Surreal landscapes around the world (17pics)

 Giant Buddha, Leshan, China which was built during the Tang Dynasty. It is carved out of a cliff face that lies at the confluence of the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers in the southern part of Sichuan province in China, near the city of Leshan

 Travertines, Pamukkale, Turkey. Pamukkale, meaning cotton castle in Turkish, is a natural site in Denizli Province in southwestern Turkey. The city contains hot springs and travertines, terraces of carbonate minerals left by the flowing water

 Tourists on a walkway next to the Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park, U.S. The Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is the largest hot spring in the United States, and the third largest in the world, after Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica

 Dragon's blood trees, Socotra, Yemen. The tree's name comes from the red sap it produces

 Tunnel of Love, Klevan, Ukraine. A young couple walks down a leafy 'tunnel of love' near the town of Klevan, east Ukraine. The tunnel is actually a three kilometre section of private railway that serves a nearby fibreboard factory. A train runs around thrice daily through the ethereal 'tunnel' delivering wood to the factory

 Sossusvlei, Namibia which is a salt and clay pan surrounded by high red dunes, located in the southern part of the Namib Desert, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park of Namibia

 Lake Pukaki, New Zealand, which is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes running north-south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand's South Island

 Cappadocia, Anatolia, Turkey, featuring a great variety of shapes, forms and colours in the landscape

 Hitachi Seaside Park, Hitachinaka, Japan, covering an area of 190 hectares, the park features blooming flowers around the year. The park has become known for its baby blue-eyes flowers, with the blooming of 4.5 million of the translucent-petaled blue flowers in the spring

A couple take pictures inside Antelope Canyon, Arizona, which is the most-visited and most-photographed slot canyon in the American Southwest. It is located on Navajo land near Page, Arizona

 Odle Mountains, Italy, part of the Dolomites. Dolomites is derived from the famous French mineralogist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu who was the first to describe the rock, dolomite, a type of carbonate rock which is responsible for the characteristic shapes and colour of these mountains

 Door to Hell, Derweze, Turkmenistan located in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert, the eerie cavern has been on fire for more than 40 years. It was discovered in 1971 by Soviet geologists when the ground beneath their drilling rig suddenly collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of 70 metres (230 ft). As the huge crater was filled with potentially poisonous natural gas the decision was made to set it alight. Scientists expected it to burn itself out within a few days, but fast forward several decades and, amazingly, the fire is still as fierce as ever

 Rice terraces, Bali, Indonesia

Wensu Grand Canyon, Wensu County, China - after millions of years in the wind and rain erosion, forms the peculiar scene of different patterns, weird rocks and rich colours making the landscape look like something similar to Mars

 Giant's Causeway, Antrim, Northern Ireland, an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is located in County Antrim on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland, about three miles northeast of the town of Bushmills

 Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers. It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in the southwest of the country

The Wave, Arizona, consists of intersecting U-shaped troughs that have been eroded into Navajo Sandstone of the Jurassic age