Top 10 Desert Destinations

Camel treks to the Erg Chebbi dunes at sunrise, Berber drumming circles around campfires, and a silence so absolute that you can hear your own heartbeat — the Sahara earns its mystique.

The driest non-polar desert on Earth hosts the world's best stargazing, salt flats with flamingos, and geysers at 4,500 meters that erupt at dawn while you question every life decision that led you to waking at 3 AM.

The oldest desert on Earth features rust-red dunes towering 300 meters above the ghostly white clay pan of Deadvlei, where 900-year-old dead trees stand frozen in a landscape that looks digitally rendered.

The sandstone buttes made famous by John Ford westerns rise from the Navajo Nation reservation floor like nature's skyscrapers, and every sunset here looks like a movie poster — because it literally was.

The Golden City's sandstone fort rising from the Rajasthani desert, camel safaris to remote Bishnoi villages, and Sam Sand Dunes at dusk with Manganiyar musicians — this is desert romance at its most alive.

Two hundred and seventy-five square miles of gypsum dunes so white they look like snow, creating an otherworldly landscape that the US military once used to test atomic bombs — nature reclaimed it beautifully.

Dinosaur fossils underfoot, nomadic ger camps on the steppe, and the Flaming Cliffs at sunset make the Gobi the most culturally rich desert experience available to travelers willing to endure the remoteness.

The world's largest salt flat transforms into an infinite mirror after rain, creating perspective-defying photos and a landscape so flat and featureless that your brain temporarily forgets how scale works.

The hottest surface temperature ever recorded on Earth — 70.7°C — was measured here, and the wind-carved yardangs and kaluts create a landscape so hostile and so hauntingly beautiful that UNESCO inscribed it in 2016.

Camel treks to the Erg Chebbi dunes at sunrise, Berber drumming circles around campfires, and a silence so absolute that you can hear your own heartbeat — the Sahara earns its mystique.

The driest non-polar desert on Earth hosts the world's best stargazing, salt flats with flamingos, and geysers at 4,500 meters that erupt at dawn while you question every life decision that led you to waking at 3 AM.

The oldest desert on Earth features rust-red dunes towering 300 meters above the ghostly white clay pan of Deadvlei, where 900-year-old dead trees stand frozen in a landscape that looks digitally rendered.

The sandstone buttes made famous by John Ford westerns rise from the Navajo Nation reservation floor like nature's skyscrapers, and every sunset here looks like a movie poster — because it literally was.

The Golden City's sandstone fort rising from the Rajasthani desert, camel safaris to remote Bishnoi villages, and Sam Sand Dunes at dusk with Manganiyar musicians — this is desert romance at its most alive.

Two hundred and seventy-five square miles of gypsum dunes so white they look like snow, creating an otherworldly landscape that the US military once used to test atomic bombs — nature reclaimed it beautifully.

Dinosaur fossils underfoot, nomadic ger camps on the steppe, and the Flaming Cliffs at sunset make the Gobi the most culturally rich desert experience available to travelers willing to endure the remoteness.

The world's largest salt flat transforms into an infinite mirror after rain, creating perspective-defying photos and a landscape so flat and featureless that your brain temporarily forgets how scale works.

The hottest surface temperature ever recorded on Earth — 70.7°C — was measured here, and the wind-carved yardangs and kaluts create a landscape so hostile and so hauntingly beautiful that UNESCO inscribed it in 2016.