“Sokolica”. Sokolica, Poland. (Photo and caption by Marcin Kęsek/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.

“Cub”. In the colony of penguins in South Georgia. (Photo and caption by Ondrej Zaruba/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.

People protect themselves behind a trash can as anti-riot olice fires water cannon to disperse thousands of people demonstrating following the death of Berkin Elvan, a teenage boy wounded in mass anti-government demonstrations last year, on March 11, 2014 near the Middle East Technical University (ODTU) in Ankara. Elvan's story – he spent 269 days in a coma – gripped the nation and became a symbol of the heavy-handed tactics used by police to reign in the biggest demonstrations against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to power in 2003. (Photo by Adem Altan/AFP Photo)

Only the most intrepid urban explorers cross the tattered ruins of the old Iron Curtain to endure the excessive bureaucracy, military paranoia and freezing winds of the East to hunt for the ghosts of an empire. Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn’t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union.

A National Bolivarian Police officer rescues a man who was being attacked by protesters, who then threw rocks at them, during a protest demanding food a few blocks from Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, June 2, 2016. Venezuela is seeing rising frustration with widespread food shortages and triple-digit inflation. (Photo by Fernando Llano/AP Photo)

Alisa, 10, gets a kiss from one of the wolves her family tamed in the village of Zacherevye, Belarus, on August 17, 2014. (Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP Photo)

Saintsetseg Jambaldorj, a member of the Tsaatan ethnic minority, one of the last remaining groups of nomadic reindeer herders in East Taiga, Mongolia, wearing a traditional deel, on July 5, 2016. (Photo by Madoka Ikegami/Barcroft Images)

A pro-Russian armed man secures crash site wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane (flight MH17) at the site of the plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region November 16, 2014. Local emergency services have begun collecting parts of the wreckage from its crash site in the middle of the conflict zone, Dutch air accident investigators said on Sunday. Dutch inspectors had hoped to collect the parts themselves, following the downing of the flight on July 17 that killed 298 people, two thirds of them Dutch citizens. But they remain concerned about the safety of their staff in the rebel-held conflict zone, and so have decided to work with local services following an initial focus on finding human remains and belongings. (Photo by Antonio Bronic/Reuters)