Meet the travelers who vacation in the world’s most treacherous places

When the Vacation Spot Is a War Zone: Inside the Growing World of Dark Tourism

Earthguardiansonline.com – A new wave of vacationers is packing their bags for destinations most people would cross out of their travel plans entirely. They are heading toward active conflict zones, irradiated landscapes, and borders where tensions simmer just below the surface. They call themselves travelers; the industry that has grown around their itineraries has a name — dark tourism — and it is expanding rapidly, fueled in part by the appetite of social media audiences who want to see the world’s darkest corners rendered in polished feed posts.

The phenomenon is not, however, entirely new. In July of 1861, hundreds of ordinary Washington, D.C. residents loaded their carriages with picnic baskets and opera glasses and drove out to the Virginia countryside to watch the American Civil War’s first major engagement unfold at Manassas. A writer later labeled the outing “the worst picnic in history.” The practice faded quickly, dismissed as a macabre Victorian curiosity. More than a century and a half later, though, that same impulse — to stand close to catastrophe and call it leisure — has reasserted itself as a recognizable travel category.

Two Distinct Flavors of the Same Impulse

Dark tourism splits into two broad categories, and understanding the distinction clarifies what drives the trend. The first type involves visiting countries that are, by any conventional metric, perilous to enter. North Korea, Afghanistan, and Haiti all carry “do not travel” advisories from the US Department of State, yet each draws a steady stream of visitors who want to experience those places firsthand rather than consume them through headlines.

The second type centers on specific locations where infamous events occurred. Jonestown in Guyana, where a mass murder-suicide claimed over nine hundred lives in 1978, remains a pilgrimage site. The execution grounds of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, where hundreds of thousands were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime, draw visitors who want to stand where history turned lethal. These sites transform abstract historical horror into physical, sensory experience.

For younger travelers, the grim subject matter also serves a second purpose: content creation. A photo taken at a former prison camp or a radiation exclusion zone translates directly into scroll-stopping material for Instagram and Facebook. The past becomes a curated performance, staged for an audience of followers rather than for the traveler alone.

History, Curiosity, and the Allure of the Untraveled

Not every dark tourist is chasing a viral moment. Arnaud Kirby, a frequent traveler based in Luxembourg, frames his choices in terms of historical engagement and cultural exploration. He has visited Syria, Libya, and Sudan, among other destinations that most guidebooks would steer readers away from.

“For me, the main motivation to visit places that are often considered dangerous — such as Syria, Libya or Sudan — is largely connected to my interest in history. Many of these countries have incredibly rich and complex historical backgrounds, and being able to see those places in person gives a completely different perspective compared to simply reading about them.”

Kirby also points to the scarcity of fellow visitors as a draw. Fewer tourists means fewer intermediaries, fewer staged experiences, and more direct contact with local communities.

“Being somewhere where there are very few tourists creates a completely different atmosphere. It allows for more authentic interactions with local people and a more genuine experience of the country.”

One recent trip took him to Chad, a landlocked nation in central Africa that receives only a trickle of international visitors annually. Both the US Department of State and the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office recommend against all travel to the country, citing terrorism, civil unrest, crime, kidnapping, and unexploded ordnance as persistent risks. Kirby nonetheless made his way to the capital, N’Djamena, and to Zakouma National Park in the south, and reports that he encountered none of the dangers the advisories warn about.

“Chad was an amazing experience. What really stood out to me was how friendly the people were. The locals were incredibly kind and welcoming.”

The wildlife at Zakouma, he says, proved equally memorable — if for unexpected reasons. Animals there, accustomed to far fewer vehicles than those in more popular parks, reacted with curiosity rather than indifference.

“The animals clearly weren’t very used to vehicles. Instead of ignoring the cars like they often do in more visited parks, they seemed curious. I remember one moment in particular when a lone elephant walked right up to our vehicle and put his trunk on the car, almost as if he was trying to understand what it was.”

The Danger Is Real, Even If It Doesn’t Materialize

Will Aswell, a British globetrotter who requested a pseudonym because of concerns about future travel permissions, has visited Iran, North Korea, Ukraine, and Iraq without feeling threatened. He pushes back on the assumption that authoritarian or conflict-affected states are inherently more lethal than Western democracies.

“You’re much more likely to be attacked in a big US city than you are in any obscure authoritarian country. The murder rates show this over and over again.”

For Aswell, the deeper pull is intellectual and moral. He wants to test the dehumanizing narratives that dominate Western media coverage of countries with political systems unlike Britain’s or America’s.

“There’s definitely an attraction to understand what’s behind many of the news stories, but also to disagree with a lot of the dehumanizing representations of countries that might have a different perspective than the UK and the US. For example, realizing the depth of kindness and hospitality in the Islamic world, having been told my whole life how bad and evil these countries are, was something that resonated deeply with me. Travel is about understanding and experiencing differences and allowing yourself to be impacted and changed by it.”

Yet the risks are not merely theoretical. During a 2025 journey through Sinaloa state in Mexico — a region long plagued by cartel violence — Aswell was pulled from a bus at gunpoint in the middle of the night by members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. He says he had to hand over a “lot of money” before being released.

“I was stupid to be traveling at night,” he admits.

The episode underscores a tension at the heart of dark tourism: the very places that offer the most transformative, least-visited experiences are also the places where the margin between a remarkable story and a tragedy is thinnest. Travelers who choose these routes accept that risk as the price of entry, and they do so with increasing frequency, armed with smartphones and a growing audience waiting to see what they find.