Looking for travel inspiration? We’ve been asking fascinating people — Pulitzer Prize-winners, world champion athletes, entrepreneurs, artists, and more — to share the greatest travel journeys of their lives.
New Guinea
Scientist and author Jared Diamond, who won the Pulitzer Prize for “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” is emphatic: “The most beautiful, exciting place in the world is New Guinea, with no close seconds. This is not my opinion, this is objective fact.”
Here’s his case: “Within this island, you get the whole world, from the equator to the North Pole, squeezed in. It’s on the equator, but its mountains are 16,500 feet high, so there are glaciers. That means that as you go up a New Guinea mountain, you’re going from tropical rainforest, into oak forest, into beach forest, into sub-alpine forest, into tundra, and then finally up to the glaciers, all within a few miles. In fact, it is the only place in the world where you can stand on a coral reef and look up at a glacier. Also, there are hundreds of different tribes with hundreds of different languages, so from a human point of view, it is the most exciting place in the world.” [Map]
Huli Wigmen crossing in the forests of the Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea. (Wade Davis via Getty Images)
Aerial view of the Bensbach River floodplains. (Col Roberts via Getty Images)
Canyonlands National Park, Utah
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He continued: “As opposed to China, Mongolia is this huge country with a very small number of people. Everyone has their little tent — the Turkic word is yurt, but in Mongolia it’s call a ger, and you’re miles away from everybody else. So there’s this expansive frontier culture, a culture of welcoming and of self-reliance and of not wanting to be part of some system that’s going to oppress you. And the people, at least my Mongolian friends — I certainly don’t vouch for every Mongolian — but they’re just such a creative, fun-loving, big-hearted people. They’re not the only people in the world that way, but it’s certainly in a way that’s touched me.” [Map]
A row of Mongolian gers. (Gettystock)
Sand dunes in the Gobi Desert. (David Santiago Garcia via Getty Images)
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Transcription services by Tigerfish; now offering transcripts in two-hours guaranteed. Interview text has been edited and condensed.
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