Gallery: stuff your eyes with wonder

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Ray Bradbury

From the well-known (think Grand Canyon or Great Pyramid of Giza) to the less lauded (an ancient artefact, a beautiful stained-glass window, a snow-capped mountain, a colourful bird, a surprise encounter with wildlife) … the world is full of wonders.

I would normally prefer to find my own quotes to introduce a post, but there is no better one than this, which Sofia uses in setting this week’s challenge. She is looking back at the very first Lens Artists challenge, set by Patti nearly eight years ago! My first ‘wonder’ is at the longevity of this particular blogging challenge. It demonstrates what a great job our hosts do each week in stimulating our creative juices!

But I want to concentrate on the wonders that await us when we travel: the moments when we stop in our tracks and exclaim, ‘Wow’. Yes, I know that travel is a privilege as much as it is a pleasure. And wonders can be found close to home: among the flowers in our gardens, in a sunrise or sunset, in a tree blossoming again in spring … The list is endless. But I am fortunate to be able to travel and to appreciate the wonders I am able to discover far from home. So they are my focus today.

A number of these shots you may have seen in earlier posts, but I hope quite a few will be new. And of those shared previously, several have been freshly edited.

These then are just some of my personal ‘Wonders of the World’, every one of which elicited a ‘Wow’. And yes, I know there are far too many, but once I started searching these out, I couldn’t stop! Believe me, many more were omitted than were included 😏 But please feel free to skim.

My feature photo is perhaps an obvious choice: Angkor Wat soon after sunrise

NATURAL WONDERS

Rainbow in the spray, from a helicopter flight over Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

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Iguaçu Falls, Brazil

(scanned from an old slide)

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The Grand Canyon in a snow storm, seen from the North Rim

(also scanned from an old slide)

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View from the Mirador de Kari, Atacama Desert, Chile

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View from Sharaf al Alamayn, Oman

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The perfect cone of Mount Fuji, Japan

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Sunrise over the Himalayas, from Sarangkot near Pokhara, Nepal

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Okavango Delta sunset, Botswana

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The vibrant colours of the Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

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And the blues of Glacier Grey, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

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Polar bear on the sea ice, Svalbard

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Walking with elephants at MandaLao, Laos

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A rare single-horned Asiatic Rhino in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

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Little green bee eater, Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka

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A group of guanacos posing beautifully in front of the Torres del Paine, Chile

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MAN-MADE WONDERS 

The Treasury, Petra, Jordan

(another scan from an old slide)

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The Sainte Chapelle, Paris

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And I had to include my favourite view in Paris, the Île de la Cité from the Pont des Arts

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The Salon de Embajadores (Hall of the Ambassadors), Real Alcazar, Seville

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The Registan, Samarkand, Uzbekistan

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The Taj Mahal, Agra

(edited to remove scaffolding that marred one of the minarets when we visited)

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Ranu Raruku, the ‘birthplace’ of the moai, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

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A Pre-Columbian gold mask, Museo del Oro, Bogotá, Colombia