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Ready to take an extended break? These multi-day hikes are ideal for serious alone time.
There’s never been a better time to go for a long walk. While some trails loom large in the popular imagination—the Pacific Crest Trail, for example, or the Camino de Santiago—the past several years has seen the development of new long-distance trails all over the world. More attention has also been brought to lesser-known long trails, says Jackie Randle, international co-chair at World Trails Network, a trails advocacy nonprofit.
There are a number of reasons we now have so many options for a multi-day trek, the most obvious being the broad surge of interest in walking and hiking since the pandemic. But countries are also investing in trails as a way to spread tourism beyond the most popular destinations, and to support local, rural economies, says Randle.
While all of these newer trails offer immersion in nature, they also lead travelers through communities. This makes them a particularly rich experience for solo travelers—and for the locals they meet. On the 870-mile Via Transilvanica across Romania, for example, visitors stay and eat home-cooked dishes in villages that have been experiencing depopulation. “These are not only meals. They are encounters,” says the founder of the trail, Alin Ușeriu. “They bring back a kind of social life that many of these places had almost lost.”
Finally, there’s a timeless appeal to a long solo walk. “It’s a deeply human thing to go on a journey,” says Meagan Neal, executive director of the association for the Transcaucasian Trail which, when complete, will run over 1,864 miles through Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. (Visitors can already walk 1,177 miles of the trail.) In a time when we’re constantly bombarded with quick hits of information and short-form content, the act of embarking upon a long endeavor may be particularly satisfying, she says. On a long trail, “you have the beginning where you make all these mistakes, learn all these things, meet all these characters on the way.” And at the end, she says, “the sense of completion.”
Here are five new long-distance trails around the world.
Via Transilvanica: Romania
Ușeriu describes the Via Transilvanica as not only a long-distance trail but a social project, developed to highlight the country’s shrinking rural villages and agrarian way of life. Residents of the 400 communities on the route actively managed the land for over a thousand years, supporting the health of old-growth forests and flower-dense meadows. Walking the well-marked route, which cobbles together dirt roads and ancient paths, you’ll see pastures with grazing livestock and guardian dogs; hear church bells, sheep bells, and birdsong; and sleep comfortably each night in guesthouses, small hotels, and homestays. The trail crosses Romania diagonally, running from the rural commune of Putna to the city of Drobeta-Turnu Severin.
Pekoe Trail: Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s first long-distance trail winds 186 miles through tea country, mountains, and villages. Along the way, you’ll sleep in accommodations ranging from eco-lodges to boutique hotels, visit tea plantations and estates, and enjoy traditional dishes like dosa, curries, and puttu—rice cylinders flavored with ground coconut and served for breakfast. And you just might end up having a moment like one described by Pekoe Trail Association executive director Pramudith Thenabadu, who recalled “sitting beside a waterful with a freshly brewed cup of Ceylon tea,” he says, “served in a traditional coconut shell.”
Transcarioca Trail: Brazil
This 111-mile trail boasts a truly impressive resume: it’s located within both a World Heritage Site and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, takes hikers to one of the new seven wonders of the world (the statue of Christ the Redeemer), and winds through a national park, state park, and seven municipal protected areas. Oh, and it crosses one of the world’s biggest cities, Rio de Janeiro. In a country whose hiking infrastructure is still nascent, the trail is helping to preserve green space and offering visitors the opportunity to see wildlife like monkeys, marmosets, coatis, sloths, and toucans. The shortest of the trails here; the Transcarioca could be completed in 12 days or so; walkers can stay in a handful of hostels or campgrounds along the way, or in hotels and guesthouses in nearby neighborhoods.
King Charles III England Coastal Path
When this new route is completed, it will be the longest managed coastal trail in the world, at 2,700 miles. Twenty-one hundred miles can already be walked, allowing visitors to view England’s famous headlands, cliffs, beaches, and dunes, as well as castles, oceanside resorts, and wartime relics. It winds through urban centers like Liverpool, storied coastlines like Essex, and wild areas like the Lake District.
Hitachinokuni Long Trail: Japan
Visitors may experience a sense of time travel as they walk this 217-mile route in Japan’s Ibaraki prefecture, on the east coast of its main island. Approximately 171 miles—or 80 percent—of the route is open, with the remainder scheduled for completion this year. Dipping up and down between mountains and villages, the path takes walkers along Edo-period highways, old mining roads, and ancient routes used for shugendo, Japanese spiritual tradition involving ascetic training on mountain pilgrimages. In the villages, you’ll enjoy traditional dishes like Hitachi Aki soba, made from a native variety of buckwheat; and free-ranging local Okukuji Shamo chicken, known for its lean meat and robust flavor.
Read the original article on Travel & Leisure
