Next-to-Impossible Destinations: Places You Cannot Simply Buy a Ticket To

In the 21st century you can reach almost anywhere on Earth within days, and usually within 36 hours if the place has an airport. Magellan's expedition, the first round-the-world trip, took three years, and only one of its five ships made it all the way; today a round-the-world flight takes a couple of days. Yet some places still cannot be reached by simply buying a ticket. A Wikivoyage guide collects them and explains what getting there takes.

Dunes of the Sahara desert (Photo: fr:Utilisateur:Jgremillot, CC BY-SA 3.0).

What counts as next-to-impossible

The guide admits the term is subjective and elastic, but it has to mean more than inconvenient. Even where a ticket exists it may be prohibitively expensive or need the right contacts and permits years ahead. The places fall into several groups:

• Remote destinations, the main focus. They lack regular transport, and often services, drinkable water, communication and even landing places. The way back may be harder than the way in.
• Politically restricted destinations. North Korea admits foreigners only in approved groups with minders. Iran is fairly easy for EU citizens but hard for US citizens. Saudi Arabia introduced tourist visas in 2019, but Mecca is open only to Muslims. Sometimes the problem is at home: it is difficult for US citizens to visit Cuba, and the UK has revoked the citizenship of people travelling to the conflict in Syria.
• Large, sparsely populated regions such as Australia's Outback, much of northern Canada, Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai and most tropical rainforests and deserts, though some places in them, like Uluru or Whitehorse, are easy to reach.
• Temporary closures (disasters, unrest, a pandemic), restricted areas such as military sites and borders, and war zones, where the advice is simply not to go. The guide notes that Vietnam, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia once seemed interminable conflicts and are now mainstream destinations.

It leaves out fictional places and the past and future.

A sampler

The coast of Navassa Island (Photo: USGS, Public domain).

Longboats on Pitcairn (Photo: Jens Bludau, CC BY-SA 3.0).

A view of Surtsey, one of the youngest pieces of land on Earth (Photo: CanonS2, CC BY-SA 2.0).

Rockall, with an Irish coast guard boat giving a sense of the rock's size and the swell breaking at it (Photo: Irish Defence Forces, CC BY 2.0).

The poles

In summer parts of Antarctica are mainstream cruise and air destinations, but a kilometre off that beaten path is expedition territory. In winter temperatures fall below -40 degrees, katabatic winds of hurricane force make it far colder, there is little or no daylight, the sea freezes and most research stations close. Marie Byrd Land is the largest tract of land in the world not claimed by any country. In the Arctic, apart from the North Pole, which can be reached on an expensive tour, nothing within 1,000 kilometers of the pole can be reached without an expedition. Franz Josef Land needs a permit from the Russian military, and the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, inhabited only by Russian military staff, hosted the largest man-made explosion ever, the Tsar Bomba, in 1961.

The Diomede Islands, Little Diomede in the US and Big Diomede in Russia, are the only place in the world besides Antarctica where you can see land across the International Date Line. The crossing is a few kilometers, but the paperwork is the real obstacle.

The Little (US) and Big (Russia) Diomedes, as seen from the north (Photo: Dave Cohoe, CC BY 3.0).

Beyond the usual map

The guide also points to unclimbed mountains, which call for real mountaineering experience and which some peoples consider sacred, and to caves, where the longer the system the less likely anyone has been there. The oceans offer wrecks and reefs few have seen, and the Challenger Deep, at about 11 km below sea level, is the deepest known point on Earth. Beyond low Earth orbit, space is off limits to tourists, as of the guide's writing.

Earth as seen from the Moon (Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center / NASA, Public domain).

Planning a trip like this

• Time and kit. It needs months or years of preparation. Everything must be brought: food, water, shelter, communication and navigation gear and emergency equipment, including a satellite phone. Beyond 80 degrees north or south, geosynchronous satellite signals fall below the horizon, though non-geosynchronous systems such as Iridium may still work.
• People. Gather a crew that includes someone with medical knowledge and someone with technical knowledge, and the sailing, flying, driving or survival skills the route needs. Some places effectively require a local guide. In polar bear country local authorities may let a native Inuit bear guard carry firearms, and Svalbard requires at least one member of any party to carry a firearm and know how to use it. A tour is the alternative; tours to places few visit run only a few times a year and cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars or euros.
• Permits and borders. Check immigration rules for every country you pass through. Entering in your own boat or plane may require a visa even for people who would not otherwise need one, and the country claiming a territory may check from the air.
• Getting in. A boat is often best for islands but means a long time at sea and no guarantee of a safe harbour. By land you may need a 4WD vehicle, walking or riding an animal. A private plane needs a place to land and take off, and a helicopter can land almost anywhere but has a short range. Maps are often poor, and near the magnetic poles compasses do not work as expected.

Safe, healthy and respectful

Expect severe weather. If an accident happens, you are on your own, with no ambulance to call, so a first aid kit, up-to-date vaccinations and a medical check beforehand matter. In deserts, wadis can flood without warning and drown a sleeping party. Military sites are not always marked on civilian maps, and authorities may react with scrutiny, refusal or worse. Do not bring animals, seeds or diseases to a remote island, and leave uncontacted peoples undisturbed.

Sources

• Wikivoyage contributors, "Next-to-impossible destinations," https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Next-to-impossible_destinations, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changed here: rewritten in hubnx's own words as an overview; most of the guide's destination list, links and listings left out; this version stays CC BY-SA 4.0. Photographs are credited in their captions under their own licences.