Almost at once dozens of displaced civilians started taking their staple dry rations to town.

ECONOMIST: Eking a living from handouts

The tunnels merge and separate, feed into the sewer system, and branch out again for hundreds of metres, emerging right outside town, amid the bushes of a dry river bed.

BBC: 'Ndrangheta: Exploring the mafia's underground world

Twenty miles outside the small town of Taos, New Mexico, the dry, flat landscape is interrupted momentarily by a small brown-colored dome that appears amid the low, desert scrub.

FORBES: Tiny Desert Dome Home for Sale $74,000

Picture the beautiful village of Ipstones with its dry stone walls and weathered houses perched high above the market town of Leek, way up in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

BBC: What price village schools in funding shake-up?

The North Cape is found in a barren, dry and mostly uninhabited area of Norway called Finnmark, an alarmingly desolate town.

FORBES: An Arctic River Cruise Should Be Your Next Adventure

The bars and dry cleaners visible on its street maps of New York get replaced by the names of rivers and small-town roads in the distance.

WSJ: Review: iPhone Google Maps lags Android version