Last month I asked you about the safest country you visited, so it makes sense to ask this month about the most dangerous country you’ve visited? Perhaps you were a victim of crime, or just had a sense of unease walking around the streets.
Leave your nomination for a dangerous country and why as a comment below…
Have travelled to Egypt on several occasions and not found it dangerous. I feel it is a little unfair to judge it on the basis of being there when the riots are happening! Jordan is the most dangerous country I have been to for driving conditions. Russia for me is definitely one of my scariest countries – sbeing accosted by the mafia, robbed in one evening, and seeing a guy killed In a road accident in one night definitely outranks any other destination for the most unbelievable!!
Demogratic Republic of the Congo.
Everybody had an AK-47 except me. The country seems to be in a perpetual state of civil war.
I would have to say Russia. it’s a nice country, but when I visited, 3 of our small group companions were accosted by “gypsies”, who may well have been gypsies, who robbed them. I was also in Egypt when the “arab spring” broke out, and we were near tahrir square where we saw some of the demonstrators, and my wife got a dose of tear gas, but we left for Jordan before Egypt dissolved into chaos. Still for just plain dangerous, my vote goes to Russia.
Probably Afghanistan this year, or Bosnia, back in the 90s. However, in both, while there was the chance of catastrophic events on any given day, I never felt that sort of dread one gets going alone and unarmed into a “bad neighborhood.”
Nairobi Kenya has to be up at the top of my list. We were advised not to leave the hotel at night. Guards roam the halls. We were escorted to a curio shop and then locked in. We weren’t allowed to walk back to our hotel without a guide.
Cairo, Egypt January 29, 2011. Locked in Intercontinental Hotel on Tahrir Square while rioters demonstrated and tanks rolled thru the streets. Burning buildings, cars, and police vehicles nearby. Threatened with a dagger by a rioter. Used my Mobal World phone to arrange State Department evacuation to Cyprus.
The Canary Islands were not dangerous in terms of physical harm (at least not to my knowledge) but pickpockets are rampant. They are particularly active at bus depots and similar places. My wallet was stolen while in a crowd boarding a bus.
Arrived in Cairo Friday, January 28 and traveled by minibus across the city as the riots were erupting. Hundreds of people surging across the highway and banging on our bus was not confidence inspiring. The sound at 1:00am of tanks and APC in front of the hotel didn’t make us any happier. Three days later we were whisked to the airport and off to Rome and the US.
Afghanistan
Nigeria. I never went anywhere without an escort in Lagos. My Nigerian escort’s wife had been robbed and thrown out under a bridge when taking a taxi from the airport. She was hospitalized, but recovered.
Next to that, South Africa, where I was mugged in Johannesburg.
Almost anywhere can be unsafe even for a seasoned traveler: I had my pocket picked on a crowded bus in Rome and was present when someone else had the same experience on a subway in Barcelona.
Caracas, Venezuela used to be safe, but is really dangerous, I’m told, these days.
At various times and in certain locations any country can be dangerous or safe. Generally, Mexico, Albania and the United States were the most overtly dangerous. But I avoided the dangerous areas. In other countries I may have been in more danger than I realized but it didn’t feel dangerous.
“Dangerous” is a relative term, I think. If you’re referring to murder rates, the U.S. is one of the most dangerous countries in the modern world, isn’t it? Riding a train or auto-rickshaw in India can be quite dangerous due to road conditions and driving habits.
Considering both concepts above, then, I would think a place like Mexico would be rather dangerous in multiple ways…
Venezuela. They don’t even turn the street lights on at night in Caracas. Very creepy place, unless you’ve got military escort.