Italy
Val di Funes
Green valley floor rising to jagged Odle peaks, the view that defines the Dolomites.
The valley floor is so green it looks lit from below. Above it the Odle rise in a wall of grey teeth, sudden and jagged, as if the earth cracked open and forgot to close. No photograph of the little church against them prepares you for standing there.
Val di Funes runs quiet and pastoral beneath the Odle group, whose highest blade, the Sass Rigais, reaches 3,025 metres inside the Puez-Odle Nature Park. The lone churches of Santa Maddalena and San Giovanni in Ranui sit in open meadow with the peaks stacked behind them, compositions so complete they have become the signature image of the Dolomites. Most of the valley speaks German first, and its guesthouses keep wood-panelled Stuben warm for walkers. Paths run from pram-flat meadow lanes to the Adolf Munkel trail, which traverses directly beneath the rock walls.
Couple
Morning mist in the meadow, the traverse under the Odle, then strudel in a wood-panelled Stube: quiet and cinematic.
Family
Flat meadow lanes suit young legs, and the farm guesthouses keep animals that are half the holiday.
Solo
Dawn in the valley belongs to whoever gets up for it; the Adolf Munkel traverse fills what remains of it.
Friends
Base in a guesthouse and walk a different line each day, from valley floor to the foot of the walls.
- The Odle's serrated wall, topped by the 3,025-metre Sass Rigais, closes the valley's sky.
- The Puez-Odle Nature Park spreads over ten thousand hectares of protected mountain land.
- The meadow churches at Santa Maddalena and Ranui give the Dolomites their most repeated photograph.
- The Adolf Munkel trail traverses directly beneath the rock faces at around two thousand metres.
Apple strudel comes from the farm ovens with pastry stretched thin enough to read through.
In a wood-panelled Stube, speck is carved at the table and eaten off the board with rye.
Skardu
Pakistan
Sand dunes and glacial lakes sharing the same valley floor beneath Karakoram granite walls.
Aberdare National Park
Kenya
Mist-soaked moorlands and waterfalls above a forest where leopards pass treetop lodges at night.
Blyde River Canyon
South Africa
Green canyon walls fold around a blue reservoir beneath three round mountain heads.
Lamington National Park
Australia
Antarctic beech trunks rise through cloud forest where waterfalls vanish into green ravines.
Val d'Orcia
Italy
Cypress-lined roads through golden fields, the landscape Renaissance painters used as their backdrop.
Burano
Italy
Every house a different colour on a lagoon island where lacemakers still work by windows.
Favignana
Italy
A butterfly-shaped island of abandoned tuna traps and coves carved from pale stone quarries.
Procida
Italy
Pastel houses stacked above a fishing harbour that no car can reach.