What is it?

Papua New Guinea is one of the last genuinely wild frontiers on Earth — a country of over 800 living languages, cloud-drowned mountain ranges, steaming volcanoes and coral reefs so intact that scientists still find new species in them. To travel here is to step into a place where the modern and the ancient sit side by side: you might fly a 19-seat prop plane into a grass airstrip in the morning and by afternoon be watching Huli wigmen paint their faces with ochre, or hear the thunder of hundreds of kundu drums as clans gather in feathered headdresses of bird-of-paradise plumes at a highland sing-sing. Along the Sepik River, dugout canoes glide past stilt villages where haus tambaran (spirit houses) hold carvings that inspired Picasso and the European modernists. Underwater, the Coral Triangle delivers wartime wrecks, muck-diving oddities and walls of fish in warm, glassy visibility. Add the Kokoda Track — a brutal, sacred 96km jungle trail that defined Australia's Second World War — and PNG becomes less a destination than a collection of worlds, each demanding to be met on its own terms.

Where is it?

Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea plus hundreds of islands, just north of Australia in the western Pacific. Highlights include the Highlands (Mount Hagen, Goroka, Tari for the Huli people and birds of paradise), the Sepik River in the northwest, Milne Bay and Kimbe Bay for world-class diving, Rabaul and its volcanoes in New Britain, and the Kokoda Track running inland from Port Moresby. The dry season from May to October is best; time your trip for the Mount Hagen Show (August) or the Goroka Show (mid-September), the country's most spectacular cultural gatherings.

What makes it worth it?

Travellers routinely describe Papua New Guinea as the most extraordinary place they have ever been — and the hardest to explain afterwards. It is the sensory overload of a sing-sing, where the ground shakes with drums and 3,000 dancers in paint, shell and feather move as one; it is the silence of a Sepik dawn broken only by a paddle stroke; it is the humbling weight of walking Kokoda's mud with a young Papuan guide whose grandfather carried wounded soldiers on the same path. Because so few outsiders come, encounters feel unmediated: you are a guest, not a customer, and villages welcome you with genuine curiosity. "You don't visit PNG, it visits you," is a sentiment repeated by returning travellers, along with the observation that it recalibrates your sense of what "remote" and "diverse" actually mean. Years later, what you'll remember isn't a landmark but faces, names, laughter across a language barrier, and the realisation that a country of nine million people can hold more cultural variety than an entire continent.

How accessible is it?

This is one of the more challenging countries in the world to travel independently. Roads are limited and often unsafe, so domestic Air Niugini and PNG Air flights (frequently delayed or cancelled) are the main way to move around, and Port Moresby and Lae have real crime issues that mean most visitors use guides, lodges and pre-arranged transfers. Expect to spend USD 250–500 per day for a guided itinerary; a 10–14 day organised trip with festival access, Sepik cruising or Highlands lodges typically runs USD 4,000–9,000 excluding international flights (usually via Brisbane, Cairns, Singapore or Manila). Most nationalities can obtain an eTA or visa on arrival, but check current rules; malaria prophylaxis, travel insurance with medical evacuation, cash in kina (cards are rarely accepted outside cities) and sturdy wet-weather gear are essential. Trekking Kokoda takes 8–10 days, demands serious fitness and a licensed operator (USD 3,000–4,000), while diving liveaboards in Milne Bay or Kimbe Bay start around USD 3,500 per week. Fewer than 200,000 visitors arrive annually — and most are on business — so book cultural festivals and lodges months ahead through a specialist operator.