Which is the world's largest landlocked country by land area, at roughly 2.7 million square kilometres, bigger than the whole of Western Europe combined?
- Mongolia
- Chad
- Kazakhstan
- Bolivia
Why C? And why not the others?
Correct answer: C. Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, stretching from the Caspian Sea in the west to the border of China in the east, covers about 2.72 million square kilometres without touching any ocean, making it comfortably the largest country on Earth with no direct sea access, and the ninth-largest country of any kind, landlocked or not. Mongolia is the world's second-largest landlocked country, at roughly 1.56 million square kilometres, a genuinely enormous nation in its own right but well short of Kazakhstan's total. Chad, about 1.28 million square kilometres, and Bolivia, about 1.1 million square kilometres, are both large landlocked countries that frequently appear on lists of the world's biggest nations, but each is less than half of Kazakhstan's area.
Source: Guinness World Records: largest landlocked country; corroborated by CIA World Factbook, Kazakhstan (area) entry