Tatra Mountains

It’s hard to overstate the majesty of the Tatras, whose 300-plus peaks form the loftiest section of the Central Carpathian Mountains. Together with the Polish national park of the same name, Slovakia's Tatra National Park is a Unesco-protected biosphere reserve. The Slovak side has the lion's share of the reserve, 740 sq km of beech and spruce forests, deep-blue glacier lakes and alpine meadows spangled with wildflowers. It's a vast playground for native fauna like marmots and chamois (mountain goat-antelopes); also at play are human hikers tackling hundreds of kilometres of trails, and skiers who flock to High Tatras resorts in winter.