“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)

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A pro-democracy demonstrator fights with a Soviet soldier on top of a tank parked in front of the Russian Federation building on August 19, 1991, after a coup toppled Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The same day, thousands in Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities answered Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin's call to raise barricades against tanks and troops. (Dima Tanin/AFP/Getty Images)

“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”. – Yahoo News. Photo: Hungary, MAV 424 Steam Train. (Photo by Rebecca Bathory)

Vladislav Doronin and Naomi Campbell attend the religious ceremony of the Royal Wedding of Prince Albert II of Monaco to Princess Charlene of Monaco in the main courtyard at the Prince's Palace on July 2, 2011 in Monaco. The Roman-Catholic ceremony follows the civil wedding which was held in the Throne Room of the Prince's Palace of Monaco on July 1. With her marriage to the head of state of the Principality of Monaco, Charlene Wittstock has become Princess consort of Monaco and gains the title, Princess Charlene of Monaco. Celebrations including concerts and firework displays are being held across several days, attended by a guest list of global celebrities and heads of state. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Participants compete in a wife-carrying championship in Tapiobicske, Hungary, August 7, 2021. Some 40 Hungarian husbands, with their wives on their backs, clambered over rough terrain on Saturday in the nation's second wife-carrying contest. (Photo by Marton Monus/Reuters)

Gianluca Pardelli is something of an expert on markets. For the past two years, he’s travelled across eastern Europe, from Azerbaijan to Uzbekistan, Moldova to Georgia, photographing them. Here: Telavi, Georgia. (Photo by Gianluca Pardelli)

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.

Two chimpanzees share a piece of watermelon at Taronga Zoo on December 23, 2010 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Rick Stevens/Taronga Zoo via Getty Images)