Travel

All of us have seen paintings of artists and seen their brilliant imagination expressed on a canvas, and thought to ourselves, where is this craziness coming from. We are used to the ordinary, peaceful, and calming nature we usually turn to soothe our soul, but nature can actually go way beyond that at times. That painting of an artist we see on a canvas can get even wilder in real life, and if you still need proof, we’re here to give you exactly that! Just check out the gallery below we have put together for you to understand what we’re talking about much better.

Nature never ceases to amaze us, and especially during these trying times when everything seems kind of depressing and boring, it’s always nice to look at some fascinating things. The photographers on our list managed to capture one of the most mind-blowing things nature has given to us-aurora borealis. This stunning phenomenon occurs in high-latitude places due to the disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind. Aurora borealis is very colorful, gorgeous, and to be honest, it seems like something magical. There are a lot of people that are dying to see it in real life; unfortunately, no one knows when we will be able to travel again, so let’s just check out the winners of the contest organized by Capture the Atlas from the safety of our homes. In the gallery below, you are going to find the 15 of the best photos participated in the contest, so just sit back and enjoy!

Our planet Earth is actually an unbelievably beautiful place. Even though there are very popular tourist spots that many people want to see, there still are places that no one knows of. Most of us already know about all the popular tourist destinations, but there are also many places that fall under the radar, usually only known by the locals there. But today is your lucky day, dear reader! We made good research on those places and crated this list just for you to show you some of the most amazing places we have found. If you want to visit somewhere that hasn’t been impacted by humans much, then you’re going to love our list. So get ready to see some amazing photos of fantastic places, and scroll down to see them for yourself!

Everyone knows about Niagara, and also Yosemite, but actually, the US is littered with incredible waterfalls. If there’s only one thing the US knows how to do (and there might be), it’s obtaining natural wonders. You probably think you already know all the big ones- and you may also think the rest are all smushed into the Pacific Northwest- however, there are a ton of them that are worth knowing about. A couple of them are important state attractions, others a reward for those who bother to visit those places. From Washington to New York, here are some of the most breathtaking falls you can find in the US during the amazing autumn season.

This may be one of the most interesting toilets of all time. If you like watching underwater and don’t mind them while you are using the toilet. It is just for you. Scroll down to see this interesting toilet.

Photograph artist Karim Bouchetata has taken gorgeous images of ice on sand dunes in the Sahara as temperatures dipped below freezing. 

A British Columbia native named Bert ter Hart has been named the eighth person in the world (and first in North America) to circumnavigate the world alone using merely celestial navigation.

Okunoshima is a tiny island that can be found in the Inland Sea of Japan between Hiroshima and Shikoku. In the World War II era, this island used to be a very confidential military site producing poison gas for chemical warfare. Nowadays, you can find adorable fluffy bunnies all over the island and they're the main inhabitants of this island. Between the years 1929 and 1945, Okunoshima Island was used to produce and provide poison gas for the Imperial Japanese Army, and it's believed that more than six kilotons of mustard gas were manufactured. The island was suitable for this job mainly because of its isolated location, so it was a secure place, and also it was far enough from Tokyo and other areas in case of disaster. The program was conducted in secret and when it had been active for 16 years, Okunoshima was even erased from maps. The people who were living on the island and potential workers weren't told what the plant was producing and everything was very confidential.

This weird -ooking landscape that is filled with craters just like the surface of the moon in the middle of Thetford Forest in Norfolk, England looks highly similar to mortar craters in Normandy and Somme from the First World War. However these craters in Norfolk have a different background story, and even though their name suggests otherwise, they're not actually graves. In reality, Grime's Graves is a huge flint mining complex from the Neolithic age that's more than 4,500 years old. In the New Stone Age, flint- a solid, mineralized version of quartz- was a precious natural resource and extremely prized due to its tendency to break into small flakes with a razor-sharp edge that was very convenient to make tools and weapons. So, flint kept on being used for many centuries even after men started to make tools out of metals.

Nullarbor Plain is an extensive, featureless place that can be found on the Great Australian Bight in Southern Australia. 

There are sunken lanes you can come across all across the European countryside that are called holloways, and they seem like trenches dredged through the earth or tunnels cleared through the forest. In the past, they began at the ground level, however over time, under the tread of a million feet and chariots carrying people and things, the floor of these roads have worn away, and eroded down to the bedrock, creating trenches that lay beneath the level of the surrounding landscape. Many of these ancient passages have high banks on both sides and they used to be used as temporary waterways during rains, which deepened and widened the paths, even more, making them permanent features of the landscape. A number of these paths are twenty to thirty feet deep and it can be said that they are more like ravines than roads.

Giuliano Mauri's "Cattedrale Vegetale" is perhaps the most striking work of 'natural architecture' on Earth.

It's possible to find a very interesting geological formation also known as "earth pyramids" at a lot of places across South Tyrol, in northern Italy. 

Tam Coc can be found approximately 90 km from the city of Ninh Binh and is thought to be one of Vietnam's most eye-catching sights. The literal translation of Tam Coc means "three caves", and those three caves are Hang Ca (the first), Hang Giua (the second), and Hang Cuoi (the smallest). 

The town of Maras can be found 40 kilometers north of Cuzco in Peru, in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The town is famous for its nearby salt evaporation ponds which have been in use since Inca times. Thousands of asymmetrical square-shaped ponds stretch in the slopes of the hillside less than a kilometer west of the town. These pre-Inca salt pools were built during the Chanapata culture from AD 200 to AD 900. Extremely salty water emerging from the Qoripujio spring, near the head of the valley, is directed into a complex network of small channels constructed so that the water runs slowly down onto a couple of hundred prehistoric terraced bonds. Nearly all the ponds are less than four meters square in the region, and none of them exceeds thirty centimeters in depth. The flow of water is delicately controlled and kept track of by the workers. The altitude of the ponds gradually decreases, so that the water may flow through the multitude of branches of the water-supply channels and be introduces slowly through a dent in one sidewall of every pond.

