The Harrisons Malayalam Plantation in Varandarappilly, Kerala, is home to India’s most beautiful cricket ground, a hidden oasis in a sea of green canopy.

A remote cricket ground in Kerala, India, has been getting a lot of attention online because of its unique location, tucked away in the center of a lush tree plantation. Seen from the air, the breathtaking site looks like a clearing in the Amazon rainforests of South America, but it’s actually one of the hidden gems of Kerala, aka ‘God’s Own Country’. Originally set up by the Harrison Malayalam company decades ago, as a place where its plantation workers could relax, the remote cricket ground, accessible via a narrow, tree-lined road that is invisible from above and on most maps, has become a sanctuary both for plantation employees and locals.

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Kansai International Airport welcomes tens of millions of passengers every year, but it has developed a system that ensures none of their baggage ever goes missing.

Losing a piece of baggage is always a risk at airports. For example, in the US, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that domestic flights lose about 3 million bags every year. With hundreds of millions of individual bags to handle, losing some of them seems like an inevitability, and yet, one busy airport in Japan claims to have never lost a piece of baggage in its three decades of operation. Kansai International Airport, which serves the city of Osaka, opened in September 1994, to relieve the overcrowded Osaka International Airport and has been welcoming millions of passengers per year ever since. The staff at Kansai Airport pride themselves on being extremely efficient at handling passenger baggage, so much so that they have never once lost one.

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A mountain resort in Jianxi, China, has invested millions of dollars into a massive network of giant escalators to allow people to reach its mountain peaks effortlessly.

The pain and effort of reaching the top of a mountain used to be part of the whole hiking experience, but at the Lingshan Scenic Area in Eastern China’s Jianxi Province, one will soon be able to reach a 1,500-meter-high summit simply by riding on a bunch of outdoor escalators. Aimed at allowing anyone to reach the popular mountaintop and take in the beauty of the surrounding area, this massive project was kickstarted in 2022 and is scheduled for completion next month. Recent photos and videos shot on location show dozens of interlinked escalators from the foot of the mountain all the way to the top. Although this isn’t China’s only mountain escalator installation, it is considered one of the largest and most complex.

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El Marco, a small rustic bridge connecting the Spanish village of El Marco to the Portuguese village of Varzea Grande, is the world’s smallest international bridge.

Crossing the 19ft (6 meters) long and 4.7ft (1.45 meters) wide El Marco wooden bridge, you’d think you were just crossing a small stream in a rural area of Western Europe, but you couldn’t be more wrong. By taking these few steps over El Marco, you are not only crossing from one country into another, but you are also changing time zones, as Spain operates on Central European Time (CET/CEST), while Portugal follows Greenwich Mean Time (GMT/BST). You can think of it as the easiest way of time-traveling.

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Known as the Garbage Mountain of Delhi, Ghazipur Landfill covers an area of about 70 acres (over 50 football) and is almost as tall as the iconic Taj Mahal.

Established in 1984, on the outskirts of Ghazipur, in the eastern district of Delhi, Ghazipur Landfill reached its maximum capacity in 2002, but it has since grown into a small mountain up to 72 meters high. It is already one of the world’s largest landfills, but it continues to receive hundreds of tons of garbage from Delhi every day and is expected to grow even more. Consisting of more than 14 million metric tonnes of waste, Ghazipur Landfill has long been a plague on the millions of people who call Delhi home. The stench it emanates is almost unbearable, especially in the summer, fires routinely break out engulfing the surrounding area in a thick, toxic smoke, and its winding slopes sometimes collapse burying people and vehicles under millions of tons of garbage.

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A tiny park roughly the size of a newspaper in the Japanese town of Nagaizumi currently holds the Guinness Record for ‘world’s smallest park’.

A decade ago, we wrote about Mill Ends Park, the former world’s smallest park. At just two meters in diameter, it only had room for one tree and a few tiny plants, but it was of decent size compared to the newly crowned smallest park on Earth. Located a short distance from Nagaizumi town hall, in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, the tiny park measures 2.6 square feet and consists of a tiny patch of grass, a couple of stone plaques, and a stool for visitors to sit on and admire their surroundings. The park has reportedly been around since the late 1980s, but it was only recently recognized by Guinness Records as the world’s smallest recreational park.

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What began as a broken water pipe in Havana’s El Cerro neighborhood is now a small banana plantation, after local authorities forgot to fix the pothole.

Cuba’s infrastructure crisis is a well-known fact, with around 70% of the country’s roads deemed in “regular” or “poor” condition, but some streets are in such a bad state that they can hardly be considered functional. For example, a street in the El Cerro district of Havana, has become famous for having a veritable banana plantation square in the middle of it. The large pothole housing this urban oddity began as a broken water pipe that was eventually fixed by the local authorities three years ago. The asphalt, however, was never replaced, and at one point, plants began taking root in the massive pothole. One of these plants was a banana tree which gradually turned into a small plantation that residents tend to religiously.

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Located in the basement of a department store in Kawasaki, Japan, the world’s smallest escalator only has five steps and measures 83.4 centimeters (32.8 inches).

The escalator is one of humanity’s most useful inventions, allowing people to effortlessly travel between floors in places where elevators would be impractical, but the world’s smallest escalator is actually a useless oddity that holds no real purpose than to claim the Guinness record for the world’s smallest escalator. Known as the ‘Petitcalator’ or ‘Puchicalator’, this unusual contraption is located in the basement of More’s Department Store in the city of Kawasaki and is considered more of a tourist attraction than a useful piece of technology. Yes, it’s useable, but it measures just 83.4 centimeters so it offers no real benefit to whoever is riding it over traditional stairs.

