The World's Quietest Places

Spend a day walking the downtown streets of almost any city, and odds are, you've just gone over the government's safety recommendations for exposure to noise. Everywhere, we're blasted by sound--traffic, construction, passing radios, TVs blaring and the constant ring of cellphones. And none of it is quite enough to drown out the sound of airplanes passing overhead.

The simple truth is, that ringing noise in your ears shouldn't be there.

We're not talking about complete silence; that can actually drive you insane. "I heard two sounds," wrote composer John Cage of his time in an anechoic chamber, a room completely free of reverberations and outside noise, "one high and one low." When he asked the engineer in charge what was going on, the man said, "The high one was your nervous system in operation. The low one was your blood in circulation."

Who wants to hear that?

What we need is not a complete absence of sound, but to be in places that sound the way the world did before iPods and leaf blowers were invented. But quiet is still out there, ready to be found. Around the world remain places--quite accessible places--where the constant din of civilization simply drops away.

Go far enough in the middle of nowhere, of course, and things get pretty quiet. Mongolia's Gobi Desert, or Africa's Kalihari Desert are both almost entirely free of human-created sound (as well as being startlingly beautiful). These places whisper like the last words of a bedtime story.

Keep reading at ForbesTraveler.com to see the rest of the world's quietest places, or view the slideshow here.

Comments

[Swerinjer]

BOO!!!!

[desertdweller]

They were quiet, but thanks to this article, they will now be inundated with loud and obnoxious American tourists.

[Lupin77]

One of the quietest places I've ever been to and an enchanting place is the forest in Sitka Island, Alaska. The place looks like something out of a fairy tale and we loved it.

[dadw5boys]

The Grand Canyon.

A place 60 % of Americans who pay taxes to support will never be albe to afford to go and see.

After raising kids getting them thru school and paying for a home many will turn 65 years old and for 40 years of hard work only have a home to show for it.

A home many lose with the 2nd or 3rd illness that comes after a lifetime of hard work and old age.

Too bad the USA does not have high speed trains people could ride out to places like the Grand Canyon for a day and back without needing to take a week off to drive there. Without needing to pay high prices for hotel and motel rooms.

Coast to coast high speed trains should be a goal of the 21st century in the USA.

[desertdweller]

And under the theocratic Bush Administration, the Grand Canyon National Park Visitor Center is required to sell books, alongside factual science-based texts, that proclaim that the Grand Canyon was formed during the "Biblical Flood" and therefore was not shaped over millions of years.

[Wilburrr]

Unfortunately, the location in the photo is nowhere near quiet. Tour planes constantly drone by the Palisades of the Desert in Grand Canyon.

[SolarPowerGuy]

Agreed, I've been to the Grand Canyon twice, and it's a pretty noisy place.

My votes for quiet, beautiful places in the United States are:

Highway 190 between Panamint Springs and Olancha, southeastern California.

Lava Beds National Monument, northeastern California. Also nearby: Medicine Lake and Glass Mountain.

Yampa River overlook, Dinosaur National Monument, northwestern Colorado.

[pattyrenee]

Since I live in a place where I can reach absolute quite in 15 minutes, the place will remain a secret. Too many people are already moving here due to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, and big city craziness!

[zizyphus]

Tour helicopter and planes are modern air pirates stealing the serenity of the world's most beautiful places.

People, please do not go on aerial tours of scenic wonders. Your presence in an aerial assault vehicle ruins it for everyone on the ground. People have hiked for days to get to a spot of remote and pristine beauty and silence, only to find a helicopter roaring around ruining it.

Helicopter tours are the epitome of elitism. I almost can't wait for high fuel prices to put them out of business, if wasn't for that fact that many other innocent businesses will go, too.

[JScott]

Cutback and stiff controls on canyon flights are in effect in the Grand Canyon National Park area
however at Grand Canyon West where the glass bridge is is on an Indian Reservation not a National Park and being sovereign nation they do flights 'below the rim' with aircraft unfortunately, the tour guide stated that the airport runway there is expanding so that 747's could land there dunno if that was a joke or not.

[Vyvjala]

McCain's Campaign headquarters.............................

[desertdweller]

or the inside of McCain's skull

[Vyvjala]

The GOP hotline.....................

[mamacat]

One of the quietest places I have ever been was Washington's Olympic peninsula. Surrounded by the trees and the ferns, the sound of the occasional passenger jet going overhead was a stunning reminder of how quiet the forest really was.

[marthaquest]

Quitest?

[mamacat]

Quiltingest.