Which of these places would you like to visit?
From an island where its native people
Live in complete isolation and kill anyone who tries to visit them, to a cursed village where its citizens only live to be 35 years old.
And from super rare halos that appear
In the middle of greenland, to the most remote piece of land on the entire planet, here are the most isolated places on earth.
What if I told you that there was a country that has never recorded a single case of vid 19? This place is Nauru which is the smallest republic in the world. It is only 21 square kilometers in size, which is less than half the area of Manhattan. But that is not the only record that Nauru is currently holding
With just 200 visitors a year it is the least visited country in the world. One of the reasons for the low number of tourists could be its catastrophic past. About 200 years ago Europeans discovered phosphate deposits and turned the whole beautiful island into a massive strip mine. But when the phosphate reserves were depleted in the 1990s, all that the mines left behind was a destroyed environment.
Today, Nauru is infertile and 80% of the entire island is covered in limestone. This terrible mining also contaminated the waters and destroyed its ancient coral reef. Speaking of islands, our next place is North Sentinel Island where its native people have lived in complete isolation for most of the past 30,000 years. It is officially controlled by India. But if you had the silly idea of asking the people living there, they would very likely kill you. In fact, they will attack anyone who tries to enter this island. In 2018, a local tribe killed an American tourist who tried visiting the island. The 26-year-old John Allen Chau paid fishermen to ferry him over to the island.
The fishermen warned him not to go but he did not listen. Upon his arrival, he was immediately killed with arrows by the local people. Even other indigenous groups from nearby islands are cautious of the North Sentinelese. They ve lived so apart from them that at this stage they can t understand their language. But some people still made the mistake to visit the island. In 1771 British colonists shipwrecked and accidentally arrived on the island. They spent their time fending off attacks from the locals until they were rescued by The Royal Navy. In 1880, Royal Navy Officer.
Maurice Vidal Portman and his fleet arrived on the island. All of the islanders ran away, but four children were too slow and were captured. These children got very ill and were returned to the tribe. Thereafter, the locals associated outsiders with spreading diseases. In the 20th Century, anthropologist Trinok Nath Pandit spent decades trying to reach out. He would send presents like coconuts and fruits, and in 1991 he was finally in contact. He could not understand their language and communication was difficult, and soon a young boy made a gesture to say he was going to cut off his head. By 1996, they had stopped giving gifts and the Indian Navy established a buffer zone to keep curious visitors away.
Speaking of places that aren't very welcoming to tourists, our next place is North Korea, which is one of the most isolated countries in the world. After the Korean War ended about 70 years ago, the country split into North and South Korea. The North became a communist state and closed itself off from the rest of the world.
According to Vox, you can only own
A computer with permission from the government.
Then you get access to the few websites available that are controlled by the regime. Any information about its leader, Kim Jong Un, will be highly complementary. According to local news outlets, he could drive at the age of three, has discovered a drug that cures cancer, and can even control the weather. The country has a wealthy elite class and a functioning middle class.
But most of the people in North Korea are poor and struggle for basic supplies. In 2020, Sky News reported that North Korea had ordered its citizens to give up their pets, which were to be used as meat due to food shortages. International travel is very limited, and anyone who visits is under strict supervision. Those with US and South Korean passports are normally not allowed in, as North Korea sees these countries as their enemies. Most tourists come from China, a country that is a key ally to them. North Koreans cannot freely travel around the country, never mind travel to a different country. Since the Korean War ended, it's estimated that around 300,000 have somehow managed to escape. But if you re caught, you could be sent to a prisoner camp, or even killed.
Worst of all, if you do escape, the government will come for your family members and send them to a prison camp. So most people are trapped in this politically isolated place, with little or no contact with the outside world. From North Korea to North Africa, Siwa in Egypt is one of the most remote oasis in the world. Although part of Egypt, the region has its own language and culture. It is a place that you can visit, but it's very difficult to reach. To get to Siwa, you have to take a bus from Cairo which takes roughly 9 to 12 hours, traveling through bumpy and remote terrain. However, in recent years more and more people are trying to reach this isolated oasis as it received a massive tourist boost from being shared on Instagram. The oasis s salt pools contain so much salt that the water is extremely clear and you don t need to move a muscle to float.
Images from Instagram make it look like you are floating on air. So far we have only visited places that have a tropical or warm climate, but what about the North? Welcome to Ittoqqortoormiit in Greenland. This place is so isolated, that its guest house in Ittoqqortoormiit has been dubbed the most remote hotel on Earth. There are no cars and no phone signals. It's about as remote as the average tourist can get. Greenland is a country with the lowest population per square kilometer anywhere in the world. Its average population is literally 0.0 people per square kilometer, and the majority of the 57,000 citizens live in its capital, Nuuk. In Ittoqqortoormiit, residents have access to heating and electricity, and Wifi is available in the local recreation area.
You can order something on Amazon, and it will eventually arrive on a charter plane which travels once every two months. But if you want to get even further north, you can go to Alert in Canada. It is the northernmost continuously inhabited place in the world. But to travel here is easier said than done. It is not a village or town, but a military base for the Canadian military.
According to data from 2018, 80 people
Live there and they are 800 km away from the nearest community.
So even by plane, it will take
You at least 1 hour to get to the closest city.
But isolation isn't the only thing making life difficult in Alert.
