The Highlands, the dramatic interior of Iceland, offers some amazing landscapes. It's a difficult area to access most of the year but from july on most areas are accessable with a 4wd car. The roads are in many cases very bad and there are often rivers to cross and it might be a good idea to travel in caravan. If you're not comfortable driving I'd recommend a bus tour instead, the icelandic nature is not to be played with.

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Landmannalaugar is probably the most popular of the highland destinations and that's not difficult to understand. This is a landscape of colorful rhyolite mountains, big lava fields and hot springs. Here you can walk around in the lava fields on marked paths and look at the lava formations. The mountains around have strikes of all kinds of colors such as red, green and brown. The most famous being Brennistadsalda. 

The area is also highly geothermal with steams coming up from the ground here and there. Close to the tourist hut there is a natural pool where hot water from the springs flow together with water from the rivers making bathing ideal.  4wd cars are needed to get here, there are also excellent bus transportation with the route Reykjavík-Landmannalaugar- Eldgjá-Skaftafell and Landmannalaugar- Mývatn. These tours start in July.  

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For those going from Reykjavík to Akureyri or reversed a great option to the main road  is Kjölur, the road through the Highlands, passing the hot spring oasis Hveravellir.  This is a real pearl between the big glaciers Langjökull and Hofsjökull. Here there are a lot of interesting hot springs to look at, including a geyser. It is also possible to bath in the water from the springs. During the summer there are daily bus trips between Reykjavík and Akureyri, through Kjölur. Making shorter stops at Gullfoss/Geysir and Hveravellir.

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Eldgjá (Fire canyon) east of Landmannalaugar is a long, wide and green canyon. In some places it's as wide as 600m and 200m deep.  The most scenic attraction is Ófærufoss, a large waterfall in two steps. There used to be a natural bridge over the lower falls, wide enough to walk over, but it collapsed a few of years ago. Eldgjá can be reached by 4wd cars, but there are some rivers that have to be crossed. It's easier to take the bus on the route: Reykjavík-Landmannalaugar-Skaftafell. 

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For those who want to visit a volcano, Askja is definately one of the best options. As for most highland attraction a 4wd car is needed if you want to get there. In summer there are also day tours to Askja from Lake Mývatn.  On the way to the volcano you will pass a few other interesting places, among others Herdubreiðarlindur. This is a green oasis in this otherwise black sand and lava landscape. Here is also Mount Herdubreið, often called the Queen of Icelandic mountains. The mountain is very impressive (1682m) and was formed during a volcnic eruption when all of Iceland was covered with Ice. 

Drekagil (Dragon's Canyon) is a very impressive, but fairly narrow, canyon right next to Askja. It is possible to walk at the bottom of the canyon, but it is difficult because of the river running there, so be careful. 

In early summer there is usually a lot of snow up here and tour buses don't operate until July. Even then there can be much snow left and you might have to walk for hours on snow to get to the volcano itself. If going with Mývatn Tours though you will be travelling part of the way with a snow-mobile. 

One of the most spectacular things about this trip is that it is possible to take a bath in the explosion crater Víti  next to the main crater, so you might want to bring your swim suit.  The main crater is also water filled, although this water is way to cold. This lake, Öskjuvatn, is actually Icelands deepest lake. The area around the volcano is lunar like with typical lava landscape. And it is easy to understand why NASA chose this place for training before the missions to the moon.  Askja had its latest eruption in 1961.

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