The steep granite slope rose in front of us, stretching towards the mountain’s horizon at nearly 16,000 feet. To the right, streams of Buddhist prayer flags fluttered atop the crest of a mountain pass, and to our left, the sound of voices chanting and horns blasting echoed from a village monastery located far in the valley below.

I stood on the side of a dirt road staring at a wall of trees and vines in front of me. As lightning bristled across the night sky, the pitter patter of rain served as a background to the blaring ring of cicadas who dutifully announced the arrival of that night’s thunderstorm. The warm air became thick with moisture, and the sweet smell of chocolate drifted from the tens of thousands of cacao trees growing across the valley landscape. As a nocturnal lemur called somewhere in the distance, I took off my shoes, clicked on my headlamp and followed my guide barefoot into a sacred rainforest.

I saw my first picture of Wadi Rum when I was a high school intern at Alpinist, a mountaineering magazine with an office above a small Mexican restaurant near downtown Jackson. I sat at my desk, mystified by the image of a sand-filled valley in southern Jordan: it was dotted with towering sandstone spires and isolated camps of Bedouin who herded camels across the desolate moonscape. Staring out the office window, as heavy snow blanketed the mountains outside, the endless red sand dunes were about as opposite a landscape as I could possibly imagine. It epitomized the allure of travel but resided in my mind as a place I would probably only see in the pages of a magazine.

Green hills and mountain lakes dot the landscape of the Quiraing, a popular hiking and camping destination on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Stemming from Old Norse word for “sloping place,” the Quiraing is a nod to the region’s Viking history, where it is rumored that locals hid livestock in the nooks and crannies of the exposed rocks during raids.