A man looks at a figure outside a store as he walks along a street in Beijing on March 2, 2021. (Photo by Wang Zhao/AFP Photo)

A man transports a car on a horse cart to a repair shop along a street in Amritsar on May 6, 2021. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

An Afghan boy carrying empty plastic cans, walks along a street in Kabul on December 21, 2023. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

A woman dressed in traditional clothing visits a business street in Beijing on June 5, 2024. (Photo by Wang Zhao/AFP Photo)

In this photo taken Monday, April 29, 2013, carver Jackson Mbatha, 40, poses next to a an unfinished large toy giraffe he is making from pieces of discarded flip-flops, in front of a painted workshop wall at the Ocean Sole flip-flop recycling company in Nairobi, Kenya. The company is cleaning the East African country's beaches of used, washed-up flip-flops and the dirty pieces of rubber that were once cruising the Indian Ocean's currents are now being turned into colorful handmade giraffes, elephants and other toy animals. (Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

Tami Varma, right, and her brother Robin, the grandchildren of Devendra Varma, a scholar of English gothic tales and an expert in vampire lore, pose in coffins at the Bran Castle, in Bran, Romania, Monday, October 31, 2016. A Canadian brother and sister are passing Halloween night curled up in red velvet coffins in the Transylvanian castle that inspired the Dracula legend, the first time in 70 years anyone has spent the night in the gothic fortress, after they bested 88,000 people who entered a competition hosted by Airbnb to get the chance to dine and sleep at the castle in Romania. A portrait of medieval prince Vlad the Impaler is placed on the wall. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

Vardzia is a cave monastery site in southern Georgia, excavated from the slopes of the Erusheti Mountain on the left bank of the Mtkvari River, thirty kilometres from Aspindza. The main period of construction was the second half of the twelfth century. The caves stretch along the cliff for some five hundred metres and in up to nineteen tiers. The Church of the Dormition, dating to the 1180s during the golden age of Tamar and Rustaveli, has an important series of wall paintings. The site was largely abandoned after the Ottoman takeover in the sixteenth century. Now part of a state heritage reserve, the extended area of Vardzia-Khertvisi has been submitted for future inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List