Global Spot: Alluring Images of the World

A helicopter flies near smoke rising as a volcano erupts in Grindavik, Iceland, January 14. via Icelandic Coast Guard (Reuters)

Backwaters, Allepay, Kerala, India

'Rice Art' is displayed in a rice field in Suncheon, South Korea.

River Gorge Overlook on the St. Paul, Minnesota side of the Mississippi River

Mehrum, Germany Coal-fired Power Station

Volcano Merapi (Aluisius Sudiarto)

Pasture of flowering bulbs, including tulips, Keukenhof, Netherlands (Yves Herman)

The rugged mountainous countryside of Ruatoria, where Māori iwi are setting up coronavirus roadblocks

Moss-green Mælifell volcano in Hálendið, the highlands of Iceland.

The Volcan de Fuego, or Volcano of Fire, spews hot molten lava from its crater in Escuintla, Guatemala.

The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) is seen over the sky in Rovanierni, Lapland, Finland.

An iceberg floats in a fjord near the town of Tasiilaq, Greenland.

The Villarrica volcano is seen at night from Pucon town, Chile.

Lava streams down from the Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatoa) volcano during an eruption, as seen from Rakata island in South Lampung, Indonesia.

The sun sets over the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

The aurora borealis displays above Ice Camp Skate in the Beaufort Sea.

Mount Agung volcano is seen spewing smoke and ash in Bali, Indonesia.

The unique U-shaped troughs of 'The Wave' rock formation are seen at the Coyotes Buttes North wilderness area near Page, Arizona.

Through the Mist: The Tadami Line is a train route that stretches for 84 miles in Japan. The view from the train is stunning, (Teruo Araya)

Migrating Great White pelicans rest as they are fed at a water reservoir in Mishmar Hasharon, central Israel,. (Ronen Zvulun)

A flock of starlings flies in the vineyards overlooking Lake Geneva in Allaman, Switzerland (Valentin Flauraud)

Snow is seen in the moat surrounding the Forbidden City during a snowfall in Beijing, China.

An Emirati man walks with his camels across the Hameem desert, some 170 kilometers west of the Gulf Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

The moon passes in front of the sun, creating a solar eclipse visible in the southern hemisphere, seen from from Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Saguaro cacti in Arizona bathed in the fiery light of a desert sunset. The slow-growing plants store water in their pleats and can weigh more than six tons. A healthy saguaro can live up to 175 years, even in this seemingly unforgiving landscape.(Darcy Ingram)

Arctic sea ice is at a record low wintertime maximum extent for the second straight year. At 5.607 million square miles, it is the lowest maximum extent in the satellite record, and 431,000 square miles below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent. (NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/C. Starr)

Mount Sinabung volcano spews lava and ash during an eruption as seen from Tiga Serangkai village in Karo, Indonesia's North Sumatra province.

Lightning strikes beyond the rim of Arizona’s Horseshoe Canyon. Located within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the site is named for the distinctive bend of the Colorado River, which flows a thousand feet below the top of the cliffs. (J. Cho)

Heimdal Glacier in southern Greenland, in an image captured on Oct. 13, 2015, from NASA Langley Research Center's Falcon 20 aircraft flying 33,000 feet above mean sea level.

Badlands, South Dakota: The setting sun paints summer storm clouds massed over South Dakota's Badlands. Home to some of the richest mammal fossil beds on Earth, the geologic formations are preserved within Badlands National Park, over a quarter of which is also a designated wilderness area. (Ken Stewart)

Great Wall of China at sunrise. (Joseph Tam)

The northern lights set the night aglow over Ersfjordbotn, a village in Arctic Norway. (Sandra Jordan)

Mount Rainier National Park, Washington State, USA. (Steve Matera)

The Milky Way over the Yosemite National Park in California. (Abe Blair)

The dark area across the top of the sun in this image NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is a coronal hole, a region on the sun where the magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, sending coronal material speeding out in what is called a "high-speed solar wind stream."

