The world’s “craziest city” is like nothing else on this planet, where trains run through apartment buildings and boats have their own skyscrapers.
Thanks to its dramatic geography and huge population of 32million, this sprawling metropolis in China has turned into a crazy maze where maps are basically useless. Ground level buildings suddenly turn into 22-storey high skyscrapers as you walk to the other side of the roof terrace, while its deepest tube station takes up to 2 hours and 45 minutes to descend. Nestled between steep mountains and deep valleys at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers, Chongqing has rightly earned its reputation as the “world’s craziest city”.
There are even lifts for cars in this huge southwestern municipality to help navigate the huge shifts in altitude, while petrol stations are on rooftops and restaurants sit atop skyscrapers on boats.
Driving is unsurprisingly mind-boggling, with infrastructure like the Huangjuewan Overpass that connects more than 20 ramps and eight different roads.
Almost as large as Austria by surface area, something that looks close by on the map can turn out to be tens of storeys above or below you, and it has recently captured the intrigue of tourists to become a viral sensation.
Darren Watkins Jr, the 20-year-old better known to his 37 million YouTube followers as iShowSpeed, exclaimed the “city doesn’t look real” when he visited.
Travel vlogger Dylan Page’s Instagram video in “the craziest city on Earth” has now amassed more than 90 million views on Instagram.
Viewers responded in shock, with one saying: “That’s not a city, that’s a video game.”
Another joked: “It would be easier to just start a new life if you get lost.”