The world is a beautiful place. But within that beauty, sometimes inexplicable wonders and phenomena have kept men wondering for ages. Some unusual phenomena worldwide are creepy, while others are exhilarating. Stay on this page and learn some of the rarest phenomena you might ever hear about the world you live in.
1. Ethiopia’s Depression Zone
The Danakil Depression in Ethiopia might flaunt some of the most colourful geographical formations you’ll see, but it’s also one of the hottest spots on Earth. Although uninhabitable, the landscape is one of Ethiopia’s leading tourist attractions.
Visitors come to see its teeming hot springs, steaming fissures, and salt mountains firsthand. The Danakil Depression Zone sits over 400 feet below sea level, and temperatures can sometimes reach up to 122 degrees. Worse still, the bubbling water could reach 212 degrees with a more acidic concentration than you’d find in battery acid.
2. ‘The Door To Hell,’ Turkmenistan
For about five decades (and counting), the Door to Hell has been raging with incredible flames, thanks (or no thanks?!) to some mishap around an ill-fated Soviet oil rig in 1971. Officially known as the Darvaza Crater, the Door to Hell is a continuously burning, 224-foot-wide, 99-foot-deep crater in a natural gas field somewhere in Turkmenistan.
A Soviet oil rig fell into the crater in 1971, and was possibly a victim of some drilling mishap. Unsurprisingly, the fiery pit is located in a barren landscape and has never received any willing (or known) human visitors until 2013, when explorer George Kouronis plunged into the flaming crater to collect soil samples.
3. Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa in California
Don’t be jarred by the name; the location is named after the Death Valley National Park, renowned for housing mysterious moving rocks. The rocks tumble from mountains and move across a level playa surface for up to 1,500 feet, leaving tracks behind. Well, tourists might not get to see much movement in person, since the movements can take up to a decade to complete. However, the very sight of mountain racetracks across a plane Playa surface is enough to jar even the most traveled people.
4. England’s Bolton Strid
Forgive the list if it’s sounding too creepy or deathly already. But, like other mentions in this list, these locations and phenomena are by-products of nature’s inexplicable possibilities. Enter the small but mighty Bolton Strid on the River Wharfe, which is renowned as one of the deadliest water bodies on Earth.
Only about 6 feet from bank to bank, it looks like a quaint babbling brook. But its smaller size is the same reason behind its deadliness. The creek rapidly narrows into a rocky terrain as the river becomes narrower, deeper, and more treacherous.
Sadly, a few years upstream gives an illusion of a shallow and wide river, which is probably partly responsible for the river’s 100% fatality rate. You heard that, anyone who ended up in the water, either by purpose or by accident, was a lost cause.
5. Venezuela’s Catatumbo Lightning
Catalumbo lighting, also called the lanterns of San Antonio or lanterns of Maracaibo, refers to a meteorological phenomenon that occurs in Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo basin. The location where the Catatumbo River and Lake Maracaibo meet is called the lightning capital of the world, thanks to the over 1.5 million lightning strikes that visit the terrain annually.
Geography experts explain that warm air from the Caribbean meets the cold air from nearby mountains, causing a lightning storm almost 300 nights annually. The lighting is almost constant and flashes at an average of 28 times per minute.
Conclusion
Nature has given mankind lots of beautiful things for everyone to explore. But perhaps only the most adventurous minds can willingly approach these unusual natural phenomena in person. Which of these destinations would you mind visiting on a guided tour, and why?