Honshu Island, Japan: Mount Fuji is surrounded by cloud as seen from an airplane. (Toru Hanai)

Lesser flamingos take flight over Lake Bogoria in Kenya. (Martin Harvey)

Angel Falls towers above the fog-obscured canopy of Canaima National Park in Venezuela. At a height of more than 3,200 feet, it is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall. (Kevin Schafer)

The famed water-bound willows of Glenorchy, New Zealand, rise from Lake Wakatipu on the country’s South Island. (Paul Reiffer)

The frozen river channel in McGrath, Alaska looks magnificent from the altitude of 38,000 feet. (Jijian Fan)

An aerial view shows people traveling along a road inside the Danxia National Geological Park, in Zhangye, Gansu province, China. The National Geological Park, covering an area of 510 square km (197 square miles), is known for its colorful and special rock formations.

In this image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory the sun emits a mid-level solar flare, an M7.9-class, peaking at 4:16 a.m. EDT.

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way. It is located about 25 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), close to the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Wolf volcano spews smoke and lava on Isabela Island in Galapagos National Park.

Kokee State Park on Kauai provides a stunning view of Hawaii's lush Nā Pali Coast. (Paul Souders)

View from Frutillar, southern Chile, of lava spewing from the Calbuco volcano.

Terraced fields cut into the red earth of Dongchuan, near Kunming, China. (Konstantin Iagoudine)

Arabian Oryx walk at the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Umm Al-Zamool, south of Abu Dhabi near the Saudi Arabia-UAE border.

Trees pierce through fog and mist in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in the Lawang Valley of East Java, Indonesia. (Kowit L.)

Stretching from the Himalaya to the Kunlun Mountains, Ladakh in India is a high-elevation desert crossed by razor-sharp peaks. This isolated and starkly beautiful area is a refuge of Mahayana Buddhism. (Chalongwong Manakit)

Farm at Steptoe Butte National Park, Washington, USA (Libby Zhang)

Mount Sinabung releases pyroclastic flows seen from Tiga Serangkai, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Mount Sinabung, among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia, has sporadically erupted since 2010 after being dormant for over 400 years.

Smoke and lava spew from the Chilean Villarrica volcano.

A total solar eclipse can be seen in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway.

The Northern Lights (Aurora borealis) are seen in the sky above Pilisszentkereszt, 26 kms north of Budapest, Hungary.

Group flight: Flamingoes take flight in the the wetlands of Gujarat, India. (Navtej Singh)

The Cuernos (Horns) del Paine grab the early morning light in Chile's wild Torres del Paine National Park.(Gleb Tarro)

The northern lights glow over Skagsanden beach in Norway’s remote Lofoten Islands. (Felix Inden)

Rising from the sea near Port Campbell are the Twelve Apostles, a series of dramatic rock pillars that are the most famous landmarks along Australia's Great Ocean Road. (Patrick Love)

Storm over Mitten Buttes, Arizona’s Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. (Emma Rogers)

'Moonland' at Lamayuru, Ladakh, India. (Sandeep Chetan)

View from Zoji la, the first mountain pass that leads the way from the lush green valleys of Kashmir to the cold desert of Ladakh, India. (Sandeep Chetan)

The Mighty K2 from an Air Safari Plane (Kristen Elsby)

Rapa River Delta, Sarek National Park, northern Sweden (Sven Zacek)

Storm Break in Zion Canyon, Zion National Park, Wildcat Canyon Trail, Springdale, Utah (Nick DeBarmore)

Thousands of starlings fly over marshes as they return to roost at dusk near Glastonbury in Somerset, south west England.

Pied avocets fly over the Lake Boyang in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China.

The sun emitted a significant solar flare. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event.

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore took this photograph of the Great Lakes and central U.S.

The Langtang mountain range towers over the Kathmandu Valley, hidden under a blanket of clouds, as seen from Bhanjyang on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal.

