'Badlands'

This is the most terrifying place I have ever been. I was told it was an area called the Badlands, because it is a habitat so dry and inhospitable that it can sustain no life. Actually to be very precise, all kinds of life but one: somehow, a type of lichen managed to exist on the rock surfaces. Apart from this, the group of forty or so people I was with were the only living organisms as far as the eye could see. I was struck by the idea that, if everybody else drove away without me, I would certainly die.

If I remember my GCSE Geography correctly, this kind of desert is called 'reg' desert, and on the spot I was standing, it only rains once every ten years- hence the hundreds of channels scoured into the land by running water.

Of course, a person abandoned amongst the dunes of the Namib would also have feeble chances of survival. However around Dune 45 and Big Daddy and the likes, there are usually other tourist parties with their buses parked not far away; and at least the dunes are colourfully stunning. The bare and brutal landscape seen above has none of this beauty to distract the viewer from the harshness of its conditions.