10 dream holidays to give you an adrenaline rush – extreme skiing, a safari on foot, abseiling down the world’s highest waterfall
- If your appetite for adventure is as big as your pockets are deep, after months cooped up because of Covid-19, we have just the experiences for you
- How about eight days on camels through Oman’s Empty Quarter, two days abseiling down Venezuela’s Angel Falls, skiing down some volcanoes or to the South Pole?
Rest. Recharge. Relive past trips and maybe make a photo book of your travels. All good advice to fill time at home, but what about your next trip? When travel restrictions are lifted and the borders open, where will you go, and what kind of traveller will you become?
After an extended period of isolation many of us are going to want to do something active. Any of the following suggestions should get the blood pumping again.
1. Go e-mountain biking around Namibia
After a few months indoors even some of the most accomplished cyclists would need a little help when ascending sand dunes.
Cue electric mountain bikes, which on this 12-day tour from H&I Adventures is how you’d explore some of Namibia’s less travelled red dirt roads.
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2. Kayak one of northern Norway’s largest fiords
Starting in the town of Alesund, this five-hour adventure with 62ºNord tours includes a helicopter sightseeing trip with a local guide followed by a guided kayak around the majestic Hjorundfjord, one of Norway’s largest fiords.
Optional add-on adventures include an adrenaline-pumping deep-sea rafting safari to a seal colony and Runde Island, to see eagles and puffins.
3. Abseil Venezuela’s Angel Falls
Getting down the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall will not be easy, but first you have to climb the tabletop mountain of Auyan-tepui on a two-week, US$7,185 (flights not included) expedition to Venezuela with Secret Compass.
To get to the summit you and the team (a minimum of four and maximum of six people) will first undertake a trek through the Canaima National Park (made famous in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 book The Lost World). Abseiling down Angel Falls takes two days (including an overnight camp halfway down the falls) with more than 13 abseil pitches. Then you’ll do the return journey by dugout canoe.
4. A hiking holiday in Bhutan
It is offered by Health and Fitness Travel and costs US$3,823 for 10 days, although it’s worth bearing in mind Bhutan’s borders are currently closed and it’s unclear when they’ll reopen and hiking will resume.
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5. Zip-line into a luxury tented camp in Cambodia
What better way to start an outdoorsy – albeit luxury – stay than by zip-lining 400 metres over a forest canopy, a river and waterfalls into a tented camp? Then it’s straight to the appropriately named Landing Zone Bar for a welcome cocktail.
You might also like to pick up a piece from a just launched collaboration between Bensley and Australian fine jeweller Kate McCoy. The heirloom jewellery collection – named “Nature’s Treasury” – is based on the gemologist’s stay at Shinta Mani Wild and sales will help fund those rangers while business remains slow. As soon as there is international, unencumbered, no-quarantine, non-restrictive movement of leisure tourists, Shinta Mani Wild will reopen.
6. Surf and e-foil in Panama’s untouched marine playground
Isla Secas, 36km (20 miles) off the Pacific coast of Panama, is a playground for marine adventures. It’s home to beautiful beaches, one of the largest coral reefs in the region, two vast protected marine parks, and a combination of beach breaks, reef breaks and point breaks that make for a year-round surfers’ paradise, minus the crowds.
From the full-service luxury resort island (which costs US$1,500 per night, including flights from the mainland), which opened in December, 2018, you can surf, “fly” the coastline on an e-foil surfboard … and perhaps even catch sight of a migrating Humpback whale.
7. Ski four volcanoes in four days
Many skiers contend that Hokkaido, Japan, has the world’s best powder snow. It’s also got some of the world’s best off-piste powder touring and backcountry skiing.
8. Walk up to wildlife in the Masai Mara, Kenya
Safari jeeps are for wimps, and besides, you’ll have had enough time sitting by the time you get to the Masai Mara. So see one of the planet’s most iconic landscapes on foot with this five-night US$2,914, tour from Asilia Adventures.
Covering about 20km a day with armed guides, you’ll fly-camp, cook over a fire, eat under the stars … and constantly run the risk of chance meetings with elephant, buffalo, leopard and lion.
9. A walk on the wild side through Oman’s ‘Empty Quarter’
Made famous by desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger in his travelogue Arabian Sands (1959), the Rub’ al Khali – the Empty Quarter – is about as off the beaten track as you can get.
This trip (US$3,920) with IGO Adventures involves eight days with the local Dhofari tribe and a caravan of camels as you cross the Dhofar mountain range in southern Oman, under starlit skies and across the world’s highest dune.
You finish up at a unique beach eco-hotel resort on the Arabian Sea, before helping to clean up plastic pollution from remote beaches that are breeding grounds for giant turtles.
10. Ski to the South Pole
Before you consider skiing the last 60 nautical miles to the southernmost place on Earth, you should know that Adventure Life’s “Ski Last Degree” package with Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions starts at an eye-watering US$65,790.
For that, you get a return flight to Union Glacier – Antarctica’s only “resort” – another flight to the South Pole, and 11 days camping, skiing and support on the high polar plateau.
Spoiler alert: you do have to haul your own sledge. At the time of writing, the 2020-21 season departures are unconfirmed, so this one might be better to plan for the 2021-22 or 2022-23 seasons.
