Genuinely breathtaking: Huangshan, Malomorskaya, The Great Barrier Reef, The E6 Stokkedalsveien and arriving in The Maldives
5x5 There are lots of nice places to see in the world, but there are very few which really steal your breath. I hope there are many more for me to see, but here are five of my favourites.
1 Huangshan, the Yellow Mountain (Anshui province, China) The chatter of my fellow tourists died the moment our cable car broke through the clouds below the jagged peaks of the Yellow Mountain. We gasped almost as one to see the sun reflected from the Sea of Clouds as it flowed around the granite mountains. Despite the crowds shuffling impatiently along the narrow paths and stairways, the banality of people jostling for the same selfie to prove they’d been there, Huangshan delivered these moments again and again throughout the day.
2 Malomorskaya (Irkutsk oblast, Russia) The ferry port for Olkhon Island gave me my first sight of Lake Baikal, on a cold and unusually wet day (or so my guide said). It’s a good spot to take in the island and the lake, surrounded by forbidding Siberian mountains, with clear waters below when the ferry arrives for the short trip across the Olkhonskie Vorota strait. It’s even more sobering when you realise that this is the last stop on the mainland until Severobaykalsk, some 300km to the north, and that Olkhon Island was only detached from the mainland a few hundred years ago by an earthquake in this active rift valley.
3 The Great Barrier Reef (Queensland, Australia) Always keep breathing is a basic motto of scuba diving, but it’s kind of hard the first time you descend to Australia’s most famous reef and see the underwater colours of living coral pop out. Climate change may have dulled the reef’s beauty, but it’s still a remarkable experience to float among the towering corals as schools of fish swim around you, and your eyes gradually pick out more and more detail of life on the reef, from tiny clownfish swimming amongst the anemones to rays skulking on the seafloor. A double thumbs-up — the greatest superlative in the vocabulary of diving sign language-hardly seems to do it justice.
4 The E6 Stokkedalsveien (Norway) Less of an “ooooh” than a long “ahhhhhh”, if you’re heading from Tromsø to Nordkapp by car, the E6 Stokkedalsveien leaves the wonderful coastline north of Rafsbotn and heads into the highlands to reach Skaidi, along a stretch of road frequently closed by bad weather. As my late wife and I joined the Northern Lights Rally in May, the snows had relaxed enough for the road to open and locals to dig out their summer cars, but there were still miles of untouched snowfields reaching off into the mountains, and it was cold enough to push our little Austin Allegro to its limits. The stubborn little fellow made it, though.
5 Flying into the Maldives You’d be mad not to fight for a window seat on your way to the Maldives, and your fellow passengers will be mad that you’re not talking to them very much. Why? Because the flightpath steers away from the larger islands where holidaymakers might be disturbed in their sun loungers, and flies over semi-submerged atolls, the shallow pale waters plunging into deep blue depths, and the landing approach sweeps past a wonderfully deserted older resort, falling apart on the eastern edge of the islands. There’s one more surprise as you land, the tower blocks crowded together on Male reminding you that this is only a paradise for the visitors.
