What travel writer could resist Mongolia? Toting a collapsible kayak through a little-traveled land, Backpacker Magazine's Berne Broudy recently toured the Zavkhan province to paddle lakes she says "melt into the endlessly brilliant blue sky that Mongolians consider their national treasure and identity." Finding the paddling destinations was half the adventure. Broudy says her group stopped at yurts in the bush to drink tea and eat fried bread with the occupants before inquiring about area lakes.

As a massive volcano of mud, Volcan de Lodo might seem an improbable place to relax. But Robin Esrock, host of World Travels on the National Geographic Channel, cites the natural bubbling vat—a rich mineral stew of geo-excreted liquids—to be a restorative experience as well as the world's best hangover cure. "You take off your clothes, climb into the thick goopy mud, and bye bye-hangover. It is like a dream fulfilled: To float in thick milk chocolate."

Far off the beaten path, the Czech Greenways are a network of old trading routes turned into hiking trails. Zigzagging from Prague to Vienna, the trails pass through ruined castles, tiny villages, dense forests and formerly forbidden Cold War borderland. Says David Farley, editor of "Travelers' Tales: Prague and the Czech Republic": "The Greenways are a tapestry of nature, culture, and history, wrapped up in a series of well-marked trails that cross an entire country."

This multi-day backcountry route connects a string of mountain huts in the Canadian Rockies in and around Banff National Park. Skiers cross ice fields and climb peaks before skiing downhill each day to a new alpine hut. Kate Siber, former editor of Outside Magazine, cites highlights like the traverse's roped glacier ascents, where her group snaked past deep crevasses on their way up the mountains.

This remote preserve on the north shore of Lake Superior boasts rugged lakeside cliffs and cold, stormy waters reminiscent of Maine's Atlantic coast. Outdoors writer Greg Breining recommends touring the park from the seat of a sea kayak, where you can paddle on Superior for days without seeing another soul. "The few traces of humans you do see—old logging artifacts, excavation pits and odd ancient stone walls—seem like voices of spirits past."

In the don't-try-this-at-home category, Canadian extreme athlete and writer Will Gadd cited paragliding over the Grand Canyon as one of his most memorable trips to date. "The whole point was to do something completely over-the-top," he says. Gadd got boosted to 18,000 feet on thermal air currents before swooping north from the canyon's rim and across the mile-deep gulch, landing successfully three hours later on the other side.

This remote ruin site, deep in the desert and locked behind Syria's xenophobic curtain, is a little-known World Heritage site that has acres of blocky half-collapsed buildings, columns, amphitheaters and rows of soaring arches. Dubbed the "Venice of the desert," Palmyra was for centuries a caravan stopover for merchants moving goods through the sands of the ancient Persian Empire.

Fly-fishing off the coast of Christmas Island, the largest coral atoll in the world, can net bonefish and prized giant trevally, the latter of which writer Bill Becher hooked on a trip to the tropical paradise in 2001. "After a 45-minute fight I landed a fish I could hardly lift," he says. A friend took a photo and then Becher released his fish of a lifetime. "He kicked his fins and swam away into the warm tropical water," Becher says. Christmas Island is known for its expert local fishing guides, abundant bonefish and easy wading to cast on the tidal flats.

Fernando de Noronha, a Brazilian archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, was a military prison for more than a century, not transitioning to full civilian administration until the 1980s. As such, the equatorial islands have remained largely undeveloped and pristine. For a trip earlier this year, writer Rolf Potts paddled into the islands' waves on a surfboard and went scuba diving. From land he watched the acrobatics of small spinner dolphins, which inhabit Fernando de Noronha's waters by the hundreds.