In 1724 the Dutch East India Company marooned Leendert Hasenbosch on Ascension, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic, as punishment for a sexual relationship with another man. He was left with a cask of water, some tools and a musket with no ammunition. He kept a dated diary of catching boobies, eating turtles and searching the horizon for ships, and his entries grow steadily more bleak. By the autumn he was drinking mixtures of urine and turtle blood to survive. His final entry reads that he lived as before, and the text then ends abruptly. A later ship found his camp and papers but no body, and the diary was published in several versions in the 1720s and 1740s.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.