Member Login | Not a FREE member yet? Sign Up Here!

Destination darkness – places to avoid
By: Ann Corba

Every county on Earth is beautiful in its own way, has its attractions and sightseeing, but there are some places on our planet, you’d better avoid. In these countries or, sometimes, parts of the countries tourists won’t be safe usually either because of the political instability, local conflicts or because of nature disasters or epidemics.

In each country Ministry of Foreign affair makes its own list of such countries dangerous for their citizens, but there are some points on the map, where you shouldn’t go no matter your citizenship.

Usually tourist agencies don’t offer tours in these dangerous places, but still…
Even in wealthy, safe Europe are some hot spots – Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Asia has a lot of such spots, the most dangerous – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Eastern Timor, Iraq.

African countries are widely represented in the list – eternal local wars, not developed infrastructure and dangerous epidemic environment don’t contribute to tourism image.

So, the list of the most unrecompensed African countries – Somali, Burundi, Angola, Algeria, Sierra-Leone, Congo, the former Zaire, Nigeria, CAR, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Rwanda, Cote-d’Ivoire.

America looks like the safest part of the world – only Columbia with its narcotic wars and partisans in the jungle is included in all lists of dangerous countries. Pablo Escobar is dead but it didn’t bring any peace in the country.
There is another part in this “black list” – the countries included in it are not dangerous in a whole, only some parts of them.

In Europe such place is the Northern Cyprus, didn’t admitted by any country, except Turkey.

In Asia it’s strongly not recommended to visit Palestinian Autonomy, the Jordan West bank. India has become one of the most attractive countries for tourists, but its state Jammu and Kashmir on Pakistan border is a bad place for rest. Islamic struggle for this state separation makes this place very unsuitable for peaceful tourists. The North and East of Sri-Lanka due to its radical Tamil organization are also in the black list.

The south of Philippines is also full of radical groups; so if you don’t want to become an innocent victim of the regular terrorist acts, don’t go there.

Sometimes a country is included in the list temporarily – for example, Thailand during tsunami, or now there is difficult political situation in Haiti, although usually this country wasn’t considered dangerous. Now Denmark created the list of 14 countries (mostly Arabian) where its citizens won’t be the dearest guests – it happened after “caricature scandal”. The government is afraid of religious fanatics deserving to revenge for prophet Mohamed offence.

As it was said in the beginning the list may vary depending on the country. For example, USA includes Northern Korea, Venezuela and Ecuador in the list.

Italy doesn’t recommend visiting Iran, Egypt, China, Guatemala, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Jordan.

France adds Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Russia included in its “black list” the only country from the former Soviet Union – Turkmenistan.

“Not recommended” doesn’t mean “prohibited”, you are free to go anywhere, but these recommendations make sense.