Noise follows us. Into cafés, under subway tunnels, across continents via Bluetooth earbuds and app notifications. Silence—true, untouched, unplugged silence—isn’t a default anymore. It’s a decision. A luxury. A rebellion.
In a 2024 study by the Global Health Observatory, urban noise levels were linked to increased stress in over 65% of adults in industrialized nations. But there’s an antidote: nature. More precisely, quiet nature. Not your trendy over-tagged overlook. No, the kind of places where your footsteps are the loudest thing you’ll hear all day.
These aren’t selfie spots. They’re soul spots. And they don’t care for hashtags.
1. Kerguelen Islands, French Southern Territories
No locals. No roads. No regular flights. Just wind, penguins, and silence.
Located in the sub-Antarctic Indian Ocean, the Kerguelen Islands—nicknamed Desolation Islands—are reachable only by ship. The average visitor count? Fewer than 1000 a year, mostly scientists.
Want silence? Here, silence comes with sleet and volcanic cliffs. Instagram won’t load. Good. Let your mind buffer instead.
2. Wrangell–St. Elias National Park, Alaska, USA
Think big. Now think bigger. This is the largest national park in the U.S., six times the size of Yellowstone. Few roads, fewer people. Glaciers. Mountains. Silence thick enough to bite.
Tourists tend to hover in the entrance areas. But step off the trail (guided, please) and you’ll enter true sonic emptiness. No vending machines. No tour bus echoes. You and the mountain are breathing together.
3. Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana
Salt flats stretch like alien mirrors under the sky. In the dry season, nothing moves. Nothing sounds. The emptiness can feel holy or haunting—sometimes both.
You’ll see more stars than humans. No buzzing drones. Just the silence of salt cracking under your boots.
This isn’t the savanna for safari selfies. It’s where your brain’s tabs finally start closing.
4. Tasiilaq, Greenland
In East Greenland, Tasiilaq sits quietly between fjords and ice. No major airport. No highways. Not even trees to rustle. The silence here is so thick it echoes—your breath, your boots, your thoughts.
And sometimes silence becomes music. The sound of shifting icebergs. The snow squeaking beneath your sled. The absence of traffic, of voices, of commerce—it’s loud, in its own way.
5. Zangskar Valley, India
In Ladakh’s Zangskar Valley, altitude does the silencing. Few travelers make it past Leh. Fewer still take the winding roads to Zangskar, where Buddhist monasteries sit atop cliffs and the air is thin, meditative.
Life moves slowly here. Prayer wheels spin. Snow melts. Goats bleat. But the overwhelming sound? Nothing. Not even your phone—no signal. Perfect.
6. Fiordland National Park, New Zealand
This is where mountains collapse into the ocean, where fog drapes over valleys like curtains on a sleeping giant. Milford Sound gets the cruise ships. But venture south. Deeper. Into the park’s guts.
Kayak on Doubtful Sound—noted for having one of the world’s rarest natural silences. Even birds hush here. Your paddle dips like a whisper.
The Department of Conservation reported that less than 2% of park visitors reach the remotest trails. Be among the few. Listen like it matters.
7. Socotra Island, Yemen
It looks like Mars. Or Dr. Seuss’s dream journal. Dragon blood trees twist like surreal sculptures, and birds you’ve never heard of will perch in silence beside you.
Socotra is isolated in every sense. Politically. Ecologically. Sonically. No resorts. No highways. Most of the island is still unreachable by car.
Peace here is baked into the rock.
Beyond Texting: When Silence Includes Our Digital Selves
In places like these, talking to others—online or off—becomes secondary. But the urge doesn’t disappear. Communication shouldn’t be a burden, but on the contrary—easy and enjoyable. There is a solution: anonymous video chat. You can simply open CallMeChat and have a heart-to-heart talk without worrying about all the extra stuff. CallMeChat allows you to be alone with the people you like and easily scroll through the rest.
And yet, ironically, removing names and faces from communication—like in anonymous video chat platforms—mirrors the kind of disconnection you experience in these wild places. So if you’re chatting anonymously while watching an arctic fox dart across a frozen plain, maybe you’re doing both: connecting and retreating. And that’s okay.
What These Places Teach (Without Saying a Word)
It’s not about running away. It’s about running toward something quieter. Something untouched by algorithm and expectation.
You don’t need 5G to find yourself. You need silence. You need stillness.
Let the world scroll by.
Let the echo of your own breath remind you that not everything needs a like.
Final Thought (Or Lack Thereof)
There are two kinds of noise: the one that interrupts your thoughts and the one that replaces them. Out here, in the remote quiet of Zangskar or the vast emptiness of Makgadikgadi, both go silent.
And what’s left? You. Not your curated version. Not your profile picture. Just… the original file.
