The May Queen during the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland on April 30, 2022. A dynamic reinterpretation of an ancient Celtic celebration of the return of summer, the festival is centered around the story of the May Queen and the Green Man, and the lighting of the Beltane bonfire, symbolic of purification, healing and new life. Edinburgh's Beltane celebrations are the largest of their kind in the world with around 250 volunteer performers and thousands of spectators. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

A sacrificial goat peeks through the entrance gate of a house, ahead of the Eid al-Adha festival in Peshawar, Pakistan on June 28, 2023. (Photo by Fayaz Aziz/Reuters)

Girls in ballet dresses pose near St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

A police officer points his gun while confronting a gang during a protest against Prime Minister Ariel Henry's government and insecurity, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 1, 2024. (Photo by Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters)

A captive elephant is made to swim for visitors at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chonburi province, Thailand on September 15, 2024. (Photo by Lillian Suwanrumpha/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.

Circus performer from the Association of Circus Proprietors on Whitehall, London, Britain, 07 July 2020. The association handed a petition to Downing Street to ask British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to allow circuses to reopen. (Photo by Will Oliver/EPA/EFE)

CHINA: Customers eat at a restaurant as a cooked pig sits on a cart on the street outside in Hong Kong, China, December 12, 2016. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)