A child plays with a cat next to a makeshift animal shelter at Cihangir neighbourhood in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, March 23, 2023. Turan comes every single day with cat food in his hand to the makeshift shelter he helped build with the other volunteers in the area and takes care of the needs of the cats that reside their every single day. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

A man shaves blocks of salt from the Danakil Depression on 28 March 2017, in Afar, Ethiopia. Every morning, hundreds of men converge on a dry lakebed in a remote corner of Ethiopia, where they cleave the ground open with handaxes to extract salt, just as their fathers and grandfathers once did. (Photo by Zacharias Abubeker/AFP Photo)

A Hindu devotee prepares for Annakut or Goverdhan puja at Naba Brindaban temple in Kolkata on November 14, 2023. Annakut or Govardhan Puja is a Hindu festival in which devotees prepare and offer a large variety of vegetarian food to Lord Krishna as a sign of gratitude for saving them from floods as per Hindu Mythology. (Photo by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

The Supermoon rises over houses in Olvera, in the southern Spanish province of Cadiz, July 12, 2014. Occurring when a full moon or new moon coincides with the closest approach the moon makes to the Earth, the Supermoon results in a larger-than-usual appearance of the lunar disk. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

People light fireworks to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, in New Delhi, India on November 12, 2023. (Photo by Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters)

A Nihang' or Sikh warrior performs “Gatka”, an ancient form of Sikh martial arts, during a Fateh Divas celebration a day after the Hindu festival Diwali, in Amritsar on November 5, 2021. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

Merit: A Night at Deadvlei. The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means “dead marsh. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry. (Photo and caption by Beth McCarley/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)