Bowl in splendor, if you're lucky.

A sacred mountaintop temple offers a fine cup of tea to visitors who can survive the journey.

This domed temple was built in a hidden cave mouth as a refuge for sinners seeking absolution.

A salty red wasteland in Tanzania is a breeding spot for endangered flamingos.

The hottest place on the planet.

On the outskirts of a desert trading village high on the Andean plain, steel giants have been destroyed by salt winds.

A part of the world's largest marsh seems to be growing bright red Martian grass.

A dangling church built over a Colombian gorge.

An enormous concrete structure built over a nuclear crater.

A prized globe signed by Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh sits in the Brooklyn office of the American Geographical Society.

Hundreds of stone stairs and a winding medieval bridge connect this haunting Spanish island to the mainland.

The massive gardens and office of a Brazilian sculptor.

Tirelessly maintained by a Wisconsin man named JFK.

The ghost town left by the worst nuclear disaster of all time is being taken over by nature and urban explorers.

This tiny man looms large over downtown Charleston.

The thousands of shades on display — some toxic, others impossibly rare — are a library of more than just color.

A series of five defunct panopticon prisons in Cuba.

Hans Christian Andersen for the postmodern world.

This mountaintop lake bubbles and steams in a perpetual boil, thanks to its direct link to the Earth's interior.

A sculpture of a giant hand reaches for the stars in the middle of the Atacama desert.

Eurasia's most difficult place to hang out, and farthest point from sea access.

This "dead marsh" sits among the largest sand dunes in the world, a forest frozen in time.

An organ located deep within a cave, whose "pipes" are the geological features of the cave itself.

For 20 years, this whale skeleton has been slowly dripping oil on the floor of the museum where it hangs.