Eleven Otherworldly Places and the Stories behind Their Photographs

Some landscapes make you stop because they seem to break the usual rules: trees with umbrella-shaped crowns, a forest standing in water or a cave lit by living points of light.

Eleven settings appear below, beginning with five landscapes explored in closer detail. Some owe their appearance to biology or geology; others record a shipwreck, an unfinished development or a sculpture. The explanation is often as interesting as the first impression. Understanding what you are looking at also helps separate a surviving place from a historical photograph of something that has changed, vanished or been moved.

Socotra: a distinctive island flora

Socotra’s dragon’s blood trees give parts of the landscape a recognisable silhouette. The archipelago’s UNESCO account explains its exceptional biodiversity and high proportion of species found nowhere else.

That is a more useful starting point than describing the island as an empty alien world. Socotra is also a lived-in place with communities and a fragile environment.

It belongs to Yemen. At this review, the UK FCDO advised against all travel to Yemen; the island photographs are not an invitation to overlook that context. Our Socotra feature explores the landscape in greater depth.

Wulingyuan: sandstone pillars in Hunan

The dramatic pillars around Wulingyuan, including the Tianzi Mountain area, are often confused with limestone scenery elsewhere in Asia.

UNESCO identifies the characteristic formations as quartz sandstone. Their shape and the spaces between them create the layered views that have made the area so widely photographed.

A picture can make the columns appear almost detached from the terrain. Look for vegetation and changes in height to understand their connection to the wider landscape.

Lake Kaindy: water above a former forest

Kazakhstan’s Lake Kaindy is known for tree trunks rising from its surface. A University of Pennsylvania geographical feature describes how a landslide triggered by the 1911 earthquake created a natural dam, after which the valley filled with water.

The forest was inundated; it was not simply pushed intact to the bottom of a ready-made lake. That sequence gives the visible trunks a clearer story.

Lake Hillier: famous colour that can change

Lake Hillier, on Middle Island off Western Australia, became famous for its vivid pink appearance. Older photographs should not be treated as proof of a permanent colour.

Tourism Western Australia explains that heavy rainfall in 2022 diluted the lake’s salt levels and its bright pink colour was lost. Its appearance remains subject to natural variation.

The lake’s striking appearance does not establish that it is suitable for swimming. Its environmental setting and access arrangements deserve attention beyond the colour.

Waitomo: light made by living organisms

Waitomo’s glowworms create a very different visual surprise. In darkness, their small points of light can draw your attention away from the cave’s scale and towards the living things within it.

Our Waitomo guide and comparison of cave experiences explain how to distinguish the guided visit from other underground activities.

Let the explanation deepen the view

Ask what makes the place unusual, what is changing and what a visitor can realistically experience. Those questions add interest without requiring a sensational claim.

A landscape can remain astonishing after you understand it. Often, that is when the real curiosity begins.

Socotra: an island with its own biological history

The umbrella-shaped dragon’s blood trees give Socotra a distinctive silhouette. Their shape is only the most visible part of a much broader island ecosystem. Treat the landscape as a living place with communities and conservation needs, rather than an interchangeable backdrop for a fantasy photograph. The travel context in the guide above is essential to any present-day interpretation.

Wonderland: a vanished construction project in China

The castle-like structure in the old photograph belonged to an unfinished amusement-park project, not a medieval ruin. Construction stopped in the late 1990s, and the remains were demolished in 2013. That sequence explains both the empty atmosphere of the picture and why the same scene cannot be offered as a standing attraction today. Its appeal now is as a record of an unrealised development.

Mar Sem Fim: a shipwreck that was later raised

The Brazilian vessel sank off King George Island in April 2012. Its owner’s account documents its recovery during the following Antarctic summer, using inflatable lifting equipment. The ghostly underwater photograph therefore records a temporary stage in the vessel’s history. It is not an enduring underwater installation waiting for visitors beneath the ice.

The owner also identifies the depth as about twelve metres. Keeping the sinking, photograph and salvage in order gives the image a much clearer story than describing a mysterious ship left indefinitely on the seabed. The recovery was a substantial operation in difficult conditions, not a casual retrieval after a sightseeing dive.

Pripyat: a city changed by evacuation and time

The abandoned city is associated with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the evacuation that followed. Buildings, vegetation and material conditions have continued changing since then. Calling it perfectly preserved would erase those decades. The photograph records one moment in that later history, while the human significance lies in the lives and homes abruptly left behind.

Tianzi: sandstone pillars in the Wulingyuan landscape

The slender rock towers are sandstone formations. Their separation, vertical faces and vegetation create the layered view that makes the landscape so recognisable. Tianzi also needs distinguishing from Tianmen Mountain: similar names do not make them the same attraction. A route planned for one will not automatically deliver the scenery of the other.

Kaindy: trunks above a lake, not a forest pushed uphill

The lake formed when a landslide associated with the 1911 earthquake dammed the valley. Trees were flooded where they stood, leaving trunks projecting above the new surface. Their positions make the change unusually visible: parts of the former valley remain readable through the water and the standing timber, linking the earlier landscape with the lake now occupying it.

Lake Hillier: colour that belongs to changing conditions

The contrast between the lake, surrounding vegetation and ocean made the aerial image famous. Its colour should not be treated as a permanent paint sample: the changes described above matter when interpreting older photographs. An aerial picture also does not establish public access to the shore or permission to enter the water.

Waitomo: light from living organisms

The points of light are produced by glowworms, not mineral crystals shining in the cave. Darkness and the low viewing angle turn the ceiling into the familiar star-like scene. A guided cave experience places that view within a living environment, where lighting, noise and photography arrangements help determine how the encounter works.

Christ of the Abyss: an underwater sculpture near San Fruttuoso

The Italian bronze sculpture was made by Guido Galletti and placed underwater in 1954. Galletti's role was that of the sculptor, rather than the diver commemorated by the work. The raised arms and filtered light give the work its recognisable appearance. The Italian setting must also be distinguished from other casts and similarly named underwater statues elsewhere.

Abraham Lake: gas trapped in layers of ice

The pale discs are bubbles caught as the water freezes. The gas itself has not become a stack of solid methane tablets. Different freezing stages can leave bubbles at several depths, creating the layered appearance in a photograph. Such an image does not establish safe ice thickness or access conditions for the day a visitor arrives.

Darvaza: separate the gas crater from its familiar origin story

The burning crater in Turkmenistan has often been accompanied by an oversimplified story about a single accident in 1971. Satellite-based research reported by the Universitat Politècnica de València in 2026 instead places the onset of the visible fire between September 1987 and February 1988. That finding concerns the fire’s history, not a promise about its future duration.

The photograph remains a striking record of flames across a crater floor. Its geological setting, the escape of gas and the timing of combustion are separate questions. Treating them separately avoids turning an uncertain anecdote into a precise chronology or forecasting that the flames will continue unchanged forever.