3 Days in Uluru

Parks Australia suggests the Tjukurpa Tunnel at the Cultural Centre as your very first experience of the park. Tjukurpa is the Anangu word for their law, the creation stories and the way of living that come out of them. The building is mud brick, and its galleries, Maruku Arts and Walkatjara Art, are the honest places to buy a souvenir.

It's also where the climb story makes sense. People began climbing Uluru in the late 1930s, and the first section of the chain went in during 1964. The park was handed back to the Anangu in 1985, but closing the climb was put off. In the 1990s signs asked visitors Please Don't Climb, the numbers fell, and in November 2017 the park board voted unanimously to close it from 26 October 2019, the 34th anniversary of the handback. Climbing is now an offence under Australian law. Anangu call the closure a cause for celebration, not a loss.

Ininti is inside the Cultural Centre, 100% Aboriginal-owned, and the only place in the park where you can buy food and drinks: coffee, sandwiches, wraps, sausage rolls and meat pies, with a lounge upstairs that looks at the rock. A pie is a fair way to meet Australia's unofficial national dish, and the money stays with the community.

The Liru walk is an easy 4 km return track from the Cultural Centre towards the base of Uluru, named after the poisonous brown snake. It winds through a mulga forest that often fills with flowers after rain. A few hundred meters along is a large shelter in a sandy clearing with an uninterrupted view of the rock, which Parks Australia calls one of the park's best-kept secrets.

Come late in the afternoon when the heat eases and sit in the shelter. If it's still 38 degrees at 4 pm, skip it and go back to the pool: it's Grade 2, but there's little shade.

This is the viewing area for people with cars (buses use another one), 15-20 minutes from Yulara. Sunset is around 7.15 pm in November and 7.30 in mid-December, and the rock goes from orange through red to purple. At full moon it rises beside Uluru around sunset.

Bring chairs and snacks, and arrive early for a spot at the fence. There's no water and no toilets, and the park closes at 8.30 pm in November (9 pm in December).

The Outback BBQ at the Outback Hotel is do-it-yourself: you pick steaks, kangaroo, sausages or barramundi and cook them yourself on the grill. It's casual and the right level of fuss after a day in the sun, open 5 to 9 pm daily, and the bar stays open late.

For something dressier, Arnguli Grill at Desert Gardens Hotel (6 to 8.30 pm, reservations recommended) cooks with native ingredients. The name is the Pitjantjatjara word for bush plum.

Kata Tjuta means many heads: 36 domes over more than 20 square km, up to 546 meters above the plain. It's the less famous neighbor of Uluru and in some ways the better walk. For Anangu it's an extremely important men's site, and its stories are not shared with visitors. You walk the tracks, but you don't hear the stories.

The Valley of the Winds is a 7.4 km loop, Grade 4: steep, rocky and hard in places, 3-4 hours, with drinking water at the start and halfway but no toilets. If the heat or your legs say no, walk to the Karu lookout (2.2 km return, about an hour) for the best view on the loop. Parks Australia says the full circuit is actually easier than going to the second lookout, Karingana, and back.

Walpa Gorge is a narrow creek valley between two of Kata Tjuta's biggest domes, with sheer walls closing in around the track. The 2.6 km return walk is Grade 3 and rises gently to a seasonal stream and a grove of spearwood. Wallaroos hop around the domes here, and Parks Australia compares the place to an ancient temple, which is fair.

Walk quietly and stay on the track: Anangu men have always camped a short distance away and walked in quietly. In the heat it's the safer choice if you only want one Kata Tjuta walk.

On the way back, stop at the dune viewing area, an easy stroll to a lookout over the grassy hills and valleys around Kata Tjuta. There are shelters for a picnic, but no water and no toilets. Uluru is visible in the distance, so a long lens can catch both sites in one frame.

For photos, keep at least five domes in the frame, as Parks Australia requests, so no single sacred detail becomes the subject.

Ilkari is the buffet restaurant at Sails in the Desert, and from 2 to 4 pm daily it serves an Australian Native High Tea built around ingredients from Central Australia and beyond. It's the comfortable way to meet bush foods, and it's air-conditioned, a strong argument on a 40 degree afternoon.

