They attract explorers and attract adventurers. Anyone can feel like Indiana Jones. Choose a lost city of your choice and go explore it.
The most impressive lost but rediscovered cities are easily accessible. It is not necessary to cut through the jungle and hide from warlike savages, conquer mountain passes and swim across stormy rivers, as the brave discoverers did. All you need to do is buy a plane ticket. Great mysteries await their researchers just a few hours’ flight away. After just a day’s travel, with breaks for sleep and food, you can touch the walls built by civilizations about which little is still known. There is only one problem – which city to start learning the secrets of antiquity.
Angkor
The beautiful and mysterious city of Angkor is lost in the deep jungles of Cambodia. It was actively built in the 9th-12th centuries, but three centuries later, for unknown reasons, it became empty. Once upon a time it was a huge settlement the size of modern Moscow. One can imagine how amazed the French traveler Henri Muot was when he discovered it in the deep jungle in 1860.
After many years of restoration, it was possible to put in order only the very center, where the temples stand relatively close to each other. The largest and most beautiful Hindu complex of the 12th century looks best – Angkor Wat,
included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has been almost completely restored. Not only the external decor has been preserved here, but also more than a thousand square meters of bas-reliefs and stone carvings on the walls and ceilings. Beautiful views of Angkor Wat open up at sunrise and sunset, when the temple is reflected in the ponds in front of it with blooming lotuses (Reflecting Pond).
There are small and large circles for viewing the ancient city. If you can get around the center of Angkor on foot, then it is better to travel around the large circle by bicycle. There are still many buildings lost in the jungle and waiting for the hands of researchers to reach them. However, tourists should not go deeper into the forest without a guide.
It is always very hot in Angkor, but you forget about the inconvenience as soon as you see the first building. Graceful lines and proportions, powerful tree roots wrapping around ancient walls. This is how the Ta Prohm temple appears to tourists. In some places, trees with roots were deliberately not removed in order to give a sense of the force with which the jungle swallowed up the ancient city, as well as the scale of the clearing and restoration work. It turned out so picturesque that Ta Prohm was chosen as a location for filming the Hollywood blockbuster “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” with Angelina Jolie in the title role.
Petra
Lost Ancient City (Petra),
founded in the 18th century BC. in the red Jordanian desert, also inspired Hollywood directors. The action of one of the episodes of the final part of the film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” takes place in Petra. Filming took place near the most picturesque place – the Treasury. It unexpectedly strikes the eyes of the main characters of the film, taxiing around the next bend of the Siq Canyon.
The treasury, like other temples and tombs, is carved into the red soft rock of a large tectonic fault. All of Petra is hidden inside one giant rock that fell apart due to earthquakes. Excavations have been going on for more than a century, but only a small part of the territory of the huge ancient city has been studied. Once upon a time, 30 thousand people lived here, and the water supply system had 200 storage tanks and a terracotta pipeline that collected water from sources tens of kilometers around. The city was ruled in turn by the Edomites, Nabataeans, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs – they all built in their own style.
Petra has always attracted lovers of dangerous adventures. The discoverer of the lost city for the Western world was the Swiss orientalist and traveler Jan Ludwig Burkhart. He traveled under the guise of an Arab merchant and Petra almost cost him his life. Local Bedouins were going to kill him when they saw him making sketches of temples. However, Jan Ludwig still managed to get out of this situation and then described the city he found in the book “Journey to Syria and the Holy Land.”
Until now, Petra is an arena of romantic and dangerous adventures. There is a secret initiation ritual associated with this place that has been practiced by Israeli special forces for almost 40 years. It was necessary to secretly cross the border with hostile Jordan, get to Petra and return back undetected. The first to do this was in 1953 Meir Har-Zion from Detachment 101 with his friend Rachel Savorai. Then in Israel they composed the song “Red Rock”, dedicated to this daring foray. But when they began ambushing daredevils, resulting in the deaths of, according to some sources, 12 Israelis over the course of several years, this risky tradition and the song about it were banned by law.
