Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Fallen leaves cover the undergrowth as a commuter on a bicycle makes her way through the Tiergarten park in central Berlin on December 7, 2020. (Photo by Odd Andersen/AFP Photo)

Secondary school graduates play in a fountain as they celebrate the last day of school, traditionally called the “last bell” in central Kiev, Ukraine on May 31, 2019. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

A Sudanese man plays a local music instrument ahead of a meeting with Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Himediti, deputy head of Sudan's ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) and commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries, in the capital Khartoum on June 18, 2019. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

A nurse bows to the life size statue of Pope Francis as her friend takes a photograph at the St.Louis hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, November 19, 2019. Pope Francis arrives in Thailand on Wednesday for the first visit here by the head of the Roman Catholic Church since St. John Paul II in 1984. (Photo by Manish Swarup/AP Photo)

Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, Isabelle Axelsson and German Luisa Neubauer take part in a climate strike protest during the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 24, 2020. (Photo by Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

A Garba (folk dance) participant gets her back painted with an awareness message on vaccination against the Covid-19 coronavirus during the ongoing Navratri festival in Ahmedabad in western India on October 8, 2021. (Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP Photo)

A monkey chews on a brazillian tourist's hair at the Pra Prang Sam Yod temple during the Lopburi Monkey Festival on November 28, 2021 in Lop Buri, Thailand. Lopburi holds its annual Monkey Festival where local citizens and tourists gather to provide a banquet to the thousands of long-tailed macaques that live in central Lopburi. (Photo by Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)