My personal top 10 coolest places
that I've ever been to, dark or otherwise
2. Everywhere in North Korea, August 2005
3. Inland Iceland incl. swimming in Viti crater lake, August 2004
4. Auyan Tepui/Angel Falls, Canaima, Gran Sabana, Venezuela, December 2007
5. clambering down into Ijen crater with its sulphur mine blue flames in the middle of the night, Indonesia, August 2014
6. Camping and spending the night by the Darvaza flaming gas crater, Turkmenistan, November 2010
7. Sabi Sabi private game reserve safari (adjacent to Kruger Park), South Africa, August 2003
9. a week on St Helena, August 2018
others/runners-up:
-- seeing the old rusting oil installations on Absheron peninsula, especially off the northern tip of Artyom, east of Baku, Azerbaijan, August 2010
-- private top-to-bottom tour of the Titan Missila silo in Arizona, USA, April 2012
-- driving through and walking in the moonscape of the Lausitz strip-mining pits, Germany, 1995
-- seeing the glow of the active Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat at night, and its ashing plume and pycroclastic surges by day, December 2009
-- ballooning over Cappadocia, Turkey, August 2007
-- scenic flight by small plane from Swakopmund, Namibia, over the Namib desert and along the coast with its shipwrecks, August 2022
-- tours into the "Sperrgebiet" ('forbidden zone'), the restricted-access diamond-mining area in the Namib desert south of Lüderitz, Namibia, to see the ghost towns of Pomona and Elizabeth Bay, August 2022
-- by boat through the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela, December 2007/January 2008
-- Cape Wrath tour from Durness, Scotland, Great Britain, September 1991
-- driving in the Atacama desert, Chile, December 2011/January 2012
-- hiking in the volcanic moonscape of Cha das Caldeiras on Fogo, Cape Verde, January 2013
-- walking amongst the moai on Easter Island, December 2011
-- going to the remoteness of the Falkland Islands and getting close with penguins, December 2013/January 2014
-- feeding hyenas in Harar, Ethiopia, December 2019
-- flying in a helicopter over Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, August 2018
-- exploring the ex-prisons of Iles du Salut, French Guiana, August 2019
--- back to non-dark travel ---