice and lotus-stem salad — the plain's own harvest on one plate.
Azrou
Morocco
Cedar trunks swallow the road outside Azrou, where macaque families wait beside the picnic tables.
Ásbyrgi Canyon
Iceland
A vast horseshoe of skyscraper cliffs sheltering a birch forest that hums with birdsong.
Reserva Nacional Federico Albert (Chanco)
Chile
A planted forest tells how one town stopped the coastal dunes from swallowing its fields.
Forêt de Brocéliande
France
Moss-cloaked oaks and misty hollows where Arthurian legend clings to every twisted root.
Ly Son Island
Vietnam
A volcanic island quilted in garlic fields stretching toward basalt cliffs and the sea.
Trang An
Vietnam
Sampans paddled by foot through flooded caves beneath vertical limestone monoliths.
Ban Gioc
Vietnam
A multi-tiered waterfall thundering across an international border into jade-green pools.