Thiksey Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery known for its resemblance to Lhasa’s Potala Palace, sits at 11,800 feet in the northern Himalayan region of Ladakh, India. (Kavya Reddy)

Mount Bromo (in foreground) and Mount Semeru (in background) on a misty morning in East Java, Indonesia. (Achmad Sumawijaya)

Sunset time in Egypt's Sahara, the White desert. (Nicolas Marino)

At 21,467 feet, India’s Mount Shivling rises toward a clear night sky. Here in the Garhwal Himalaya lies the Gangotri glacier—and the headwaters of the Ganges River. (Pete McBride)

Giant ash clouds released from the crater during the eruption of Mount Sinabung volcano, as seen from Karo district located in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Pangong Tso, a high-altitude brackish lake on the India-Tibet border, in winter, Ladakh Range, 194201. (Sankar Sridhar)

Early morning mist floats around the hilltops near San Quirico D'Orcia, in Val d'Orcia, Tuscany, Italy. (Mauro Maione)

Grassland fog in Inner Mongolia, China. (Libby Zhang)

Aerial view of a river in Peru's Amazon region of Loreto.

The Mont Blanc massif at sunrise is seen from Geneva, Switzerland.

The Milky Way, our home galaxy, photographed over Cathedral Valley, a scenic backcountry area in Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, USA. (Dave Lane)

Rain forest in Banaue, part of the Ifugao province of the Philippines. (Per-Andre Hoffmann)

Caroline Island, part of the Southern Line Islands in the remote Pacific Ocean. (Brian Skerry)

Lava erupts at the Bardarbunga volcano, Iceland. The lava eruption is the largest in Iceland since the 19th century. (Orvar Atli Porgeirsson)

The Tungurahua volcano blows steam and ash, seen from Guadalupe, Ecuador

Beautiful Bac Son Valley, Vietnam. (Nguyen Viet Thanh)

A boat commutes across the Mekong River in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Mekong is the world's 12th longest river running from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Mishima Bridge, crossing the Tadami River in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (Teruo Araya)

Chaine des Puys in Central France, a volcanic chain of 80 volcanoes over a distance of 32 km, with the Puy de Dome (top) and the Puy de Pariou (bottom) near Clermont-Ferrand.

Sunrise at Wadi Doan, Yemen (Paul Nevin)

A multi-layered lenticular cloud hovering near Mount Discovery, a volcano about 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of McMurdo Station on Antarctica’s Ross Island. (IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger)

Hot spring in Hveravellir, Iceland.

Herd of bison at Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. (Matthew Potter)

Sunrise at Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park which is the lowest point of elevation in the United States. (Linda Cortelyou)

Fog surrounds the mountains in Goncalves, in the state of Minas Gerais in southwestern Brazil.

Snow cover doesn't stop Castle Geyser from blowing its top in Yellowstone's Upper Geyser Basin, Montana. (Daniel R. Westergren)

Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver, Canada. (Shane Kalyn)

Icelandic landscape. (Sarah Martinet)

Manmade rice fields in China's Yunnan province reflect the sky. The fields follow the hill's contours, depending on where people can reach. (John Qu)

Nohkalikai Falls in Meghalaya, India. (Soamtirtha Adhikary)

Tengger Caldera, Indonesia, with active volcanoes Bromo (foreground) and Semeru (background) shortly after sunrise. (Adrian Rohnfelder)

Herd of Tibetan kiang in the Ladakh Range in India. (Sankar Sridhar)

Oberstdorf, Germany : An igloo village carved into the snow atop Nebelhorn Mountain features a bar, a dining room, and an outside hot tub. Visitors can spend the night—at least until April, when the village melts away. (Michaela Rehle)

Terraces extend far away in Yunhe county, Zhejiang province, China. (Mitchell Masilun)

Foaming waves lap the shores of Bora-Bora as twin peaks Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu rise from an extinct volcano on the island. An overseas territory of France, Bora-Bora is in the Leeward group of French Polynesia's Society Islands in the Pacific Ocean. (Frank Heuer)

Hills near Hpa An in Burma, now known as Myanmar. (Francois Dorey)

Double volcano on the island of Ambrym in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. Picture was taken by NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins.