Ciudad Perdida
Ciudad Perdida (Colombia) is translated from Spanish as “lost city”. It is hidden in the remote Colombian jungle in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains. This city was founded 8 centuries before Christ by the Tayrona Indians and was abandoned after Spanish colonization, and was discovered quite recently – in 1975. Mysterious artifacts began to appear en masse at the market in the city of Santa Marta. The authorities suspected something was wrong, pressed the miners and learned about the discovery in the mountains. By that time, the ruins had been badly damaged by black diggers who were looking for gold and archaeological treasures there, but now the city is being restored, again, by the local population.
The Indians had long been secretly visiting Ciudad Perdida for ritual purposes, but were in no hurry to report it. To get to the city, you need to walk 44 kilometers through the jungle, crossing tropical rivers and steep climbs. The journey ends with the conquest of an ancient staircase of 1200 steps.
The Colombian Army patrols the lost city and footpath, protecting visitors and archaeologists. At night, soldiers join tourist camps, and during the day they help travelers cross the river.
However, Ciudad Perdida is worth overcoming difficulties and putting yourself in danger. The city has not been fully explored and is full of surprises. It is covered with an extensive network of roads, bridges, canals, stairs and 169 picturesque terraces. The lucky tourists who get there swim in waterfalls, live on high terraces, walk along paved paths through virgin jungle and watch the evening mist envelop ancient squares.
Overcoming a difficult trek on foot through mountains overgrown with impenetrable jungle and ending up in a little-explored lost city is a real adventure worthy of Indiana Jones. Ciudad Perdida remains one of the few places on the planet where this is still possible.
Fiery City
You think that the Earth has been studied far and wide, so it is impossible to become the discoverer of a lost city? It turns out that there are still untouched ancient capitals. Recently, the largest Mayan city was allegedly found on the border of Mexico and Belize. It is located in the inaccessible jungle, where researchers and archaeologists have yet to reach.
The city of Kaak-Chi (Fire Mouth) was found by William Gadourie, a 15-year-old schoolboy from Quebec. He compared satellite images with star maps. 117 Mayan cities coincided with the location of the stars. Moreover, the brightest luminaries were located in large settlements. William calculated the location where the lost city could be located and approached Dr. Armand Larocque of the University of New Brunswick with this information. The scientist began analyzing satellite images of the area and confirmed that in the place indicated by William there could be a huge ancient city with a central pyramid of 86 meters and several dozen more buildings. For now, everything is under study, but the day is not far off when the first adventurers will discover a new wonder of the world. You may well be among them!
Machu Picchu
For those who are not ready to wade through the wild jungle, but still want to join the secrets of lost cities, there are many alternatives. One of the most impressive ancient sites in South America is Machu Picchu in Peru. This city is much younger than Ciudad Perdida (it was built by the Incas in the 15th century),
but easily accessible (there is a railway there) and spectacular. The spectacular settlement hangs over a valley in the mountains, at an altitude of two and a half kilometers.
Machu Picchu (on the map) was rediscovered by American professor Hiram Bingham, who served as the inspiration for Indiana Jones, in 1911. Hiram was considered an avid explorer and traveler, and a brave climber. He reached the most inaccessible corners of the Andes: he repeated Bolivar’s path from Venezuela to Colombia; crossed the mountains, traveling from Buenos Aires to Lima; crawled around the outskirts of Cusco in search of Inca monuments and Machu Picchu, risking his life more than once. As it turned out, my efforts were not in vain. He was still able to find the lost city, which the conquistadors never reached.
The views from Machu Picchu of the surrounding mountains are impressive. The city itself keeps many secrets and mysteries. Scientists have not yet figured out how the Indians managed to fit the huge granite blocks of some temples to each other with such precision that even a knife blade could not fit between them. The purpose of many buildings in the city also remains a mystery, as does the layout of the streets, which often end in a dead end or exit to a terrace above a cliff. Finally, it is not clear for what reasons the city was abandoned by its inhabitants in the 16th century.
Anyone can touch these secrets. At one time they tried to limit the number of visitors to Machu Picchu, but then they abandoned this idea. So get on the road quickly, before the railway to the city of Aguas Calientes, closest to Machu Picchu, is washed away by rains again, like in 2010. Then the famous wonder of the world was closed to tourists for several months, during which the railway track was being repaired.
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