Hohenzollern Castle perched atop the Swabian Alps, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, seen here during the different seasons. With over 350,000 visitors per year, Hohenzollern castle is one of the most visited castles in Germany. This castle is the ancestral seat of the historically significant, imperial German House of Hohenzollern, who own the castle to this day, though they do not actually reside there. The castle that we see today was built between 1846 and 1867 as a family memorial by the Hohenzollern scion King Frederick William IV of Prussia.

Antelope Canyon is a sandstone slot canyon approximately 30 miles long and about 120 feet (37 m) deep, formed across the ages through water erosion from flash floods, especially during the monsoon season. All of Antelope Canyon is within the Navajo Reservation, in Arizona. Different Navajo families own different sections of the natural slot canyon, and some offer tours that are booked for specific dates and times. Visitors are not permitted to explore the canyon on their own; instead, they must purchase an admission ticket, or a day tour that includes an admission ticket.

In ancient times monks had converted a part of Linsong Mountain (located in Gansu Province, in China) into a Tibetan Buddhist temple complex by digging grottoes, and connecting them by means of an intricate network of tunnels. The temple complex is called Mati Si (which translates to Horse’s Hoof Temple). Thousands of grottoes are grouped together in seven clusters, and each group of grottoes is no more than a mile or so from another.





The image shown here is arguably the most impressive part of Mati Si. This part of the mountainside has been carved out into a huge pagoda-like hall. Nearly 200 feet (about 60 meters) in height, it’s divided into seven floors, and houses seven grottoes connected by tunnels, containing 200 Buddha statues.





Gansu Provicne lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia's Govi-Altai Province, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south and Shaanxi to the east. The Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Part of Gansu's territory is located in the Gobi Desert. It is home to a number of other similar Buddhist grottoes carved into mountainsides and hillsides.

Tonight, August 16th, the annual Gozan no Okuribi (roughly "The Five Mountainous Send-Off Fires") festival was celebrated in Kyoto, Japan. Five giant bonfires were lit on five mountainsides surrounding the city, signifying the moment when the spirits of deceased family members, who are said to visit this world around this time, are believed to be return back to the spirit world — thus the name Okuribi (送り火, roughly "send-off fire").



Every year on each of the five mountainsides, stone hearths are purposefully built for the festival's bonfires. Three of the hearths are shaped in the form of giant Japanese text characters that signify greatness, and the Buddhist dharma, whilst another two are built in the shape of a boat, and a shrine gate. Additionally, lit lanterns are floated into a pond in Arashiyama, just before the ritual mountainside fires are lit.



Specific families have the hereditary duty of organizing all the logistics of the bonfires, and they spend many hours annually providing volunteer labour to maintain this tradition.

3+

It's really amazing how much the angle of depression (a technical term meaning the angle formed between a horizontal line and the line of sight when an observer looks downward at an object) effects our perception of depth. Here are two images of Miramar Palace (the orange building), built in 1893 at San Sebastián in Basque country, on the orders of Queen María Cristina of Austria, who used to spend her summers there. The white building behind it (with the black, conical roofed towers) is the diocesan seminary of San Sebastián (Elizbarrutiko Seminarioa), reconstructed in 1939. (Click on an image to view full size.)



In the first image, which is taken up close, the angle of depression is sharper, and the result is that the seminary appears to be almost directly behind Miramar Palace. In reality however, there is a distance of about a kilometre between the two landmarks, and there are plenty of buildings in between them. The second image approaches Miramar Palace from the same bearing (or azimuth), but from further away, and thereby the angle of depression is much gentler. This not only bestows a panoramic view, but allows us to judge the distance between the two architectural landmarks much better.

Iguazú Falls lies on the border between Argentina and Brazil, within the Iguazu River. The falls consist of around 275 individual waterfalls. Iguazú Falls is nearly three times wider than Niagara Falls.

Kasbahs (also spelled qasbah, qasba, qasaba, or casbah), particularly in Morocco, are fortified citadels or palaces often constructed using rammed earth techniques. Rammed earth, a traditional building method, involves compacting a mixture of earth, water, and a binder (like straw) into forms to create strong, durable walls out of what is essentially sun-dried mud. The kasbahs of Morocco, especially in the Drâa-Tafilalet region, situated within the Atlas mountains, such as the ones pictured here, showcase this ancient architectural style, with walls often reaching several meters thick. Some of the kasbahs shown here are in ruins, whilst others have been faithfully restored back to their original glory (probably to attract tourist revenue).



The Drâa-Tafilalet region is renowned for its picturesque oases that cover nearly 90% of its area, and that traditionally has sustained its resilient, indigenous population and rich cultural heritage. Unfortunately, in parts of the region, such as in the villages of Tafilalet, the indigenous inhabitants are abandoning their quaint traditional rammed earth homes, because of drought, desertification, climate change and social marginalisation, and are migrating to the cities. (https: //inthesetimes.com/article/morocco-oasis-es-sfalat-tafilalet-abandoned-village-climate-change-ghost-town).

Traditional turf roofed farmhouses in Iceland (just a few miles northeast from Faroe Islands, which we visited in last week's post, and which also has these traditional turf roofed farmhouses — please see zafoid.com/post/view/12000). Such houses have amazing insulation qualities, and to boot they look cute, reminiscent of Hobbit houses, are they not? 🏡 😀

The North Atlantic island village of Saksun, on Faroe Islands (part of the Kingdom of Denmark). The views are simply breathtaking, but on Faroe Islands it rains or snows 210 days a year, on average.

Sunset over New Zealand from across the ocean © Guy Shelley from Monash University.