Walk the spine of the centre.

This is the one people talk about for years afterwards. Two hundred and thirty-one kilometres along the rocky spine of the West MacDonnell Ranges, from the old Alice Springs Telegraph Station to the summit of Mount Sonder.

The Larapinta is split into twelve sections, each a day or two of walking, from gentle creek-bed strolls to long, exposed ridge traverses that add up to more than seven and a half thousand metres of climbing over the full route. You pass through Simpsons Gap and Standley Chasm, swim at Ellery Creek Big Hole, top up water at Ormiston Gorge, and time the last climb so you crest Mount Sonder at sunrise, when the whole desert turns from grey to violet to burning red. Walk a single section over a weekend, or commit to the lot across a fortnight.

It is also a desert, and it asks to be respected. The walking season is May to August, when the days are mild and the nights drop towards or below zero in the gaps and gorges. Water is the real planning problem: natural sources are sparse, so you carry anywhere from two to six litres at a time between the tanks NT Parks keeps topped up, and every one of those litres is a kilogram on your back. Open fires are banned, campsites are booked in advance, and you do not step off the trailhead without a way to call for help.

Which is where the gear list gets long, and expensive. You need a pack that carries sixty litres comfortably, a tent light enough to walk with all day, a sleeping bag rated for those sub-zero nights paired with an insulated mat, a stove that boils fast because you cannot light a fire, poles for the endless rock-hopping, and a personal locator beacon for the long stretches with no phone signal. Buy all of it new and you are well past two and a half thousand dollars, for a trail most people walk once.

So fly in light and hire it. A beacon is the kind of thing you want for one trip, not a shelf for a decade, and the same goes for a four-season bag you would use a fortnight a year. Pick the kit up in Alice before you start, walk your section or the whole spine, and hand it back on the way to the airport. The only thing you carry home is the photo from the top of Sonder.