Parts of Japan’s 17th-century Nakasendo Highway have been preserved and restored to their original tranquility.

Parts of Japan’s 17th-century Nakasendo Highway have been preserved and restored to their original tranquility.

Photograph by Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Stock

From the National Geographic book Journeys of a Lifetime

The Old North Trail, North America

The Blackfeet Indians traveled along the Old North Trail, which originally stretched nearly 2,000 miles (3,220 kilometers) from Canada to Mexico, running along the “backbone of the world” that later Americans called the Rockies. It took the Blackfeet four years to go from end to end on trips to trade, make sacred journeys, or find a wife. You can visit fragments still visible in Glacier National Park in Montana.

www.glacierinfo.com

The Nakasendo Highway, Japan

This narrow, 17th-century highway linking Kyoto and Edo (modern Tokyo) was built along the route of an older trail. Running for 310 miles (500 kilometers) along the shores of Lake Biwa, across mountain ranges and down onto the Kanto- plain around Edo, it was meant for horses and pedestrians—the Japanese did not use carts. Parts of the tranquil route have been preserved and restored, which means that you have to walk them, as most of its original travelers did.

web-japan.org

The Yuen Tsuen Ancient Trail, Hong Kong, China

For centuries, people traveled along this rugged footpath between Yuen Long and Tsuen Wan in what is now Hong Kong’s New Territories. Today, both ends of the trail are embedded in a thoroughly urban sprawl of malls and traffic jams, but the middle remains a delicious haven of peace.

www.discoverhongkong.com

The Khmer Highway, Cambodia/Thailand

This ancient 140-mile (225-kilometer) highway ran between Angkor, Cambodia, and Phimai, Thailand, and was sacred to the Cambodian empire’s “god-kings,” who traveled the highway visiting temples and performing religious ceremonies involving fire, water, and linga (stone phallic sculptures). Most of it is now overgrown with jungle, but you can still visit many of the temples and drive along a sector near Phimai.

www.mot.gov.kh

The Old Great North Road, Australia

Famous as a masterpiece of 19th-century engineering, the road is also infamous for the use of forced convict laborers, some of them in leg irons, to build it. It started in Sydney and ended at Newcastle in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. Some sections follow ancient Aboriginal tracks.

www.australia.com