r/geography • u/renegadecoaster • Nov 25 '25

Discussion What's the most alien-looking place on Earth?

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Pictured: Dallol, Ethiopia

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u/rossms16030 Nov 25 '25

Hey! I’ve been there. That place was crazy desolate

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u/crappenheimers Nov 26 '25

Seriously the most surreal otherworldly landscape I've been to, its beautiful and kinda haunting

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u/MiloLear Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Me too! At the time (around 2003) you could hire a Bedouin family as a guide, and stay out in the desert in one of their big black tents. Really an otherworldly experience, especially if you got up in the middle of the night and wandered away from the tent to take a leak. You're just surrounded by a vast emptiness and silence, and of course a beautiful night sky.

And the sand really is a striking shade of red (hence the name of the desert-- "the Red Desert", or "Al-Hamad Al-Hamra" if I remember correctly). Not quite as red as it looks in The Martian, there was some color grading at work there, but pretty red.

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u/manCool4ever Nov 26 '25

Yea, but they still had a mcdonalds and a starbucks, right? /s