The world is full of incredible, awe-inspiring wonders.
So why do we only ever hear about the same ones over and over again?
I mean, there's only so many times you can look at a long wall, or a sandy triangle,
or a bunch of rocks before getting bored.
That's why we're going to mix things up here, and show you 10 amazing places that
are so underappreciated even your most hipster friend won't have heard of them.
These are 10 Wonders of the World You Won't Have Heard Of:
10) Las Pozas If you had insane amounts of money what would
you do with it?
Would you go the Bill Gates route up set up charity after charity hoping to improve the
world?
Or would you go down the Dan Bilzerian road and throw it all into guns and poker?
Well, in the 1940s Edward James knew exactly what he wanted to do.
James was the heir to a giant railroad fortune, and a man so blue-blooded there were rumours
that he was the illegitimate son of the Prince of Wales.
In 1949 he decided to use his cash in the best way possible: building an insane surrealist
kingdom in the Mexican jungle.
Located at the exact middle of nowhere, the ridiculous sculpture park stretches out for
323 square kilometres.
In it are dozens of buildings and sculptures so absurd they could make Salvador Dali's
moustache erect.
The most famous of the collection are The Stairway to Heaven, The Temple of the Ducks,
and The House With Three Floors That WIll In Fact Have Five Or Four Or Six.
35 years, $5 million, and probably a crate load of psychedelics later, Edward James passed
away, and the project stopped being expanded.
9) Giant Buddha In Buddhist belief, Maitreya Buddha is a future
leader who will one day come down to Earth to teach mankind tranquility.
And what better way to celebrate a figure associated with peaceful reflection, than
building a statue of him that looks like it's about to get up and fight Godzilla?
The Leshan Giant Buddha has been sitting in the Sichuan province of China since 713CE,
when a local monk called Hai Tong decided to build it.
You see the Minjiang river had a history of causing shipwrecks, and Hai Tong hoped that
having a religious figure/transformer-sized stone monster on the banks would bless the
waters.
Although Tong never lived to see his statue finished in 803CE, it's safe to say he'd
be pleased with the result.
At 71 metres tall, the buddha is comfortably the largest statue build in ancient times.
Even with modern construction techniques only 17 statues bigger than it have ever been made.
If you need a sense of this thing's scale, just remember: The Leshen Buddha's fingernail
is around the size of a person.
And in case you're wondering, yes.
The river did calm down and become a valuable trade route.
Of course, that may have less to do with divine providence, and more to do with the fact that
building the Buddha took so much clay from the riverbed that it ended up significantly
widening the river.
8) Kamchatka Ice Caves From the top, this block of ice in Russia
just looks like... well a block of ice.
But venture inside and it looks like someone's holding a rave in a Bond villain's lair.
This icy acid trip is known as the Kamchatka ice cave, and it's the accidental lovechild
of a glacier and a volcano..
You see, the Mutnovsky volcano has a series of hot water springs gushing out from it.
One of these springs starting flowing under a glacier, melting a path right through the
heart of it.
As the ice thinned unevenly overhead, sunlight started to pass through the roof at different
strengths.
The result is a kilometre-long ice tunnel with its own mood-lighting.
Despite its spectacular appearance, the ice cave has remained relatively unknown, mainly
because foreign tourists weren't allowed into the Kamchatka region until the Soviet
Union fell.
Ever since tourists have been allowed, few have taken the opportunity.
After all, shivering for two weeks in a region that makes that makes Siberia look like a
beach resort is not most people's idea of fun.
7) Lake Hellier I'll say it: lakes are boring.
Sorry if I'm triggering any lake enthusiasts out there, but it's true.
I don't care if it's Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, or Lake Victoria; they're all
just a bunch of glorified ponds.
Hell, Loch Ness even has to pretend it has a monster in it just to get people to visit.
Fortunately, there is one lake in Australia making an effort to be interesting.
You see, while most lakes are that same murky blue colour, Lake Hellier in Australia is
the pinkest thing you've ever seen.
Discovered in 1803, the lake's distinctive bubblegum coloring remained a mystery for
decades.
Outside of theories like "Maybe the Pink Panther went skinny dipping", people had
no idea what was going on.
But scientists now believe that the eye-catching tint is the result of micro-organisms reacting
with the Lake's highly salty waters.
It's the same phenomenon that causes electric blue waves in San Diego and red tides in Sydney.
6) Fly geyser Nevada is home to casinos the size of cruise
ships, ripped-off monuments from around the world, and legal hookers.
With all that on offer, it's not surprising people don't take the time to visit a geyser
in the middle of the Black Rock desert.
Well, that and the fact it's technically on private property, so the only way to see
it is to either get permission.
Or you know, just trespass.
What's that?
Our legal team would like me to point out that you should under no circumstances trespass
on private property.
How ever you do it, Fly Geyser is totally worth checking out if you can.
This bizarre-looking water fountain may look like a massive version of the eggs from Alien.
But in fact, it's completely man-made.
Sort of.
In 1964, a geothermal energy company accidently created the geyser when drilling for hot water
springs underground.
The company failed to properly reseal one of the holes they drilled, and boiling hot
water started shooting out of it.
A pillar of calcium carbonate gradually started to form around the releasing water, and over
the course of 50 years it grew into a geyser 3.7 metres tall.
