The 16 Best National Parks in The World

Established in 1885, Banff is Canada's oldest national park and one of the world's most spectacular.

Turquoise lakes, ancient glaciers, hot springs, abundant wildlife, and the postcard town of Banff itself make this an unmissable destination in the Canadian Rockies.

Yellowstone is the world's first national park and still its strangest, sitting atop a supervolcano that surfaces as thousands of geysers, hot springs, and mudpots.

Old Faithful erupts on a near-hourly schedule, while the Grand Prismatic Spring's rainbow colours come from heat-loving bacteria.

Beyond the geothermal basins, the park holds free-roaming bison, elk, wolves, and grizzly bears across nearly 9,000 square kilometres of forest and canyon.

Plitvice Lakes National Park contains sixteen turquoise lakes connected by a series of waterfalls, cascades, and travertine barriers, all within an ancient beech forest.

The network of wooden boardwalks allows visitors to walk over and around the water in one of Europe's most enchanting natural landscapes.

Yosemite Valley is a granite gorge cut by glaciers, with El Capitan and Half Dome rising thousands of feet above the valley floor and waterfalls dropping straight off the rim.

Beyond the valley, the park holds giant sequoia groves, alpine meadows, and high-country lakes reached by the seasonal Tioga Road.

It's one of the birthplaces of American rock climbing, and climbers on El Capitan's face are visible from the valley floor with binoculars.

Three granite towers punch straight up out of Chilean Patagonia, reflected in turquoise glacial lakes that change colour with the light.

The full W trek links the towers with glaciers, wind-battered forests and the vivid blue of the Grey Glacier over several days.

Even a single day at the base-of-the-towers viewpoint delivers one of South America's most dramatic landscapes.

The towering sandstone pillars of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park inspired the floating Hallelujah Mountains in the film Avatar.

Over three thousand quartzite sandstone columns rise up through a sea of mist, draped in subtropical vegetation and connected by the world's longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge.

Mineral-rich water turns this Sichuan valley's lakes an almost unnatural turquoise and emerald, layered with travertine terraces and stacked waterfalls.

Fallen trees, preserved in the clear, mineral-hardened water, are visible metres below the surface in the calmest pools.

Snow-capped peaks and autumn foliage frame the lakes depending on season.

The Teton Range rises abruptly and without foothills from the flat valley floor of Jackson Hole, creating one of the most dramatic mountain frontages in the Americas.

Below it, the Snake River, a chain of glacial lakes and open sagebrush flats hold moose, elk, bison and both black and grizzly bears.

Trails range from flat lakeshore loops to serious alpine climbs within the same few miles of road.

Volcanic islands rise steeply out of turquoise water in this remote Indonesian archipelago, the only place on Earth with wild Komodo dragons.

Padar Island's ridge walk looks down on three separate curved bays at once, and Pink Beach takes its colour from crushed red coral mixed through the sand.

The surrounding waters are among Indonesia's best for manta rays and drift diving.

Zion's main canyon is a half-mile-deep slot of red and cream sandstone carved by the Virgin River, with the Narrows letting visitors wade upriver between walls that close in overhead.

The valley floor is reached only by a free shuttle in peak season, keeping the canyon quieter than the crowded parking lots suggest.

Angels Landing's chained final pitch is the park's signature scramble, but most of the canyon is accessible on flat paved trails.

Endless golden grassland stretches to the horizon across this legendary plain, home to the largest overland wildlife migration on Earth.

Wildebeest and zebra herds move across the landscape in numbers that make the scale of the place as much the subject as any single animal.

Hot-air balloon flights at dawn take in the migrating herds and scattered acacia trees from above.

Haleakala's summit on Maui sits at 3,055 metres above sea level, placing it above the clouds for one of the world's most famous sunrise experiences.

The volcanic crater contains a moonlike landscape of cinder cones and lava flows extending 11 kilometres across and 800 metres deep.

The Valley of Fire State Park is Nevada's oldest and largest state park, containing extraordinary formations of bright red Aztec sandstone created from sand dunes 150 million years ago.

The intensely coloured rock glows with particular brilliance at sunrise and sunset when it appears almost to be lit from within.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang protects one of the world's largest karst regions, its jungle-covered limestone hiding thousands of caves, including Son Doong, the largest cave passage on Earth, and Paradise Cave's vast chambers of stalactites.

Most visitors explore by boat along the Son River into Phong Nha Cave itself, or walk the lit boardwalks of Paradise Cave.

It's Vietnam's premier caving destination, still largely undeveloped outside the main sites.

Nara Park is a large public park in the ancient city of Nara that is home to over 1,200 wild sika deer who roam freely among the park's temples, shrines, and wooded paths.

The deer are considered sacred messengers of the gods in the Shinto tradition and have been protected for 1,300 years.

One of Africa's largest and most accessible game reserves, Kruger offers a realistic chance at all of the Big Five without a bush plane or a multi-thousand-dollar package.

Self-drive routes on paved and gravel roads reach the watering holes and riverbeds where lions, elephants and giraffe gather, particularly through the dry season.

Rest camps inside the park range from basic campsites to air-conditioned bungalows.