A rare total cloud inversion at Mather Point on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park in Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA. Cloud inversions are formed through the interaction of warm and cold air masses.

Dead Horse Point: Sun setting over the Colorado River. (Joe Newman)

South face of Annapurna mountain range in Nepal. (Bo Li)

A hot air balloon captures the dreamland scenery of Yangshuo, China, a pastoral patchwork of fields, rivers, and limestone peaks. (Karl Willson)

Tribesmen lead their camels through the sand dunes of the Liwa desert, west of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

A man leads camels at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. (Reuters)

Mount Sinabung spews volcanic ash in North Sumatra, Indonesia. (Binsar Bakkara)

Baltoro Glacier: Masherbrum, one of the 25 highest mountains in the world, rises behind a glacial stream on Baltoro Glacier in northern Pakistan. (Shahid Durrani)

Vancouver is carpeted in thick fog with the city's skyscrapers poking out above the clouds. (Alexis Birkill)

Sun rising near Mount Hood, Oregon. (Ali Tucker)

Sea anemones, anemonefish, and corals create a Technicolor scene at Ari Atoll in the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. (WaterFrame)

A group of elephants gathers around a hillock in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. (Michael Poliza)

Lake Satka, Russia. The small town is on the western slope of the Ural Mountains, which mark the geographical divide between Europe and Asia . (Mikhail Trakhtenberg)

Lake District, Cumbria, England. (Adam Burton)

Lofoten Islands, Norway. (Orsolya Haarberg)

Birch trees with golden leaves soar into the sky in Ivanovo, Russia. (Vladimir Smirnov)

Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, Nevada. (Royce Bair)

A huge glacier in Greenland. (Julian Hall)

The Bugaboo peaks are reflected in a lake in British Columbia, Canada. The Bugaboos are part of the Purcell Range. (Jonathan Irish)

Mist hovers in a valley near Goathland, England. (Getty Images)

Snow covered Stubaier Glacier mountains during sunset in Innsbruck, Austria. (Dominic Ebenbichler)

A bolt of lightning lights up the sky next to Mount Sinabung volcano in western Indonesia as it spews steam and ash. (Ade Sinuhaji)

Autumn along the Lhasa river near Lhasa, the capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. (Liu Kun)

Rice terraces stairstep down the Punakha Valley in Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist kingdom in the Himalaya. Roughly three-quarters of the country's 635,000 people survive by raising crops and livestock, but less than a tenth of the rugged land is arable. (Pete Ryan)

The roof top of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. (Amy Johnson)

Bessegen Ridge, Jotunheimen, Norway. (backpackersguidetoearth)

The Atlantic Ocean Road, Norway. (Ovadia & Sons)

China's rainbow mountains: The Danxia scenic area in Gansu province, north-west China, is a landform of reddish sandstone that has been eroded to create unusual rock formations. (Xinhua)

The Borobodur Temple from Stumbu Mountain in Central Java, Indonesia. (Arif Otto)

Pico de Orizaba, or Citlaltepetl mountain, rises above the morning mist as seen from a Mexican Navy aircraft on a volcano monitoring mission in Mexico. (AP)

Lights warm a cold winter's evening in Hüttschlag, a village nestled in the Grossarltal valley of Austria in Salzburg state. (Jens Schwarz)

Mayon Volcano, Philippines: a stratovolcano on Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines. Mayon is the country's most active volcano; its earliest recorded eruption was in 1616 and its most recent was in 2010. (Chris Stowers)

Northern Lights Over Igloo on Kiyuk Lake, Nunavut, Canada. (Amanda Smith)

The Toling Monastery in Tibet. (China Tibet Online)

Waterfall in Karijini National Park, Western Australia. (Ignacio Palacios)

Buddhist temple in Shaxi, China devoted to the female reproductive organ, praying for a smooth childbirth. (BBC)

Wyoming’s Jackson Hole, surrounded by the towering Gros Ventre and rugged Teton mountain range. (BBC)