5) Mount Roraima Forget posting pictures of your avocado and
prawn toast, if you want to win Instagram forever just share this.
That cloud-splitting slab of mountain-y awesomeness is Mount Roraima.
Nestled between Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana, the flat-topped mountain is thought to be
one of the oldest geological formations in the world.
How long has Roraima been there?
Only two billion years.
That's older than the Grand Canyon, Uluru, AND Judi Dench.
If you fancy a visit, the mountain can be climbed.
But be warned, the ascent is considered extremely dangerous and difficult.
Basically unless you're Spiderman or Chuck Norris, you're not going to make it.
Apart from the incredible views, there's not much at the top anyway.
The 30 kilometre plateau is home to only a few species of plant and no animals can survive
there.
Still, the views are amazing.
At 2,700 metres high, Mount Roraima may not be one of the tallest mountains in the world.
But few could deny it's one of the most stunning.
4) Borobudur Although no-one knows exactly who built this
ancient Indonesian temple, one thing is clear: they must have pissed off Mother Nature at
some point.
How else can you explain the structure getting hit with every disaster short of a Sharknado?
Borobudur temple was constructed in the 9th century CE, and to this day is the largest
Buddhist temple in the world.
123 metres long and wide, the square temple is made of nine stone platforms stacked on
top of each other.
Most impressively, the temple uses no cement or mortar to bind it, and is held together
by its weight alone.
Pretty crazy right?
If you take one thing away from this video, let it be this: the ancient Buddhists didn't
mess about when it came to architecture.
As I said earlier, this temple has had to face some pretty intense challenges.
First it was buried under a coat of volcanic ash in 1000CE.
That stopped anyone rediscovering the temple until 1815, when a British explorer stumbled
across it.
Then in 1985, terrorist bombings of the site failed to bring the building down.
Even in 2006, when the region was hit with a 6.2 richter scale earthquake,Borobudur remained
intact.
The earthquake obliterated the nearby city of Yogykarta but the temple didn't even
wobble.
I guess if you can carve a 70-metre stone deity out of a mountain, you can build a temple
that nature itself can't kill.
3) Derawer Fort In 1733, Sadeq Mohammad Khan and his armies
captured a poxy fort in the way out in the Cholistan desert of modern-day Pakistan.
The stronghold had been built in the 9th century CE and, like most 900-year-old building, needed
a bit of a makeover.
Fortunately Sadeq was powerful enough to give the antique building the renovation it deserved,
and the stunning result has become known as the Derawer Fort.
Spanning one and a half square kilometres, the fort contains housing, a mosque and even
a cemetery.
All protected by 40 formidable bastions and a brick wall 30 metres high.
Why build such an impressive structure so far in the desert only camels and sand are
going to see it?
Simple.
Derawer Fort lies over a deep pocket of underground water.
And, since deserts tend to be get about as rainfall as the Sun, water is an extremely
valuable resource.
Unfortunately, while no army could destroy this amazing construction, time and neglect
have started to.
The fort being tucked away in a desert makes it hard to sell as a tourist attraction, and
few groups have expressed any interest in funding Derawer's upkeep.
2) Forest of Knives Here's a sentence I never thought I'd
say: lemurs are freaking badass.
No, not the ones that get to doss around in the rainforest or keep appearing in Dreamworks
movies.
I mean the ones that choose to live somewhere that makes Mordor look homely.
This is Tsingy de Bemaraha [Sing-ee de B-mara-ha], a 600 square kilometre national park in central
Madagascar.
The giant slab of limestone that once covered the region has eroded extremely unevenly,
creating millions of rock daggers each upwards of 300 feet tall.
As if the sea of stoney spikes didn't make this place amazing enough, there are also
mountains that look like they're floating, Temple of Doom-like bridge canyons and literally
thousands of hidden caverns and caves.
Most of the region remains unexplored to this day, mainly because people prefer to explore
areas where the floor isn't made of murder.
But despite being largely uncharted, Tsingy de Bemaraha has still become notorious enough
to earn the incredibly awesome nickname: "the forest of knives."
1) Chand baori As we've already established, water was
pretty important to the ancient world.
And while the people of Pakistan were busy building castles to protect theirs, a village
in Rajasthan was coming up with an innovative way of accessing its water.
Abhaneri is a tiny village in the remote Eastern corner of India.
With low rainfall and temperatures regularly reaching 40 degrees celsius, there's almost
no water on the surface.
So in 800CE, the locals did what anyone would: dig an insanely over-the-top hole.
Chand baori is the oldest and largest stepwell in the world.
30 metres deep, the well descends through 3,500 steps and a series of 13 stories.
So there you, problem solved.
Now if the people of Abhaneri want water all they have to do is scale down 30 metres of
steep and presumably wet stairs while carrying a bucket, fill it up, and climb their way
back up without spilling any.
Easy peasy.
Relatively uncelebrated for over a thousand years, this amazing feat of architecture gained
a claim to fame after it was used to film the pit scenes in The Dark Knight Rises.
And as we all know, anywhere Batman has visited is instantly made 500% more epic.
So, that was 10 Wonders of the World You Won't Have Heard Of.
What lesser known wonder was your favourite.
Are there some amazing wonders that you've heard of and we haven't?
Let us know in the comments below.
And if you want more amazing locations, check out 10 Weird Wonders of the World, playing
now.
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