All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
There is a reason why I use the term ‘Most Travelled Indian of the Natural World’. This is to make it clear that, first and foremost, my records are as an ‘Indian citizen’, who is just a ‘traveller and not an explorer’ and that my travels are ‘limited to our natural world’, our Planet Earth. This is important to understand since true exploration these days in the 21st century is in the space above and the waters below, both of which truly are alien worlds to us terrestrial beings. Space is the realm of these mega private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and to an extent Virgin Galactic, besides the government space-agency backed astronauts that go into space (100 km or more above, called the Karman Line) or the International Space Station/ISS (which orbits Earth at an altitude of 400 km).
Underwater exploration these days is also greatly propelled by private companies such as Triton Submarines with their ‘Limiting Factor DSV’ that goes 10.98 km deep into the Mariana Trench (deepest point on Earth) and the ill-fated Titan submersible of OceanGate which imploded on its adventure mission of reaching the wreck of the Titanic, resting 3.8 km deep in the Atlantic Ocean. Needless to say that, both, space and underwater are largely the domain of billionaire adventurers as the ticket prices right now are prohibitive, not to mention the extreme risk to life itself.
So most of us are not really explorers but that doesn’t mean we can’t see amazing things through the help of international travel companies and a network of air and land transport that connects so much of our blue-green globe today. In a way we are truly lucky to live in this time where we can be transported very quickly and comfortably to another part of the world, and from there the uncomfortable ‘off road’ destinations are really not that far (relatively speaking, of course). Hence, while we can’t be like the 644 professional astronauts who have been to space via government sponsored missions or as paid passengers of private space companies (as of February 2024), and we certainly can’t be like the super exclusive 12 men who have stepped on the lunar surface (all between 1969 to 1972), but we can visit places that look as alien as the Moon, Mars or any other planet outside our own. So you can definitely feel like you have stepped on Mars, at least a decade or two before some human actually does. That is exclusive too, and the best part is that you have a return ticket home and will hopefully live to tell the tale (it’s another thing if anyone else would want to hear the tale, again and again and again).
So, when you have such strange worlds right here on Earth, you know you have to somehow reach and witness them and soak in the larger reality of what is out there. Some of the suggestions that come top of my mind would be a visit to the volcanic desert lands of Northern Ethiopia called the Afar region (but avoidable right now due to the ongoing civil conflict), the largest salt flats in the world (Uyini) which are in Bolivia, the Altiplano and Atacama deserts in Bolivia and Chile, the Sahara Desert in Morocco, Algeria & Libya and the White Desert in Egypt.
You also have the surreal Namib Desert in Namibia, the volcanoes, glaciers & ice caves of Iceland, the bizarre landscapes of central Turkey in a region called Cappadocia and the crazy ‘white sand-turquoise water’ striped landscapes of Lencois Maranhenses in Brazil. If I talk about fire & ice, then the hot volcanoes of Wai-o-Tapu in New Zealand and the Yellowstone & Hawaii volcanoes in USA are some of the best places to be lost in. In contrast you have the ice worlds of the Arctic and Antarctica besides Russia’s Lake Baikal (when it’s frozen over in winters) and the remote Kamchatka Peninsula. Some more stunning and surreal worlds are the many deserts in Central Asia such as the Karakoram, Kyzylkum, Gobi and Taklimakan.
There is one more extremely remote part of this world and it is pretty hard to reach, but deserves a mention as it is considered the most Mars like landscape on Earth and NASA’s Mars mission practice drills are actually conducted on it. It’s called Davon Island in the far, far north of Canada, next to the West coast of Greenland. You will need to take at least 10 separate and unconnected flights from India before you reach Davon, so plan it well. I have been right next to it in the same cold-barren ecosystem of the far north archipelago.
Just know that the list of such alien places is long and if I were to fit it all into this article then it would take up the entire paper, so instead I will just tell you to Google ‘alien places on Earth’ and you will get a host of ideas from reputable sites such as BBC, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, TimeOut, Insider, Space.com, CNN amongst others. There is also one site on this topic that has an incredible list of 175, and for that you can Google ‘Bored Panda; 175 unbelievable places from another planet’. In fact when I had penned down the first version of this article for Lonely Planet guides 5 years ago (but not as detailed as this one), it was pretty much the first ever such publication. But since then ‘space’ has become popular (with SpaceX launches) and there is a lot of content in this ‘space’ now.
However, what the Google search on net will not get you is the linkage of these landscapes to the planets and moons of our solar system. For that there is only 1 unique article still, by yours truly, and you can simply Google ‘Nitin Gairola, Alien Planets on Earth’ (it came in last Sunday’s Garhwal Post). For a still deeper study on what our Solar System planets and moons look like, I strongly recommend searching for scientific and not travel content on these amazing worlds. I do like sites such as space.com and science.nasa.gov, in case you want to know.
If you can link the places on Earth with those in exo-worlds, then you will realise how your experience of being in such parts will ‘sky rocket to the orbit’ (couldn’t help this one). Whether you travel much or not, trust me you are already an explorer. We as humans are hardwired to explore and this mindset is even there in the new knowledge that we seek from books and articles such as these. It need not necessarily be the actual act of movement to reach a new destination, and there is certainly no need to see every such bizarre corner of Earth in order to feel good about yourself. The trick is that this knowledge gives you fresh eyes, so that when you actually do travel you can see what others with you simply can’t. For me, this hunger for knowledge and exploration (even as a humble traveller), is what makes me want to wake up every day, open the door and make it count. I only hope I inspire such curiosity and passion in a few of my readers too.
(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.)
