Deserts

* The Black Desert (Egypt): the desert with black stones

Located 100km northeast of the White desert, the Black Desert is a region of volcano-shaped mountains with large quantities of small black stones. The stones lie out across the orange-brown ground, so that it is not quite as black as many people may hope for. Especially after visiting the White Desert, which has formations that are really white, many will imagine a desert as dramatic as this. Climbing one of the many soft peeks, the view from the top is really nice, with similar peeks continuing on into the haze. The Black Desert is uninhabited.

* Antarctica: world's driest and wettest desert

Antarctica is a land of extremes. It's not inhabited year round by humans because it's simply too freezing cold. In 1983 scientists recorded extreme cold temperatures as low as -129 Fahrenheit. It's also the wettest place on Earth, but simultaneously the driest. The reason it's the “wettest” is not because of rainfall; since Antarctica is covered by 98% ice, it's technically very wet. However since it's also the aforementioned coldest place in the world, it gets very little precipitation – less than 2 inches a year. Which makes Antarctica a desert. A brutally cold ice desert with a massive trench full of even more…ice. Three for the price of one!

* Sahara (North Africa): world's largest desert

The Sahara, with a size of 8.6 million km², is the world's largest desert, covering large parts of North Africa. Around 4 million people live there. Its maximum length is 4,800 km, running from west to east, and up to 1,200 km from north to south. Sahara covers most of Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Niger and Mali, and touches Morocco and Tunisia.

* Simpson Desert (Australia): the red sand desert

Australia is home to four large deserts, popularized by Mad Max: Sturt's Stoney Desert, Tanami Desert, the Great Victoria Desert and the Simpson Desert, which is also known as 'The Big Red' due to the presence of dunes of red sand. The Simpson Desert is an erg which contains the world's longest parallel sand dunes. These north-south oriented dunes are static, held in position by vegetation. They vary in height from 3 metres in the west to around 30 metres on the eastern side. The most famous dune, Nappanerica, or, more popularly, Big Red (named by Simpson Desert traveller Dennis Bartell), is 40 metres in height.

* Namib (Namibia): the only desert with elephants

South of Africa lies the Namib desert. which is less vast than the Sahara but just as impressive. It forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park with neighbouring Angola. The Sossusvlei sand dunes are the highest in the world, some towering at 300m high and if you are lucky enough, you can stumble across desert elephants-the Namib is the only desert in the world to have elephants. Apparently the oldest desert in the world, myriad species of plants and animals can only be found here. The Namib has fascinated geologists for years but it remains very little understood to this day. Off the coast, strong southerly winds with fogs and strong currents cause sailors to lose their way; the north coast has been named 'Skeleton Coast' due to the amount of shipwrecks found there, some of which can be found as much as 50m inland, as the desert slowly takes over the ocean as it moves westwards.

* Taklamakan (Central Asia): a desert covered with snowfall

Taklamakan is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world, ranking 15th in size in a ranking of the world's largest non-polar deserts. It covers an area of 270,000 km2 (100,000 sq mi) of the Tarim Basin, 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long and 400 kilometres (250 mi) wide. It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edges by two branches of the Silk Road as travelers sought to avoid the arid wasteland.

In 2008, China's biggest desert experienced its biggest snowfall and lowest temperature after 11 consecutive days of snow. Snow is rare in the desert that covered 337,600 square kilometers, never before had the whole desert been covered.