Incredible hotels at the ends of the Earth

From camps in the Namibian desert to monasteries in the Himalayas, these are the world’s most striking places to stay

In an internet-saturated age of oversharing, it can sometimes feel like there are no corners of the Earth left undiscovered. No view unseen; no wilderness untread. Even space – that final travel frontier – is getting closer to welcoming tourists in a meaningful way.
But we don’t have to turn our eyes to the sky to feel the thrill of discovery. There are still patches of this planet where you can feel like one of the few people lucky enough to experience them.
Where the only thing as remarkable as the location is that a luxury hotel or lodge could be planted this deep in the wilderness – amid the highest mountains, in the middle of great oceans or epic national parks.
This isn’t just about bragging rights. Often the most remote, inaccessible corners are some of the most fragile – ecosystems on the frontline of climate change, or an ancient way of life gradually vanishing. These pioneering stays are important, often run by trailblazing B-Corp outfits or passionate conservationists who understand how sustainable, small-scale tourism can help preserve these almost uninhabitable ends of the Earth.
So whether you’re seeking solitude among Namibia’s vast deserts or spiritual wonder among the mountainous monasteries in the Himalayas, these are the world’s most far-out places to stay. So far off the beaten track, there isn’t a track at all. This is the true definition of getting away from it all.
Distance from civilisation: 40 miles from Bodø
Polar explorer Børge Ousland has trekked solo across both geographic poles and sailed through the treacherous, iceberg-filled waters of the Northeast and Northwest Passages to circumnavigate the Arctic – just some of the firsts that have cemented his place in the record books (he even got married at the North Pole). His Norwegian basecamp, Manshausen, on a tiny island at the country’s northern fringes, 62 miles inside the Arctic Circle, allows the rest of us a taste of Arctic adventure.
Here, some of the architectural cabins cantilever out over the sea, while others (newer two-storey towers, which were added last year) have bedrooms beneath a wraparound glass roof – perfect for watching the dancing aurora. As you’d expect, activities abound: hike the challenging Nordskot traverse, kayak around the Steigan archipelago spotting sea eagles, explore the 460ft-long Troll cave or simply soak up those all-encompassing views of mountain, sea and sky.
Cabins from £415, B&B (00 47 903 636 16; manshausen.no)
Distance from civilisation: nine miles from Calheta
Pegasus Lodges specialise in pitching frontier surf camps near some of the world’s most uncrowded breaks: deep in the Telo Islands of North Sumatra or on Samoa for pounding Pacific waves. Their latest addition is sandwiched between towering cliffs and the raw Atlantic Ocean, on the island of Sao Jorge in the Azores, nearly 1,000 miles west of mainland Portugal.
The gathering of volcanic stone houses are built dramatically on what’s called a “fajã”, a flat coastal plateau that has been created from collapsing cliffs or lava flows. The adventure begins once you reach Fajã dos Cubres, where the last leg of the journey is a hike through the Unesco Biosphere Reserve (luggage goes by quad bike). Once there, chef-prepared meals can be delivered to your door, offshore are some of the Atlantic’s most remote surf breaks, while onshore explore waterfalls and secret lakes, canyons and peaks.
Houses from £310 (pegasuslodges.com)
Distance from civilisation: 55 miles from Longyearbyen
At a latitude of 78N, Longyearbyen, on the rugged archipelago of Svalbard, is the world’s northernmost settlement, a frontier town where polar bears roam beyond its limits. A boat (in summer) or long snowmobile ride (in winter) from there is Isfjord Radio Adventure Hotel, immersing guests in this icy wilderness. A former telecommunication station, today the outpost has 22 cosy bedrooms and a kitchen whipping up Arctic cuisine, including reindeer brought in by local trapper Tommy Sandal.
Svalbard’s seasons are as extreme as its landscapes: from May to August, the sun never sets and visitors can hike across the tundra or take boat trips around fjords spotting whales, walruses, seals and puffins. In winter, when the light returns in March, whizz on snowmobiles across the thick snow to the Fridtjof glacier or explore frozen fjords before warming up in the hotel’s sauna overlooking Isfjorden – the hardy can then plunge into its waters, which hover around four degrees.
Doubles from £845pp for a three-day summer adventure, full board, including boat transfers (00 4779024600; basecampexplorer.com)
Distance from civilisation: 97 miles from Khorixas
Running from the eerie, fog-shrouded Skeleton Coast to the otherworldly dunes of the Namib desert, Namibia is one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries – there are just three million people in an area larger than France. In the mountainous northwest, Damaraland is a near-barren landscape home to the mountain zebra, southern giraffe, onyx, some elusive cheetah and leopard, and one of the last free-ranging populations of critically endangered black rhino.
