Experience the best of Chinle

Chinle lies in the high desert of north-eastern Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly, a branching red-sandstone canyon with sheer walls up to 300 metres high. The canyon's name is pronounced de shay. Navajo families still live in the canyon and graze sheep and horses on its cottonwood-shaded floor, while Chinle itself is a small town with a market, a hospital and schools.

Canyon de Chelly is a national monument, but the land belongs to the Navajo Nation, and its rim drives lead to overlooks above Spider Rock, a slender sandstone spire, and the White House ruin, an Ancestral Puebloan village built into an alcove. A historic trading post at Ganado lies to the south, and Monument Valley and the Painted Desert are within reach by road.

Navajo cooking centres on mutton stew, roast corn, blue corn mush and fry bread, which topped with beans and cheese becomes a Navajo taco. Weavers and silversmiths sell rugs and jewellery. Days are hot in summer but the nights cool quickly, and snow dusts the rim in winter.