The 5 most natural and unspoilt places on earth

There isn’t a single island or territory that hasn’t been explored by humans, and with how destructive people can be to their environments, it’s no wonder that natural and untouched beauty spots are disappearing fast. Even places that were once considered a paradise, like the Galápagos Islands for example, are now home to several towns and an airport. To find something that can be classed as “unspoilt”, there can be no trace that humans were ever there, and nowhere seems to be more untouched by mankind than the places below.

1) Gangkhar Puensum – Bhutan

Standing at 7,570 meters tall within the Himalayas mountain range, Gangkhar Puensum is one of the few mountains on earth that no one has been to the top of. The first major attempt was in 1922 by an explorer who attempted to make a map of the entire mountain, but what he produced has since been found to be wildly inaccurate. After this there have been many attempts to reach the peak but no one has even come close due to the extreme weather that constantly lingers around the slopes. After plenty of attempts, many of which ended up with people dying, the mountain was eventually closed to heights above 6,000 meters in 1996 due to local spiritual beliefs. It’s too high to reach in a helicopter and so far, not a single human has ever stepped foot onto the peak or even knows the exact layout of the summit section.

2) The Sakha Republic – Eastern Russia

(The territory of the Sakha Republic, at 3.084 million km²)

Even though the population of this entire area is little more than 1 million people, it remains one of the most sparsely populated places on earth. The Sakha Republic covers an area of 3.084 million km², which makes it only a tiny bit smaller than India which has a population of close to 1.4 billion. Most of the people who live here stay in isolated villages or live a nomadic lifestyle herding reindeer. There are huge areas of this land where you can walk for weeks and not come across a single person or settlement, with the most remote areas being over 100 miles from the nearest tiny village.

3) Star mountains – Papua New Guinea

(The area is home to many tribes, but only they known exactly what lays within the valleys)

This huge mountain range is also one of the wettest places on earth, with an average annual rainfall of 10,000 mm. For some comparison the UK is known as being a wet and gloomy place, but it only receives just under 900 mm per year. The tallest peak in the Star mountain range is 3,970 m high, and the whole range is made up of flowing slopes and thick jungle. The first person from the western world to try and explore the area was Jan Sneep, a Dutch civil servant that arrived with two helicopters and a ground team. It took them over 7 months, which included a helicopter crash and setbacks that lasts for days at a time due to the rain. He managed to map a large section of several mountains and some of the valley, but only explored a tiny fraction of the entire range, leaving what lays beneath the trees to be anyone’s guess.

4) The trans-Antarctic mountain range

This is the most unexplored mountain range on earth by a long shot, with the only a handful of the smallest peaks being conquered by humans. There are just over 2,600 peaks that have been documented within the range, but well over 99% of them have never even had a human try to climb them, never mind reaching their summits. You would have to travel hundreds of miles from the coast in deep snow and ice just to get to them, but the coldest location on earth isn’t the kind of place you want to be stuck up a mountain in a blizzard. The weather stops anything from flying up to the peaks to reach them, and the central area between the peaks has never even been seen by human eyes. It would be interesting to find out what’s hidden within the mountains, but currently we don’t have the technology to fly up there or provide sufficient clothing and equipment to scale such a dangerous and cold mountain range.

5) Greenland

This place is actually classed as an overseas territory of Denmark and not an independent country. It also happens to be the largest island in the world at 2.166 million km², making it bigger than Mexico, but it only has a population of around 55,000 people. Most of the settlements are on the west coast where the weather is slightly better, but areas on the east and north coasts can go for years without seeing a single person. The centre of the island is one giant glacier covered in thick snow, which at its widest point is close to 600 miles across. It’s simply not possible to explore anywhere in the centre or northern coast unless you have a spare and very expensive research vessel. If you landed on the furthest northern tip of the island, the nearest settlement is a tiny village called Qaanaaq, at 550 miles away.