Life is a pretty surreal thing. Despite all the rampant claims, nobody really knows what we’re doing here, where we’re going or what the point of it all is. One human life, with all of its incredible complexities, fails to even register on the radar of Deep Time. Yet here we are, alive inside of it, on planet earth, breathing the air and having this experience, together.
It is often easy to forget this, however, ensconced as we all are in our daily lives. Sometimes we get so mired in the mundane that we miss the most telling moments of beauty, even as they dance right past our eyes.
On that note, we’ve put together a post of 10 places so beautiful you simply can’t miss them. They are stunning enough to appear as if from another planet. And, it may serve us to remember, to certain “others” out there in this great, vast cosmos, they are from another planet. Please take a moment to enjoy how amazing that really is.
1) Fly Geyser
A small geothermal geyser located on private land in Washoe County, Nevada, this surreal gem is deceptively small in person, only 5 feet high by 12 feet wide.
2) Zhangye Danxia
A national park in the foothills of Zhangye, Gansu province in China, its badlands are considered some of the most beautiful in the world.
3) Lake Hillier
A saline lake on the edge of Middle Island, part of the Recherche Archipelago off the south coast of Western Australia.
4) Grand Prismatic Spring
The largest hotspring in the united states, this truly surreal beauty is located in Yogi Bear territory (Yellowstone National Park) and, minus the indigo and violet, is a a liquid rainbow that must be quite something to witness in person.
5) Honghe Hani Rice Fields
Located in Yunnan, the most southwestern province in China, these Rice Terraces, when viewed from above, create a truly stunning ‘landscape painting.’
6) Sea of Stars
Glowing plankton are the cause of this incredibly surreal effect of a glittering ‘sea of stars’ on the reefs of the Maldives.
7) Tianzi Mountain
Yet another treasure from China, Tianzi Mountain boasts some of the most amazing, otherworldly rock formations on earth. Located in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, the highest pillar is an astounding 1263 meters high.
8) Abraham Lake
What a beauty, eh? This stunner is found in western Alberta, Canada, and, as depicted, creates quite the surreal picture, particularly when the sun is either rising or setting.
9) Glowworm Caves
As with the glowing phytoplankton of the above ‘Sea of Stars’, the ‘Glowworm Caves’ of Waitomo, Waikato are another beautiful example of bioluminescence in action.
10) Salar De Uyuni
At 10 000 square kilometers, the Salt Flats of southwest Bolivia are a sight so surreal they’ve been used as filming location for many science fiction movies, Star Wars not the least among them.