A Sunburst From Australia's Blue Mountains. (VernsPics)

Blagaj Monastery on the River Buna in Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Craig Mann)

Angkor Wat ruins in Cambodia served as the seat of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. (Suresh Eswaran)

The tranquil Okavango Delta, a 15,000sqkm flood plain that fans out in the northwestern corner of Botswana, is one of the world’s greatest natural miracles; a verdant paradise of palms, papyrus, crystal-clear channels and deep lagoons. Set in a massive sea of desert sand, the fragile wonderland is an oasis for wildlife drawn to its life-giving waters. (Daniel Allen)

Mesa Verde Anasazi Ruins, Montezuma County, Colorado, USA. (Gleb Tarro)

Unobstructed view of the Mont Blanc at “Le Panoramique” restaurant in Le Brévent, Chamonix, France. (Lu Chien-Ping)

Kangchenjunga the world’s third- highest mountain in the Indian Himalayas as seen from Darjeeling in West Bengal. (A. Ostrovsky)

The Arica-La Paz train, connecting Chile and Bolivia, runs in Arica, some 2000 km north of Santiago.

Gobi Desert: The Crescent Lake sits in an oasis just south of the city of Dunhuang in Gansu Province, China. It was a trading hub of the Silk Road. (Ed Jones)

Goðafoss is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in Iceland. Located in the central north of the island, translucent water cascades over the horseshoe-shaped falls and races down the canyon. (Joshua Holko)

Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano spews large clouds of gas and ash near Baños, south of Quito.

Teide Volcano with the City of La Laguna: Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. (Daniel Cejudo)

Torre Cesta is the second of three towers on the crest of Monte Titano in the tiny republic of San Marino. Built in the 11th century, the Cesta sits on the mountain's highest peak and once held prison cells. It appears along with the Guaita Rocca and the Montale—the first and third towers, respectively—on San Marino's flag. (Möllers)

Sun rays beam at dawn over the Plaosan Buddhist temple located in the Klaten regency in Indonesia's central Java province.

Shibazakura — seasonal flowers at Kawaguchi-ko, one of the Fuji Five Lakes. (Japan Today)

Russian Wilderness: Two bull muskoxen size each other up. (Sergey Gorshkov)

A man herds horses in the Inner Mongolia region of China. (Zuopeng Zhang)

Colombia's lush Cocora Valley, part of Los Nevados National Park, is the principal home for the country's national tree, the palma de cera, or wax palm. The lanky tree is the world's tallest palm tree, reaching up to 200 feet tall. (Alex Treadway)

River Ferry Operating in the Early Morning. Xiao Donjiang, China. (James Khoo)

Double-humped Bactrian camel, Hunder Valley, Ladakh, India. (Kuntal Paul)

Hovsgol is the northernmost of Mongolia’s 21 provinces, shadowing Russia’s border and sharing the great Siberian taiga (subarctic coniferous forest). (Hamid Sardar)

Amazing landscape in autumn at Kochia Hill, Hitachinaka City, Japan.

Iran: Palangan Village, in the mountains near the Iraq border. (Amos Chapple)

Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, in Ecuador. (David Grijalva)

Zhuang women tend perfectly landscaped rice terraces in a valley in Longsheng, Guangxi, China. The terraces, called Longji, or Dragon Spine, cover steep slopes that drop some 3,000 feet. The Zhuang are China's largest minority, numbering 16 million. (Keren Su)

The Aurora Borealis bright up the sky at twilight between the towns of Are and Ostersund, Sweden.

Medieval Adalaj Stepwell, Gujarat, India (Bornav Raychaudhury)

The Temple of Haroeris and Sobek in Kom Ombo, Egypt, is located on a bank of the Nile about 30 miles north of Aswan. It was built during the Ptolemaic period. (Kenneth Garrett)

Yasuni National Park in Ecuador is the most biodiverse ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere, and maybe even on Earth.

