You think your hometown is depressing? Take a little visit to California’s Depressed Lake ― then we’ll talk.
Australian artist Damien Rudd has been mining Google Maps for the literal saddest places on earth ― the lakes, rivers, roads, and mountains whose very names will bring out all your feelings of insecurity, loneliness and mortality in full force. He uploads them onto his Instagram @sadtopographies, a one-stop shop for geographic destinations even more of a tragic mess than you.
Rudd started the project after encountering Mount Hopeless in his native Australia, a spot named for its barren landscape. Understandably amused, he resolved to hunt the globe for similarly pessimistic locales. “In Australia, like the U.S. and Canada, there are many depressing place names that are connected to the dark history of early colonialism, and the mishaps of explorers and settlers,” he explained in an interview with Quartz.
If the holidays are making you blue, and you’re just dying to plan the bleakest vacation of all time, check out the most pitiful destinations on earth below.