The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Boats moored in the middle of Dal lake are silhouetted against the setting sun on January 15, 2018 in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian administered Kashmir, India. Kashmir, the Muslim majority state, known as the “Paradise on Earth” has for centuries captured the imagination of many writers, poets and film makers and is integral to the tourist trade. Kashmir has been a contested land between nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan since 1947, the year both the countries attained freedom from the British rule. (Photo by Yawar Nazir/Getty Images)

People dressed in costumes have a break while marching during the Vijanera Festival, in the small village of Silio, northern Spain, Sunday, January 3, 2016. The Vijanera masquerade, of pre-Roman origin, is the first carnival of the year in Europe symbolizing the triumph of good over evil and involving the participation of crowds of residents wearing different masks, animal skins and brightly coloured clothing with its own complex function and symbolism and becoming the living example of the survival of archaic cults to nature. (Photo by Francisco Seco/AP Photo)

In this Wednesday, January 7, 2015 photo, a Sri Lankan Catholic devotee Rita Anthony kisses her rosary as she prays inside her house in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Vatican has said that it hopes that Sri Lanka's Christians can play a role in helping heal the wounds of the island nation's bloody 25-year civil war, when the Tamil Tiger rebels fought to create a separate homeland in the north for the minority Tamils, who are mostly Hindu. The war came to a bloody end in 2009, but many Tamils say they feel forgotten by the central government, which is dominated by the country's ethnic Sinhala majority, which is overwhelmingly Buddhist. Sri Lanka's Christians come from both the Tamil and the Sinhala communities, making them a natural bridge between the two sides. (Photo by Eranga Jayawardena/AP Photo)

A girl shoots a gun armed with blanks at an weapon exhibition during a military show in St.Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, October 14, 2017. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Cheng Chen (R), a 27-year-old worker at a state-owned enterprise, poses for a photograph with his nephew who is wearing his home-made Iron Man armour, in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province April 13, 2015. It cost Cheng about 500 yuan ($81 USD) to make the armour, which weighs about 4 kilograms, with plastic boards and LED lights, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

An owner poses with her Maine Coon cat in front of a mirror during a cat exhibition in Bishkek on April 19, 2015. Cat lovers from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan took part in the exhibition. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

Arlo Dela Cruz and Maica Nicerio-Dela Cruz on their wedding day with the Mayon volcano erupting in the background, in Daraga, Albay, Philippines on January 25, 2018. They were married earlier in the afternoon at Our Lady of the Gate Parish. After their wedding they walked out to Red Labuyo restaurant and the volcano started its eruption. The Mayon volcano continued to erupt Thursday. The airport in Legazpi is closed until at least 31 January 2018. (Photo by ZUMA Press/Alamy Stock Photo)