Good in December

Some of the most technical and committed granite towers on earth.

An hour with a habituated gorilla family, at the end of days of steep forest walking.

Ten days on a liveaboard in West Papua, over reefs holding more coral species than anywhere else measured.

The most reliable place in Europe to see free-ranging bison.

The only place on the planet where you can swim in the gap between two continental plates.

The birthplace of alpinism, and the highest cable car in Western Europe.

A point break town with a wave and a school for every level.

The 'blue hole of Abisko' — a rain-shadow microclimate with unusually clear winter skies.

Four days through Fiordland to Milford Sound, on a track with fifty walkers a day and no more.

A week timed to Siberian storms that drop fifteen metres of the lightest snow on earth over a season.

Five days on Japan's westernmost island, where hammerhead sharks school in the cold months and the current does not forgive.

Three weeks down Chilean Patagonia's gravel spine, through temperate rainforest and glacier country.

World-class reef diving you walk into from the beach.

The only lift-linked circumnavigation of its kind, and the anchor of the Dolomiti Superski network.

Six days across the Tasmanian highlands, from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair.

Proper alpine touring an hour from Kraków airport.

One of the only places left where you can realistically track wild pumas.

Kilometres of tunnel driven into granite by forced labour in 1943, abandoned unfinished, and never explained.

A working market hall, not a tourist food court.

Both an easy show cave and real wild systems, five minutes apart.

Flyable, but only for pilots who already know how to handle Patagonian wind.