Curated category
Landlocked countries
- UzbekistanUzbekistan sits at the very center of the world's largest landmass, and it touches no ocean, no sea, and no coast of any kind.
- Burkina FasoBurkina Faso sits at the heart of West Africa, entirely landlocked, ringed by six countries and a history that refuses to be still.
- TajikistanTajikistan sits wedged between Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China, a landlocked country where more than 90% of the land is mountain.
- MoldovaMoldova is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of 33,843 square kilometres and a population of about 2.38 million people.
- KazakhstanKazakhstan is the largest landlocked country on Earth, a place where you can stand west of the Ural River in Europe, then travel east into Asia without…
- LaosBetween 1964 and 1973, American aircraft dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos. That is more than all the bombs dropped by American planes during…
- South OssetiaSouth Ossetia sits in a narrow fold of the Caucasus Mountains, covering just 3,900 square kilometres and home to just over 56,500 people.
- Vatican CityVatican City sits on a marshy patch of ground that the ancient Romans considered cursed. Long before popes built their palaces here, the area was known as…
- EthiopiaEthiopia holds a fossil named Dinkinesh, found in the Awash Valley of the Afar Region in 1974 by Donald Johanson. The world knows her as Lucy.
- AfghanistanAfghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires, and that nickname was not chosen lightly. Persians, Macedonians, Mongols, British, Soviets, and…
- AzerbaijanAzerbaijan sits at a crossroads so ancient and contested that even its name carries the echoes of a Persian satrap from the age of Alexander the Great.
- BhutanBhutan sits tucked into the Eastern Himalayas, a kingdom where 98.8% of the land is covered by mountains, making it the most mountainous country in the world.
- MongoliaMongolia is the most sparsely populated sovereign state on Earth, setting aside the partially unrecognized Western Sahara.
- NepalNepal holds eight of the world's ten highest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point above mean sea level on Earth.
- SwitzerlandSwitzerland sits at the crossroads of four languages, three mountain ranges, and a thousand years of deliberate self-invention.
- BelarusBelarus sits at the crossroads of Eastern Europe, a landlocked country of 9.1 million people spanning 207,600 square kilometres, bordered by Russia, Ukraine…
- Czech RepublicThe Czech Republic holds a ceramic figurine that is, by current archaeological reckoning, the oldest of its kind ever found anywhere on Earth.
- AustriaAustria sits at the geographic heart of Europe, a landlocked country of 83,879 square kilometres where the Eastern Alps give way to the Pannonian Plain.