Iceland’s interior and the highlands reaching slightly further south are an area accessible to tourists almost exclusively in summer.
It is in its own way a beautiful, though usually empty and completely uncivilized post-volcanic and glacial desert. In the center itself, it can be more than 100 kilometers away from the nearest store or gas station. However, if you want to see “lunar landscapes” or walk on quite recently solidified lava – there is no better place in Europe, and perhaps in the world, for this than just the Icelandic interior.
Among the biggest attractions are certainly the colorful mountains in Landmannalaugar and Kerlingarfjoll, and the Askja volcano, where we can even bathe in a hot lake directly in the volcano’s crater….
However, the interior is a myriad of beautiful, albeit wild and rugged places. Lava fields, canyons, waterfalls, pumice deserts, intimate hot springs – all this and more awaits tourists ready to get off the hard paved road.
Seeing the area usually requires a four-wheel-drive car and involves driving through fords on glacial streams. Sleeping and cooking in primitive conditions, no electricity or running hot water, 100 kilometers to the nearest store, incessant wind and that special sense of brotherhood when you meet another hiker on the trail. For many here, the road itself is the goal….