There are 24 hours of sunlight in the summer, but 24 hours of darkness in the winter. Therefore, you will be medically screened before your arrival and anyone suffering from depression or alcoholism is advised not to go. You are limited to two drinks of alcohol per day when staying there. During the winter, the temperature drops below -50 degrees celsius. If you stay out too long in this cold you can lose consciousness, develop hypothermia and even die. Relatively close to the remote city of Alert lies the Summit Station, one of the world s most remote research stations. Funnily enough, the nearest town is Ittoqqortoormiit, which we've already covered and which has the most isolated hotel in the world. The Summit Station studies the Arctic climate system and its impact on the overall global climate.
But what makes this place so special are the super rare and unusual atmospheric optics. Under the right conditions, halos, sun dogs, and upper tangent arcs can be observed. The station lies on a mountain about 3.2 kilometers above sea level, which means that it is usually safe from polar bears. However in 2018, a polar bear did visit the station and everyone fled into the main house, while others lured it away by operating loud machinery and giving it food. It was the first polar bear to visit since 1988. And speaking of being high up, have you ever wondered what is the highest human settlement in the world? La Rinconada is a remote village in the Peruvian Andes. 5 kilometers up the mountains is something known as the town that loves playing the lottery. It received this name because its residents unfortunately often work themselves to death in hopes of finding gold.
The life expectancy in La Rinconada is just 30-35 years old. The workers operate according to a system in which they work for the mining company for 30 days without any pay. But on the 31st day, they can take as much rock out of the mine as they can carry on their shoulders. If the workers are lucky, the rocks will contain a small amount of gold. But if they're unlucky, they've worked the whole month for nothing. The village has become a world of its own. When the Peruvian police traveled up to control the area, the miners used dynamite from the mines to scare them away. Despite the gold surrounding the area, living conditions are tough.
There is a lack of running water, electricity, and plumbing. The gold is both a blessing and a curse for the village. Only a few have managed to become rich, but many died trying. Another remote location in Latin America is Brazil s Snake Island and it could be the most hostile place on earth. Not a single person lives here and you can probably gather why from its name. This island has between 2000-4000 lancehead pit vipers and has the highest concentration of venomous snakes in the world. It takes just one bite from one of these snakes and you will die a painful death within one hour. But lancehead pit vipers are not the only snakes on the island.
In fact, you can expect about one snake for every square meter of island.
There are local legends about the island.
One involved a local fisherman who went onto the island to get bananas and was soon found dead on his boat in a pool of blood. There s also the story of the lighthouse keeper on the island, who left the window open one night and he and his entire family were killed by a group of snakes. It s a place you wouldn't wish your worst enemy accidentally visited. The island became a snake island naturally. Sea levels rose after the end of the last ice age and the island was isolated from the rest of the land. The snakes on this island then had less ground-level animals to prey upon and started preying upon birds.
Over time, the snakes evolved and became more venomous. Their venom needs to work fast, or else the birds can just fly away. Today, they are three to five-time more venomous than snakes found in mainland Brazil. If you re crazy enough to visit this island, you need special clearance. The only people who visit the island are scientists, who extract venom from the snakes. The venom can be used then to develop medicine to potentially cure diseases. If you venture further across the Atlantic Ocean, you ll find Tristan da Cunha. It s been dubbed the world s most remote inhabited island group in the world.
And unlike most of the remote islands we ve mentioned earlier, there is no airport. To get to Tristan da Cunha, you need to get on a ship from Cape Town. Not only that, you need the island s permission to travel too. This is a 2810 km trip and will take about 6 days. Life has been very peaceful on this island, except in 1961 when the entire island had to be evacuated due to a volcano eruption. The island is a British territory so the islanders were brought over to England. After a few years, the islanders got homesick and simply moved back when it was safe to do so. But besides its volcano, this beautiful island does have another downside.
If you want to order something from Amazon, it will take four months to arrive. If that is not far away from humanity for you, you should try to get to Bouvet Island. It s s the most remote uninhabited island in the world as it is furthest from any other land on Earth. Getting there is extremely difficult. There are no airports nearby. There s not even a harbor on the island. It s technically a nature reserve so you re not allowed to visit, but it s unlikely there will be anyone there to forbid you from entering. The seas are rough and most of the island is covered in ice, so it s incredibly difficult to arrive by boat too.
What has been done in the past is to sail near the island and launch a helicopter from the boat onto the island. Only scientists and researchers ever visit the island. In the 1970s, the Norwegian government declared Bouvet island a nature reserve. Not a single human lives there, and the place receives rarely any visitors, so this is probably the most isolated piece of land you could find on Earth. But if the most isolated piece of land is still not far away from humanity for you, you could go one final step further. The most remote place on Earth is Point Nemo. This isn t actually an island or a piece of land, but a specific point in the Pacific ocean. It is the furthest point in the ocean from land.
You are as far from humanity as you can possibly get on Earth. Point Nemo is 2,688 kilometers from the nearest land in every different direction. The nearest islands are Ducie Island, Maher Island in Antarctica, and Moto Nui in the Easter Islands. But these are not really big islands either. In fact, Moto Nui is the only island of these with inhabitants and has a small population of 5700. So the people closest to Point Nemo might even be the astronauts orbiting 400 km above it on the International Space Station. Because this area is so remote, it is also used as a spacecraft dumping ground. Over the past 50 years, over 260 pieces of space junk have crashed into Point Nemo.
This is because it's safer to crash old satellites and spacecraft in the ocean rather than letting them float around randomly in space. But apart from some rocket parts and satellites that crash once every few months, there isn't much going on in this place.