Alternating Rice Plots in the Bacson Valley in Bac Son, Lang Son, Vietnam. (Hai Thinh Hoang)

Road to Zhangmu on the Tibet-Nepal border is seen after snow fall. (Tongqi Huang)

Intricate and colossal mausoleums in the Registan, in the ancient city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. (Broke)

Great Wall of China in Winter: The Jinshanling section of China's iconic Great Wall passes through snow-dusted peaks and valleys. (George Steinmetz)

Morning Sun and Limestone Karsts of Thailand. (Stewart White)

Starry blue night in the Indian Ocean.

A large statue of the Virgin Mary on Santa Barbara hill overlooking the mining city of Oruro, Bolivia. "Virgen del Socavón" is Oruro's patron and venerated in particular by miners. The statue stands at 45 meters (147 feet).

Yerevan, Armenia: A view of the capital, Yerevan, and mount Ararat. (Maxim Shipenkov)

Sulfur, salt, and other minerals color the crater of Dallol, a volcano in the hottest place on Earth, Ethiopia's Danakil Depression. At 157 feet (48 meters) below sea level, Dallol is also the world's lowest land volcano. (Carsten Peter)

Scenic Railroad, Skagway, Alaska (Royce Bair)

Tsavo East National Park, Kenya. These elephants are often referred to as “red elephants” because the soil they roll around in makes them appear to have red skin. (Brent Stirton)

Asyut Nile, Egypt (Nour El Refai)

View of Svalbard, Norway, at night with snow-covered mountains. (Bjorn Anders Nymoen)

Mount Kilimanjaro’s cone rises majestically from the clouds and soars over Shira Plateau in Tanzania. (Ulrich Doering)

The Underground Lake - Reed Flute Cave in Guilin, China. (Christian Ortiz)

Eleven hairpin turns send Trollstigen—the Troll's Footpath—winding back and forth along steep mountainsides in Norway. The mountain road, now a national tourist route, took eight years to construct and was opened in 1936 by King Haakon VII. Snow closes the road in winter and spring. (Luigi Vaccarella)

Water plunges more than 2,600 feet over the edge of the Auyantepui mountain in Canaima National Park, Venezuela. With a total height of more than 3,200 feet, Kerepakupai Vená, also known as Angel Falls, is the highest uninterrupted waterfall in the world. (Jane Sweeney)

A stunning view of Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth at 29,029 feet. Nepalese call it Sagarmatha, "forehead of the world" and Tibetans call it Chomolungma, "mother of the universe." (Cory Richards)

Two-lane traffic … one of the living tree bridges in Meghalaya, India. (Nick White)

Fall colors blaze out in concentric rings from a lake in eastern Pomerania, Poland. (Kacper Kowalski)

"Pseudo craters" mark the land surrounding Lake Mývatn in Iceland. The southern part of the lake rests on a lava flow that was emitted 2,000 years ago. The pseudo craters are continually formed as water trapped beneath the Earth's surface turns to steam and explodes through the layer above. (Jonas Bendiksen)

Guoliang Road in Taihang mountains, China. (Wilson Tom)

Haraz, Yemen: A view of a village in the Haraz mountains. (Khaled Abdullah)

Tanah Lot, Bali, Indonesia. (Vacilando)

Phugtal Monastery in Zanskar, Ladakh, India

Seda Larong Wuming Tibetan Buddhist Institute #02 in Seda County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. (Lucy Young)

Tsarang, Nepal: Dusk falls over the temples and homes of Tsarang, once the most important town in the former kingdom of Mustang. Seven hundred years ago, Mustang, in north-central Nepal, was a bustling place: a center of Buddhist scholarship and art, and a major stop for caravans carrying loads of salt between Tibet and India. (Cory Richards)

Qaqortoq is the most populated town in Southern Greenland with a population of 3,230. (Tettamanti)

Alluring Mount Gasherbrum-IV, Karakoram Range, Baltistan, Pakistan. (Afzal)

Great Wall of China: A network of fortifications built over some 2,000 years—spans about 5,500 miles from the Korean border west into the Gobi desert. (Dorothea Schmid)