Every fall, the same few places get photographed to exhaustion. Kyoto’s temple maples. Vermont’s covered bridges. Banff in its gold week. They are beautiful, and they are full.
But autumn doesn’t live in a handful of famous valleys. It travels. For about ten weeks it moves across the Northern Hemisphere, starting on a volcano in northern Japan and ending in a Hungarian marsh full of birds, and most of that journey happens with hardly anyone watching.
So we followed it. Here are six places where the season is spectacular and the crowds haven’t caught on, in the order autumn reaches them.
The route, in order
- Daisetsuzan, Japan: mid to late September
- Arslanbob, Kyrgyzstan: September, into early October
- Kakheti, Georgia: mid September through October
- Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan: late September to mid October
- Ejina, Inner Mongolia: late September to mid October
- Hortobágy, Hungary: early October to mid November
1. Daisetsuzan, Hokkaido, Japan
When to go: Mid to late September, when Japan sees its first color of the year.
While Kyoto is still sweating through the end of summer, the slopes of Asahidake, Hokkaido’s highest peak at 2,291 meters, are already turning red. This is where Japan’s autumn begins, usually about two months before the maples peak in Kyoto.
Daisetsuzan is the country’s largest national park, a high volcanic plateau the Ainu called Kamui Mintara, the playground of the gods. A ropeway lifts you to roughly 1,600 meters, where low alpine shrubs burn crimson around steaming vents and small, still ponds.
The secret: Go on a weekday and walk the short loop around Sugatami Pond at the top station. On a calm, clear morning, the smoking summit sits in the water, framed in red.
2. Arslanbob, Kyrgyzstan
When to go: September, when the walnut harvest begins.
In the foothills of southern Kyrgyzstan grows the largest walnut forest on Earth, around 11,000 hectares of trees rising wild between 1,500 and 2,000 meters. Local legend credits either Alexander the Great or a disciple of the Prophet Muhammad with planting it. Nobody knows for sure, and nobody seems to mind.
When the nuts drop, the village follows them. Families lease plots of forest and spend about a month gathering the harvest while the canopy goes gold overhead.
The secret: Stay with a village family, then hike up to the 80 meter waterfall above town. You will be offered walnuts at every meal. That is the point.
3. Kakheti, Georgia
When to go: Mid September through October, during Rtveli, the grape harvest.
Archaeologists have found traces of wine in Georgian clay jars roughly 8,000 years old, the oldest known evidence of grape winemaking anywhere. In Kakheti, the country’s eastern wine region, much of it is still made the same way: crushed grapes sealed in qvevri, egg-shaped clay vessels buried in the earth. UNESCO added the method to its cultural heritage list in 2013.
Rtveli turns the Alazani Valley into one long gathering. Families pick by hand, the Caucasus rises behind the vines, and the day tends to end at a supra, the Georgian feast steered by a toastmaster called the tamada.
The secret: Look for churchkhela, strings of walnuts dipped in thickened grape juice and hung to dry like candles. Harvest season is when they’re made, and they beat any candy bar you’ll find at home.
4. The Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan, USA
When to go: The last week of September through mid October.
New England gets the tour buses. The Keweenaw gets Lake Superior. This thumb of land at the top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula turns early, thanks to its northern latitude and the lake’s own weather, and it does it beside an inland sea that looks like an ocean.
Drive Brockway Mountain Drive, an 8.8 mile road built by Depression-era work crews in 1933 that climbs 720 feet above the water. On a clear day you can see Isle Royale about 50 miles out. Then take the stretch of US-41 known as the Covered Drive, where the canopy closes into a tunnel of trees.
The secret: Stay out after dark. The Keweenaw has its own dark sky park, and the cold, clear nights of autumn are good ones for looking up.
5. Ejina, Inner Mongolia, China
When to go: Late September to mid October. The color lasts only a few weeks.
Out on the edge of the Gobi, in the far west of Inner Mongolia, a forest of desert poplars turns gold almost all at once. Populus euphratica survives where very little else can, and local lore says it lives a thousand years, stands a thousand more after it dies, and takes another thousand to fall apart. The dead trees are part of the view, twisted silver trunks standing among the living gold.
Chinese photographers know Ejina well. Almost nobody else does. The forest is laid out along the Ejin River in a series of numbered stops called bridges, each with its own character.
The secret: The Seventh Bridge usually turns first, and the ruined Silk Road city of Khara-Khoto is a short drive away. Avoid China’s National Day holiday in the first week of October, when everyone arrives at once.
6. Hortobágy, Hungary
When to go: Early October to mid November.
Hungary’s great plain doesn’t look like much at first. Flat grassland, fishponds, reeds, and a sky that takes up most of the view. Then, around sunset in October, the cranes come in.
Common cranes from northern Europe stop in Hortobágy, Hungary’s oldest national park, on their way south. They roost in the shallow wetlands at night and feed in the surrounding fields by day. On October 12, 2023, park staff counted 182,780 of them, a record. You hear them before you see them, a rolling, bugling call that fills the whole horizon.
The secret: Book a guided evening watch through the national park and be in place before the sun drops. The birds come back from the fields in long waves as the light goes.
Go a little sideways
The famous places earned their fame, and they will still be there next year. But the season is bigger than the postcards. Pick one of these, go a week early or a week late, and there is a good chance you’ll have the best of it nearly to yourself.
If fall has you curious about what’s happening in the trees themselves, read about how trees sleep at night, why Andy Goldsworthy waits for autumn, or wander through our guide to the most beautiful places on Earth. And for a week of finds like these in your inbox, there’s Fog Signals.
Edited by Ben VanderVeen · About Moss & Fog