Conservation-led Wilderness Desert Rhino Camp started life as just that, a research field station to study these magnificent beasts. More recently, it has been entirely redesigned and rebuilt, opening again this summer with six huge canvas-roofed suites on a private conservancy of some 1.4 million acres. The camp is reached by an hour’s flight on a tiny six- or 14-seater plane from the capital Windhoek – pilots are often instructed to circle while zebra are cleared from the airstrip in the middle of the desert.
From £440pp, including all meals, twice daily scheduled camp activities, park fees, laundry and local drinks (00 27 11 257 5000; wildernessdestinations.com)
Distance from civilisation: 33 miles from Leh
In the far north of India, where the subcontinent borders Tibet, Ladakh is a place of majestic mountains that glow in the still sunshine and Buddhist monasteries that cling to cliffs above lunar-like valleys. It will leave you breathless – initially quite literally, as at 11,500ft above sea level it takes at least a day to adjust to the altitude.
Shakti specialises in these untouched parts of the Indian Himalayas, taking travellers on “village walks” between converted local houses in Sikkim, beneath the great Kangchenjunga mountain (third highest behind Everest and K2); Kumaon, where seven-cabin Shakti Prana will open next October; and here, in the high altitude desert of Ladakh. Between these Ladakhi houses, the itinerary can be as gentle or as thrilling as you need: visit monks at dawn, white-water raft along the Zanskar river, take a picnic in peaceful apricot orchards or freewheel down from the Khardung La pass on bikes – at 17,582 feet it’s one of the highest motorable roads in the world.
Itineraries from £790pp, including all meals, beverages, activities, guides, porters and local airport transfers (020 3151 5177; shaktihimalaya.com)
Distance from civilisation: 220 miles from Kathmandu
Bangkok-based architect and designer Bill Bensley creates fantastical hotels in far-away places. High in the Himalayas, between the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri mountain ranges, lies Shinta Mani Mustang, offering a deep dive into Nepal’s ancient “forbidden kingdom” – the upper reaches of which were closed to visitors until 1992. Getting here involves several hops to lofty airports or a long wiggling drive (13 hours from Kathmandu; six hours from Pokhara).
Set in a low, local Baglung stone building above the black-coloured Kali Gandaki river, each of the 29 rooms has hypnotic, floor-to-ceiling views of Nilgiri’s snow-capped triple peak (which reaches 23,000ft). Every aspect of the hotel is equally enthralling: wellness sessions with an 11th-generation Tibetan Amchi doctor, treks to the iridescent turquoise Chhema lake and creative tasting menus that feature local river trout and foraged herbs or chocolate-filled momos (steamed dumplings). A totally spellbinding adventure.
Doubles from £1,389, all inclusive, with a minimum five-night stay (00 977 980 2336386; shintamanimustang.com)
Distance from civilisation: 43 miles from Dalanzadgad
Mongolia has long been a cultural byword for remoteness, conjuring up images of nomadic tribes and wild horses roaming the empty steppes. South from the wide grasslands of the steppe lies the Gobi desert, an eye-popping landscape of towering sand dunes and craggy peaks, lakes teeming with birdlife and the red sandstone spires of the Flaming Cliffs, where the world’s first dinosaur eggs were discovered in 1923.
In the wild expanse of it all, Three Camel Lodge resembles a nomadic camp but has an elevated take on comfort and design, with solar-powered bedrooms in traditional white ger yurts around a central stone-built hub. There’s no phone signal or Wi-Fi here, allowing you to completely disconnect while exploring the surrounding desert on foot, horseback or camel, and learning more about the Mongol nomadic way of life.
Doubles from £2,083pp for a two night all-inclusive itinerary (00 976 11 325 786; threecamellodge.com)
Distance from civilisation: 44 miles from Queenstown
There is only one way to get to this secluded retreat: a scenic, half-hour helicopter ride from Queenstown through mountain valleys, over snow-capped peaks and above twisting rivers. Set on an alpine meadow at 3,000ft in South Island’s Southern Alps, Minaret Station Alpine Lodge feels a million miles from anything with just four extremely private chalets surrounded by the steep slopes of the glacier-carved valley.
Those helicopters are deployed again to transport guests to activities in otherwise inaccessible spots: heli-skiing to untouched snow, heli-biking to cruise along scenic lakeside traverses, heli-hiking to isolated ridges or the amazing blue ice caves of Aoraki Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. Back at base, the lodge kitchen whips up feasts that might include venison, lamb or beef from Minaret Station’s 50,000-acre working farm. Each chalet has its own hot tub for soaking off the day’s adventures under the startlingly clear Milky Way.
Doubles from £1,545, including all meals and beverages and a private hiking guide (00 64 3 443 5860; minaretstation.com)
Distance from civilisation: 128 miles from Kununurra
The Kimberley is remote even by Australian standards: an untrammelled frontier ranging over the entire northwest corner, where extreme seasons transform the landscape from arid rock formations and wide dusty plains to thundering waterfalls and swollen river gorges when the Big Wet rains arrive.
