The Kubuqi Desert, China

Dotted around the North of the country, in the region of Inner Mongolia, are a series of deserts.

With hundreds of miles without a plant or a well, burning days and freezing nights, eager vultures circling any poor traveler that must make the trip through, the Kubuqi desert was a barrier almost as formidable as the Great Wall itself.

Now, a government initiative is foresting and greening the desert, taming it and turning it into an agricultural and tourist hotspot.