“A snapshot from mountaineer's life”. Have you ever wondered how does a mountaineer's day start? I will give you a hint: you wake up at 3 am, set the stove, wake up your partner, pretend it is warm, quickly consume a high-calorie breakfast, watch your friends slowly ascending the icy slopes of your dream summit with their tiny head torches glimmering against perfectly blue ice, and hope for the good weather. One would ask: why all this trouble? The answer is easy: for the love of the adventure and the unknown. Location: Chamonix, Haute Savoye, France. (Photo and caption by Kamil Tamiola/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

ATTENTION! All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture.

“Attacking Howler Monkey”. Due to a major tropical rainstorm my wife and I were forced to stay overnight in a Howler Monkey Rescue center in Panama. I used the time to explore the area and to take photos of the monkeys. Just after the rain finally stopped, I ran into this monkey that tried to mock attack me. I quickly took a couple of photos before retreating to a (more) safe distance. (Photo and caption by Christian Mueller-Planitz/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

ATTENTION! All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture.

“Super Enerji”. Taken on my road trip through Turkey. (Photo and caption by Michelle Brandemuehl/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

ATTENTION! All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture.

Bikers passes along the High Street on March 18, 2012 in Royal Wootton Bassett, England. The ride, in its third and final year and involving thousands of bikers started at Hullavington airfield and aims to honour the people of Royal Wootton Bassett and to raise money for the Afghan Heroes charity. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Mercury and Maia, fueled and overhauled, are waiting in the Tay at Dundee, for favorable weather to start the flight to the Cape, a distance of 6,370 miles. The composite machine moored in the Tay River, at Dundee, on September 23, 1938. (Photo by AP Photo)

A Tai Yai boy waits for a ceremony to begin at Wat Don Chedi on April 7, 2014 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand. Poy Sang Long is a Buddhist novice ordination ceremony of the Shan people or Tai Yai, an ethnic group of Shan State in Myanmar and northern Thailand. Young boys aged between 7 and 14 are ordained as novices to learn the Buddhist doctrines. It's believed that they will gain merit for their parents by ordaining. (Photo by Taylor Weidman/Getty Images)

Ethnic San Chi women dressed in traditional costumes play a friendly football match as part of the Soong Co festival celebrations in northern Vietnam's Quang Ninh province on April 24, 2021. (Photo by Nhac Nguyen/AFP Photo)

Wang Shang-chi, 75, a mobile hats vender, rides his bike on a parking lot next to the Taipei City Zoo on July 9, 2020. (Photo by Sam Yeh/AFP Photo)