Whichever way you approach Uluru, you'll have travelled a hell of a long way to reach it. And the first glimpse of this enormous red rock in the middle of the desert literally stops you in your tracks.

Many people who make the trek here have one goal in mind, which is to climb it. But what a lot of tourist brochures don't tell you is that the Traditional Custodians, the Anangu people, ask that you don't. This, of course, seems at odds with the bloody great chain trailing up the rock face - which is at odds with the signs at the base that read: 'Please don't climb'. And so, many people figure by this point that they've travelled all this way and they're going to ignore the signs and climb anyway.

The chain is a legacy of the conditions that were laid down to the Anangu for the land to be returned to them in the 1980s (at which point its name reverted to its 40,000-plus-year-old name, Uluru, instead of the colonialised Ayres Rock).

And why the signs not to climb? There are two main reasons. First: safety. Upwards of 35 people have died climbing the rock, either by being blown off, or suffering heart attacks (it's the equivalent of scaling a 95-storey building), and the Anangu people experience tremendous sorrow when someone dies here (as you would if a guest died suddenly in your house/flat/car). Second: it's considered exceptionally sacred (so, for example, climbing it is like jumping up onto an altar in a Catholic church - regardless of whether or not you're remotely religious yourself).

Despite the fact that the people who put the chain up aren't the same people who put the signs up, removing the chain would clear up the confusion. (Although really, it shouldn't be necessary - the same way that churches don't have to have signs asking people not to jump up on the altar.) And 'please don't climb' is a simple and easy request. The main thing is that travellers know the situation ahead of time.

But the best experience of the rock doesn't actually involve climbing anyway. The path around the base is an awesome 9.4km walk that offers an endlessly changing panorama of the kaleidoscopic colours, intricate crevices, and Dreaming myths that are as timeless as the rock itself.