5 Spine-Tingling Adventure Destinations from Wild Frontiers

Just in time for spooky season, Wild Frontiers reveals five extraordinary and spine-tingling adventure destinations.

“The places that stay with you are often those where landscape, history, and local stories come together. Around Halloween we tend to think of the supernatural through haunted houses and ghost stories, but traditions surrounding spirits, ancestors, death, and the unknown take incredibly different forms around the world,” said Clare Tobin, CEO, Wild Frontiers. “For adventurous travelers, exploring the places behind these stories can reveal a completely different side to a destination. Whether you’re walking through medieval Transylvania, encountering centuries-old burial traditions in Peru or watching the Darvaza crater burn beneath the night sky, the history and stories become part of the adventure.”

Wild Frontiers selected five destinations where travelers can delve deeper into these stories and traditions:

Romania

Few destinations are as closely associated with spooky season as Transylvania. Travel through old Saxon heartlands to Sighișoara, one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval towns and closely associated with Vlad III, better known as Vlad the Impaler. In Bucovina, travelers discover a lesser-known strand of Romanian folklore at a workshop dedicated to traditional painted eggs said to bring luck and keep away unholy spirits.

Experience both on Wild Frontiers’ Romania: Across The Carpathians To Transylvania small-group adventure.

Benin & Togo

In Benin and Togo, beliefs surrounding spirits and ancestors are part of living religious and cultural traditions, like Vodun, a complex spiritual tradition. Travelers visit a sacred site in Dassa and witness a traditional Egun masked dance. In Ouidah, the spiritual home of Vodun, visit Python Temple and the Sacred Forest of Kpassè to learn about Vodun from local practitioners.

Experience these traditions on Wild Frontiers’ Togo & Benin: Voodoo Explorer adventure.

Turkmenistan

In the Karakum Desert, vast Darvaza gas crater is commonly known as the “Door to Hell.” At night, it lights up the sky. Wild Frontiers travels by four-wheel drive to camp among the dunes beside it, offering the chance to see Darvaza at sunset, after dark and again at sunrise.

Visit on Wild Frontiers’ Uzbekistan & Turkmenistan: Cities of the Silk Road adventure.

Peru

Long before the Inca, the Chachapoya, also known as Cloud Warriors, built settlements across the cloud forests of northern Peru, creating funerary monuments high in the cliffs. In Karajia, human-shaped sarcophagi have looked out from a rock face high above sea level for roughly 750 years. Travel to Kuelap, the “Machu Picchu of the North.” At Museo Leymebamba, more than 200 mummies recovered from burial sites around the Lake of the Condors are on display.

Visit these sites on Wild Frontiers’ 13-day Peru: Lost Treasures of the Cloud Warriors tour.

Eastern Türkiye

The ruins of Ani, on a remote plateau close to Türkiye’s modern border with Armenia, serve as a reminder of what was once one of the great cities of the medieval Caucasus. Today, its churches, fortifications and other medieval structures are scattered across open grasslands above the Arpa River.

Travelers can explore the ruins on Wild Frontiers’ Türkiye: Eastern Borderlands adventure.