Uluru

Uluru needs 2 days: walking the base of the world's largest sandstone monolith, 3.6 km long, with ancient Aboriginal rock art in its caves, on one, and watching sunrise or sunset from a viewpoint, when the rock shifts from ochre to deep red, on the other. May-September brings milder temperatures, avoiding the extreme heat of the desert summer. It's expensive, with flights and lodging limited to a single tourist town (Yulara) with no real competition. Sacred to the Aboriginal Anangu people, who have been the legal land owners since 1985, climbing was banned in 2019 after decades of requests, and today it's only walked around the base or flown over, never climbed.