Places Samir S. Patel Wants to Go

A golden egg-shaped sauna in the Arctic tundra.

One man's eclectic collection of treasures found at sea.

The largest lake in the Faroe Islands seems to be held hundreds of feet above sea level thanks to an optical illusion.

This mesmerizingly colorful pond looks like a scene straight out of a fairytale.

At this exhibit on the world of poison, venomous animals steal the show.

A long spiraling walkway winds through the woods, and around a copper beech tree at the center.

Seven people are buried in the middle of what's now a movie theater parking lot.

A hollowed-out baobab that became the horrific final resting place of leprosy sufferers, with gruesome evidence to prove it.

Play everything you see at a museum dedicated to a town's historic organ industry.

Hidden in the shadow of a rocky fortress is one concubine’s long-forgotten legacy.

On the Oregon coast is a natural hole that seems to be draining the sea.

Nature's water park in the Wadi Bani Awf valley is full of pools flanked with cliffs and natural water slides.

A little-visited waterfall in an otherworldly landscape.

Heavily bombed during the Vietnam War, this small town turns unexploded munitions into utensils.

An elevator into the Baltic Sea.

An abandoned set from the 1980 film "Popeye," claimed and repurposed as a theme park by creative locals.

An organ located deep within a cave, whose "pipes" are the geological features of the cave itself.

At high tide this strange footbridge appears to have no purpose whatsoever.

An architect transformed this abandoned cement factory into his castle-like workshop.

An institution dedicated to curiosity, logic, riddles, and Mongolia's long history of puzzles.

A precariously perched golden rock defies gravity and brings pilgrims from across Myanmar.

A 30-acre garden inspired by the principles of modern physics.

Sparkling, calcite-covered skeletons of children who may have been sacrificed to appease an angry god.

The remnants of an archaeological camp stand within Tikal National Park.