The bush foods Parks Australia lists along the Kuniya walk are tjantu (bush tomatoes), arnguli (bush plums) and ili (figs), and you'll see the names again on menus.

Artist Bruce Munro visited Uluru in 1992 and felt an energy that stayed with him; in 2016 his idea of light blooming across the desert like flowers after rain became real. It was conceived as temporary and now marks its tenth anniversary: more than 50,000 stems topped with frosted-glass spheres, over an area bigger than seven football fields, shifting through ochre, violet, blue and soft white. It runs entirely on solar power.

General admission (from about 31 EUR, 50 AUD for adults, 39 AUD for children) lets you walk the paths after dark for one to two hours. The Star Pass (from about 85 EUR, 137 AUD) adds a sunset viewing with canapes and drinks, and the Field of Light Dinner (from about 224 EUR, 360 AUD) joins it to the Sounds of Silence buffet. General admission is enough for most people.

Talinguru Nyakunytjaku is the main sunrise viewing area. The first light comes over the dunes behind the platforms, and the rock wakes up as light and shade run across it. There are toilets, water and a picnic area. The platforms are crowded, so follow the lower track to the second shelter for an uninterrupted view of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

Two short loops are open to everyone: Minymaku (women's work, 1 km, 30 minutes) and Watiku (men's work, tools and hunting with fire, 1.5 km, 45 minutes), both wheelchair accessible.

A short drive from the sunrise platforms, the Mala carpark is where a ranger leads a free walk at 8 am from October to April (10 am from May to September). It follows the Mala walk, 2 km return and Grade 2, with water on the way. The caves are where the Mala (rufous hare-wallaby) people camped when they first arrived at Uluru, and their story is one of the most important in Tjukurpa. You pass rock art and the kitchen cave, then reach Kantju Gorge, a quiet place with sheer walls.

A ranger explains what a sign never can, and it's the best use of 90 minutes at Uluru.

Past the Kitchen Cave, the base walk crosses the north-east face, the longest open stretch of the track, on to Kuniya Piti: 4.4 km one way, Grade 3, no toilets. These formations hold chapters of creation stories that should only be learned in person, and Anangu ask you to take no photographs on this walk.

So put the phone away. It's a rare chance to look at something famous without turning it into a picture. From the resort, the Field of Light and Sounds of Silence, Anangu ask for wide shots from a distance only, best taken one to two hours before sunset, when natural shadows cover the sacred sites.

The Kuniya walk is a short, shady track from the Kuniya carpark to Mutitjulu Waterhole, 1 km return and Grade 2, among river red gums and tall grass. It's one of the few places in the park where you may see wallabies. It's also the site of one of Uluru's most dramatic creation stories, the battle between Kuniya, the woma python woman, and Liru, the poisonous brown snake man.

After rain there are waterfalls, when Uluru is at its most astonishing. In summer the waterhole and the nearby rock art cave are a break from the heat.

Yulara's Town Square is the resort's center: a supermarket, shops, art galleries and cafés. Gecko's Café serves pizzas, pastas and salads (breakfast 7-10 am, all-day dining 11 am to 9 pm), and Kulata Academy Café (7 am to 2 pm) makes sandwiches, salads, muffins and pies. At Kulata, trainees of the National Indigenous Training Academy start their hospitality careers, so lunch is a small good deed.

More than 40% of the resort's workforce is Indigenous. Spend the hot part of the day in the galleries and the air conditioning.

It starts about an hour before sunset with canapes and sparkling wine on a dune top, then a three-course bush-tucker-inspired buffet at shared tables of up to ten, and a star talker who decodes the southern sky. It's in the Australian Tourism Hall of Fame and the one big splurge of this guide.

Return transfers are included (confirm the pickup point when booking). Children must be 10 or older (about 93 EUR, 150 AUD). The dune means an uphill walk of about 300 meters on soft sand. If the budget says no, watch the sunset free from a viewing area.