The 12-bedroom Bullo River Station, a working cattle farm spanning almost half a million acres, is a chance to experience the Kimberley in all its wild wonder. This is the raw outback on an almost unimaginable scale – the nearest neighbours are a three-hour drive away. Every day the 2,000-strong Brahman-cross herd is mustered across the Top End terrain – guests can join the team to see how it happens, all while keeping an eye out for wallabies, dingoes and wild buffalo.
There’s deep Aboriginal history here too, with around 200 rock-art sites hidden among the station’s cliffs and ridge lines created by the area’s Miriuwung-Gajerrong ancestors.
From £739pp, all inclusive, including private guiding activities and scenic helicopter (00 61 8 9168 7375; bulloriver.com.au)
Distance from civilisation: 17 miles from Cochrane; 186 miles from Balmaceda
North Face founder Doug Tompkins fell in love with Patagonia on a 1968 expedition. Decades later, now married to Kris McDivitt Tompkins (herself former CEO of the outdoors brand Patagonia), the conservationist couple began buying up swathes of the region to save them from developers. When Doug died in 2015, the pair’s work to restore the land and hand it back to the Chilean government to form part of a huge new national park network was almost complete.
One of those created was the Patagonia National Park in the Chacabuco Valley, and Explora’s lodge was once one of the Tompkins’ homesteads. Compared to the better known and more visited Torres Del Paine (in Chilean Patagonia) and Los Glaciares (on the Argentinian side) national parks, it still retains that end of the earth feel. You practically have the 750,000 acres to yourself (the lodge is the only place to stay beyond campsites), and can witness this massive rewilding project up close as condors swoop overhead and guanacos and puma roam.
Doubles from £2,334pp (00 56 2 2395 2800; explora.com)
Distance from civilisation: 51 miles from Coca
Covering over one billion acres across nine nations, the Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, home to 10 per cent of all known species on Earth. It is a staggering, humbling place, with large tracts of it still unexplored. It’s also of course wildly under threat, which makes a stay at one of the eco-lodges working towards preserving the forest and its biodiversity even more worthwhile.
In a 700-acre conservancy on the banks of the Rio Napo, Minga Lodge immerses nature-lovers in Amazonian life. The experience begins before you even arrive, on the 2.5-hour motorised canoe journey up the river to the lodge, spotting rare hoatzin and some of the other 304 types of birds that live in the reserve, along with hundreds of other butterfly, frog, reptile and mammal species.
Minga is as rooted in the local community as it is in conservation, so on top of nature hikes, there’s also Kichwa cooking, craft lessons and shaman blessings offered, to give guests a holistic taste of the Amazon’s rich culture.
Doubles from £612pp, including meals, beverages, transfers, activities, private guides and a conservation fee (00 593 98 809 8084; mingalodge.com)
Distance from civilisation: 45 miles from El Calafate
Estancia Cristina is in its own exclusive corner of the Los Glaciares National Park, only reachable by boat across the icy waters of Lake Argentino. Today it’s flocks of adventurers rather than sheep that roam the land at this century-old former ranch, many heading for the immense Upsala glacier’s only land-based lookout point. From there, hike back down via the prehistoric, deep-red Cañadón de los Fósiles (Fossil Canyon), where the erosive effects of ancient glaciers have carved out an open-air museum of marine fossils.
Another day, saddle up to explore the valley on horseback riding through forests of ñires and lengas trees and across glacial rivers. Back at the lodge, the kitchen turns out empanadas and Patagonian lamb and the cellar is filled with Argentinian malbecs. The scenery, silence and sheer scale of it all make this a very special spot indeed.
Doubles from £925pp, full board, including daily excursions and transfers (00 54 2902 49 1133; estanciacristina.com)
Distance from civilisation: 300 miles from McCarthy
Three generations of the Claus family have lived at Ultima Thule, on the banks of the Chitina river deep in the Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Reserve, the largest National Park in North America at 13.2 million acres. The ancient Greeks and Romans used the term “Ultima Thule” to describe the unknowable lands beyond the northern edges of their maps. But if anyone knows this vast Alaskan wilderness it’s the Clauses, who – behind the controls of tiny Super Cub planes that can land on mountaintops or glaciers – take guests into the heart of it.
There are no advance itineraries here: each morning from May to September when the lodge is open, the team wakes up and looks at the weather before starting the propellers and zipping off to the massive Bagley Icefield or frozen waterfall at Icy Bay, which reverbates with the echoing boom of calving icebergs. This is about as off-grid and far-out as it gets.
Four-night packages from £10,023pp, including all activities, meals and transfers from McCarthy (00 1 907 854 4500; ultimathulelodge.com)