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)

In this Thursday, February 9, 2017 photo, a Bangladeshi boy pulls a rickshaw loaded with strips of leather at the highly polluted Hazaribagh tannery area in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Hazardous, heavily polluting tanneries with workers as young as 14 supplied leather to companies that make shoes and handbags for Western brands, a nonprofit group that investigates supply chains says. (Photo by A.M. Ahad/AP Photo)

A lovely sunrise in at the beachfront of Playa de Muro, Alcudia on the island of Mallorca, Majorca, Spain on May 16, 2022. As a road cyclist walks his road bike along a wooden jetty heading out into the calm waters. (Photo by Phil Wilkinson/Alamy Live News)

Samurai commiting seppuku (hara-kiri) in Japan, circa 1880. (Photo by adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images)

A rickshaw man runs under the blooming cherry blossoms in Tokyo, Sunday, March 29, 2015. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

Photographer Logan Zillmer took this photo of the harvest moon above a corn field as part of his “Traveler” series on Flickr. (Photo by Logan Zillmer)

A hand reaches out to touch a dinosaur during the “Jurassic Quest” experience at Broward County Convention Center on July 08, 2022 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In this Tuesday, August 2, 2016 photo released by Xinhua News Agency, people stand on a platform as the Transit Elevated Bus TEB-1 conducting a test run after it unveiled in Qinhuangdao, north China's Hebei Province. The 72-feet long and 25-feet wide Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) powered by electricity can carry more than hundreds passengers, is designed to go over the normal traffic to help ease traffic congestion without having to dig new tunnels or build elevated rail tracks. (Photo by Luo Xiaoguang/Xinhua via AP Photo)