Cleft Island which is also called Skull Rock, is a granite island that can be found off the coast of Wilsons Promontory in the state of Victoria, in Australia. The island is a part of a group that consists of three islands named the Anser Group and is one of the most strikingly beautiful of all islands in Wilsons Promontory.

Terrace Cultivation which is also called Step Farming is a technique that's used to cultivate inclined land such as on hilly or mountainous terrain. Terraced fields are effective when it comes to decreasing erosion and surface runoff, and also they're better when it comes to growing crops that require a lot of water, such as rice. In many of these farming systems, the terrace is a low, flat ridge of soil built across the slope, with a channel for runoff water right above the ridge. More often than not, terraces are built on a slight grade so that the water the channel is holding moves slowly toward the terrace outlet. In places where soils are capable of taking in water readily and rainfall is low compared to the other places, level terraces may be used. Terraced paddy fields are used commonly in rice farming in east, south, and southeast Asia, including China, Japan, and the Philippines. The examples of terrace farming can also be commonly seen throughout the Mediterranean Basin, where they were used for vineyards, olive trees, cork oak, etc., and in some areas of Africa. In the Andes, farmers have used terraces for more than a thousand years to farm potatoes, maize, and other crops.

You can find this gorgeous bay surrounded by magnificent cliffs just a 30-minute drive away from the city of Vladivostok, Russia. Until recently, a local porcelain factory was using this beach here as a dumping ground, or these are the rumors about this beach. 

You can find this gorgeous bay surrounded by magnificent cliffs just a 30-minute drive away from the city of Vladivostok, Russia. Until recently, a local porcelain factory was using this beach here as a dumping ground, or these are the rumors about this beach. Another story suggests that the waste glass products were washed away by the river and then swept into the sea. Nowadays, however, the seaside on Ussuri Bay has a very unique appearance. Millions of broken pieces of glass, rounded smooth by the merciless pounding of the ocean waves cover every part of the beach. If you see them on a sunny day, they sparkle like lighted candles. The glass beach on Ussuri Bay is not the only unusual beach on the planet, though. There is another one with a similar background story in MacKerricher State Park close to Fort Bragg, California.

Salar de Uyuni (a.k.a. Salar de Tunupa) which can be found in southwest Bolivia, close to the crest of the Andes, is one of the most visually striking places in South America. Photographers swarm here on a daily basis to capture the fascinating landscape created by spectacular geological formations, geothermal springs and, brine lakes. Extending in an area of 10,582 square kilometers, it's the biggest salt flat in the world. Salar de Uyuni approximately has a reserve of 10 billion tons of salt. Approximately 30 to 40 thousand years ago, this region was a part of a massive prehistoric lake named Lake Minchin. The lake went through a series of transformations between a couple of giant lakes, and when it dried, it created two modern lakes, Poopo Lake and Uru Uru Lake, and two important salt deserts, Salar de Coipasa and the larger Salar de Uyuni.

When we think of the word "beach", we usually imagine a place full of sand, but that's not always the case. It's possible to find beaches made of seashells, broken glasses pounded smooth by the waves and pebbles. While it's not rare to find pebbles on most beaches, beaches made completely of pebbles are actually few and far between. We can't exactly say they are rare, though (according to some websites, there are only five pebble beaches in the world and that is not true).

Prabalgad Fort, also known as Kalavantin Durg (Kalavantin's Fort) can be found between Matheran and Panvel in the Indian state of Maharashtra, 2,300 feet above the ground in the Western Ghats.

Yellowstone National Park that can be found in Wyoming, the USA, is one of the most geothermically active areas on Earth. It's possible to find half of the entire world's geothermal features here. The park extends on an area of approximately 9000 square km and consists of 10,000 geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles, because of its location in an ancient active caldera. Yellowstone itself is one huge supervolcano that erupted with massive force a couple of times in the last two million years. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions can be found everywhere in the land area of the park. The park is located right in the middle of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the biggest remaining, an almost intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. Below are some of the most beautiful hot springs that can be found in Yellowstone National Park.

Lake Tekapo is the second biggest of three almost parallel lakes running north-south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin in the South Island of New Zealand. 

Flysch is a sedimentary rock created by the alternate overthrow of thin layers of silt and sandstone, and you can find flysch close to the shorelines that are swiftly experiencing changes in sea level. 

Although fireflies use their lights not only for sparkle but also create signals among them, they are inevitable beauties of the summer nights with their charm. 

Are you ready to travel the world and discover amazing places with me?

The Niagara Falls which fall between the border of Canada and the United States is a world-famous site that attracts millions of tourists. People come from all around the world to appreciate its beauty, but only the tourists that visited the place in the very cold weather got the chance to capture it in this bizarre yet hauntingly beautiful state.

Almost everyone loves to swim, especially in the scorching heat of summer days; we all want to throw ourselves into the water, and if you prefer the sea because you don't like the chlorine of the pool, you are in the right place. 

A Scottish doctor built this castle, which sprawls the top of a mountain in Zhejiang, China, in 1910. This castle, which has medieval roots, has been turned into a hotel today. The origination of the castle was preserved and rebuilt by the architectural firm Shanghai Tianhua Architectural Design. An image from the castle and the vegetation surrounding it