Tianmen Mountain
Hunan, China
Sure, you can take a cable car to the top — and it's a hair-raising ride, climbing nearly 4,200 feet in roughly 4.5 miles, with a peak gradient of 37 degrees — but you enjoy motoring, there's only one way to get to the top of Tianmen Mountain. Driving up to the top requires traversing 11 km (nearly 7 miles) of road that climbs steadily from the valley floor, turning 99 times along the way, making for an exhilarating drive. And unlike some famous stretches of road with nothing on the end but more road, this drive terminates at stairs leading to a natural, 431-foot-tall hole in the mountain and a host of terrifying trails set into the cliff face around the mountain.
Photos: Dan Huang