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Every year, during the rainy season, a scenic road winding through China’s Poyang Lake like a mythical dragon becomes flooded, offering a unique driving and visual experience.

Yongwu Road is the only stretch of road connecting Wucheng, one of the oldest townships in China, to neighboring townships and counties. Part of the X219 county road, this 5.05 km piece of infrastructure was built straight through Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater lake, making it one of the most famous tourist attractions of Jiangxi Province. But Yongwu is most popular with tourists at the onset of the rainy season, during Spring when the water level starts rising. When the level of the surrounding lake reaches about 18.6 meters, water submerges segments of the road, turning Yongwu Road into “China’s most beautiful road under the water.”

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Rain Report Cafe in Seoul is a unique cafe where it rains perpetually every 15 minutes and patrons are offered umbrellas, rubber boots, and raincoats.

If you find nothing more relaxing than a cup of hot coffee on a rainy day, you’ll probably love the concept of Rain Report Cafe, a South Korean cafe where it rains heavily every 15 minutes. Rain is definitely an unusual concept to design a cafe around but judging by the very positive Google review score this place currently has, Rain Report is definitely a very special place. Nestled in the middle of a residential area in Itaewon, Rain Report is almost completely decked in black and lined with bamboo trees, which really makes you feel like you’re outside the busy South Korean capital when the downpour starts. And that happens very frequently.

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Located in Antarctica’s McMurdo’s Dry Valleys, the shallow Don Juan Pond is the world’s saltiest body of water. With a salt content that puts the Dead Sea to shame, it remains liquid even at -58 degrees Celsius (-50 Fahrenheit).

At four inches deep, Don Juan Pond looks more like a large puddle than an actual pond, but it has fascinated scientists for decades. A liquid puddle of this size in an alien-like environment where temperatures can drop to -50 degrees Fahrenheit was bound to draw attention at one point, and the tiny body of water has been buzzing with scientists since it was discovered in 1961. A quick analysis revealed its salt content to be around 40%; to put that into perspective the world’s oceans have a salinity of 3.5%, the Great Salt Lake varies between 5 and 27 percent, and the famous Dead Sea is 34% salt.

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Helio da Silva, a retired business executive from Brazil, single-handedly planted over 41,000 trees in his hometown of Sao Paolo over the last two decades.

Flying over the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paolo, it’s tough to miss the 3.2-kilometers-long and 100-meter-wide green strip of trees wedged between two of the city’s busiest roads. It is known as Tiquatira Linear Park, and it is the work of a single man who worked tirelessly for over 20 years in order to transform a previously dilapidated area into an actual jungle within the urban jungle that is Sao Paolo. Originally from the town of Promissao, about 500km from Sao Paulo, Helio da Silva was a successful business executive for many years, but after retiring, he took it upon himself to transform the degraded banks of the Tiquatira River into a green oasis for his community. He started planting trees there in 20023 and hasn’t stopped since.

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Lake Burlinskoye, a salty lake located in Russia’s Altai region close to the border with Kazakhstan, is famous both for its pink color during the summer and the freight train passing through it every day.

Seeing an old freight train seemingly floating over a pink lake in Western Siberia is quite a bizarre experience, but somehow it all makes sense. Lake Burlinskoye is the largest single salt deposit in Siberia, with a saltiness that rivals that of the Dead Sea. It is precisely this exceptionally high saltiness that attracts a species of microscopic brine shrimp called Artemia salina which, as they multiply, end up turning the lake bright pink during the summer months. Siberia’s pink lake is a strange enough sight, but what really sets Burlinskoye apart from other bodies of water is the freight train traversing it several times per day.

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Switzerland’s Glacier Express is known as the world’s slowest fast train, taking over 8 hours to travel 290 kilometers (181 miles) through the Swiss Alps.

The Glacier Express connecting the alpine resorts of Zermatt and St. Moritz isn’t anything like the high-speed express train zipping across Europe. Moving at an average speed of 36 km per hour, it lives up to its reputation as the “world’s slowest express train”, but that laughable speed is by design. You see, taking the Glacier Express isn’t about getting from point A to point B as fast as possible; it’s a scenic journey through the heart of the Swiss Alps that allows travelers to take in all the natural wonders this beautiful region has to offer. The train itself features large panoramic windows designed to provide unobstructed views of the breathtaking scenery, allowing passengers to fully immerse themselves in the beauty of the Swiss Alps.

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Every summer, Oregon’s Lost Lake disappears down a couple of volcanic tunnels only to return in the fall, as a number of streams start flowing into what looks like a peaceful meadow.

Driving past Lost Lake in the late fall or in the winter, you may not pay much attention to the seemingly plain body of water, but making the same drive in late spring or in the summer, you’ll definitely do a double take as a peaceful meadow replaces the lake. This is the magic of Lost Lake, a special attraction located in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, just off U.S. Highway 20. Starting in late autumn, a number of streams start flowing down from the surrounding mountains filling the meadow that soon becomes the bottom of the Lost Lake, and by mid-winter, the lake is at its fullest. The disappearing act begins in spring and is completed in the summer, as the contributing streams dry out, and all the water in the lake is drained via two holes that act like the drains of a bathtub.

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