There is no question about the beauty and serenity of a mountain or a sea, but there is another such magnificent kind of landscape that we tend to forget while vacationing, and that is the Desert. Where both mountains and oceans give you a sense of leisure and serenity, a desert is serene and solitude coupled with adventure. Deserts are places with endless opportunities for discoveries that have been traversed by explorers and nomadic peoples for centuries. With warm or cold breezes, expansive sky, and the sounds of the wildlife it’s a perfect destination for anyone who wants to experience nature up close. But before going into selection, you need to understand that all deserts are not the same, they are major of four types: coastal, subtropical, polar and cold. Each of them is tremendously diverse, possessing its own unique beauty, with temperatures ranging from hot to frigid.
So let’s look at some of these amazing arts of nature
The Sahara Desert, North Africa
One of the most beautiful and greatest deserts, Sahara is the third-largest desert and the hottest desert on Earth. It encompasses much of the land in North Africa with 8.6 million square kilometres and covers most of Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Niger, and Mali. It has classic enormous sand dunes, wells and dry oases.
The Namib Desert, Namibia
Located along the southern coast of Africa, the Namib Desert is considered the oldest deserts in the world with a history of 45 to 80 million years. It is also home to a diverse group of animal and plant species, some of which are unique to this part of the world. The sand dunes of this desert reach the Atlantic Ocean, where the cold ocean waves carve shapes into the neighbouring sand. Thus, there is a high chance of finding whale and seal bones that have washed up onto the shore, as well as the remains of shipwrecks from Atlantic voyages
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
This majestical place on earth is the world's largest salt desert. It has been said that around 10 billion tons of salt can be found in this desert, which when reflected by the sun creates an eerie mirror effect. Million years ago, this region was part of a prehistoric lake which dried up to become these expansive salt flats and two smaller lakes.
Antarctic Desert, Antarctica
Although when talking about deserts it doesn’t usually come to people’s mind, the cold tundra of Antarctica is actually considered the largest desert in the world. It is one of the most isolated places on the Earth with no permanent residents. Only people found in that area are researchers and scientists who are studying that region. It obtains an average of only two inches of precipitation annually and contains 90 per cent of all of the ice on the planet.
Atacama Desert, Chile
Wedged between the coastal Cordillera de la Costa mountain range and the Andes Mountains, Chile’s Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth. It receives only about 0.0004 inches of rainfall each year which makes it the driest non-polar desert. With a high altitude of 8,000 feet above sea level, it has oddly-shaped snow and ice formations with barren wilderness and very little vegetation.
