Some people would hate Knoydart. No shops, no cinemas, just 85 square miles of Highland heather, mountains and midges, where deer outnumber locals 10:1.

There is a pub, but it’s an 18-mile hillwalk from the nearest road. There is a ferry from Mallaig, but it’s closed at weekends. See why some people might not bother?

Well, Knoydart is just about my favourite place on earth. It’s a land of rare, desolate beauty, a real wilderness. If that sounds good to you, read on: we’ve found 11 more wild, magical, abandoned Knoydarts around the globe.

Not all of them require blisters and beards – we’ve even thrown in a Patagonian hotel where you can soak up the magic from your open-air Jacuzzi – but from Lapland to Ladakh, these are spectacular journeys deep into the most striking untouched areas on earth.

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HIDDEN HIGHLANDS Knoydart, Scotland

Wedged between Loch Hourn and Loch Nevis, about 25 miles northwest of Fort William, this all-but-uninhabited peninsula is sometimes referred to as Britain’s last wilderness. As it’s Accessible only by boat or boot, this is no empty claim.

Most visitors arrive by ferry in Inverie (www.knoydart-ferry.co.uk ; £9 each way), enjoy a night at the craic-tastic Old Forge (theoldforge.co.uk ), Britain’s remotest pub, then head off with OS Landranger 33 for day walks into the interior, perhaps knocking off Knoydart’s highest peak, Ladhar Bheinn (3,346ft).

But why come this far off the beaten path just to tread the road more travelled? We say spend a night in Inverie at Knoydart Lodge (£35pp, B&B; knoydartlodge.co.uk), then charter its boat (£200; takes 12) all the way to Barrisdale Bay, a stunning spot with a sandy beach in an amphitheatre of peaks on the peninsula’s north coast. After a night or two at the bothy, filling your boots with the surrounding summits, it’s nine miles of magnificent walking back to Inverie.

Get out there: unlike the farther-flung trips below, this one’s easy enough to arrange yourself. Alternatively, Wilderness Scotland (0131 625 6635, www.wildernessscotland.com ) can do the organisation for you, so you can concentrate on the outdoorsy stuff: seven nights on Knoydart and the surrounding islands cost £835, full-board, including transfers to and from Mallaig.

TREKKING THE WILDS Jebel Sahro, Morocco

Wedged between the High Atlas and the Sahara, three hours south of Ouarzazate, the Jebel Sahro mountains form a wild, savage landscape,a place of shockingly remote villages and spectacular, wind-eroded outcrops of rock. It’s Monument Valley without the Winnebagos – in fact, this far from the nearest road, it’s Monument Valley without cars, full-stop. What it isn’t is the High Atlas.

You won’t find kasbah conversions, Branson palaces and hordes of trekkers in summer: Jebel Sahro remains eerily quiet year-round, and has been dropped from many trek operators’ brochures recently because its High Atlas cousin has stolen the show. Their loss, your gain. The Berbers fought their last stand here against the French: I’ve trekked all over Morocco, and this is the place worth fighting for.

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