This is the ruins of the Castle of St. Hilarion in Northern Cyprus. In 1191, the Byzantine ruler of Cyprus made the mistake of capturing a ship carrying Princess Berengaria of Navarre and held her hostage. She was the fiancée of England’s King Richard the Lion-Heart. You don’t do that to a guy nicknamed Lion-Heart.

Richard proceeded to conquer the whole island and turned it over to a group of French Catholic knights led by Guy de Lusignan. The knights built a series of fortified castles around the island to ward off the Moslem "Saracens." The most spectacular was atop a vertiginous crag high above the port of Kyrenia named after a crazy hermit who lived near there whom the knights dubbed St. Hilarion.

When Walt Disney was making his classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, he chanced upon pictures of St. Hilarion’s Castle, which his imagination transformed into the fairy tale castle of the movie. Can you see how he got the idea?

In the castle museum, there’s an explanation with some of Disney’s original sketches based on St. Hilarion’s. Disney was an imaginative genius. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #139 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The colossal red-orange dunes of Sossusvlei in Namibia are the world’s highest, largest, and oldest sand dunes. The one you see here is nicknamed Big Daddy at over 1,000 feet high. You climb it barefoot in early morning – and take plenty of water! The sand of Big Daddy is five million years old, filled with iron oxide giving its color.

Sossusvlei is in the middle of the Namib Sand Sea, which is the oldest desert on Earth, over 60 million years old. Plants, small animals and insects live here on the water from fog than often blankets the desert near the Atlantic Ocean. The Namib coastline is known as the Skeleton Coast for all the shipwrecks along it due to the impenetrable fog. Along it you’ll also find vast breeding colonies of fur seals numbering in the thousands. This is one of our planet’s most fascinating yet little known places waiting for you to explore. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #274 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Longwood House, Saint Helena Island, Atlantic Ocean. On May 5, 1821, Napolean died in this bed. He was surrounded by some 15 of his companions with their wives and children, doctors, servants, a priest, and a British Officer. There has been much speculation of the cause, but arsenic – either poisoning or in the wallpaper – has now been ruled out, and the original diagnosis of stomach cancer seems now confirmed. He was 51.

After his escape from exile on Elba, an island a few miles off the northwest coast of Italy, Napoleon suffered his final defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 by the British-led army of the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army of Field Marshal von Blücher. The Brits were taking no chances, exiling him to their outpost of 10-square mile Saint Helena, one of the remotest islands on earth, 1,200 miles west of Africa and 2,500 miles east of Brazil in the South Atlantic.

You can visit the hilltop Longwood House where he spent his last years, immaculately maintained with his elegant furnishings, surrounded by carefully attended flower gardens where he strolled – all under the care of the French Foreign Ministry. Nearby in a landscaped forest glen, the Valley of Willows, is his original burial place – far more idyllic and peaceful than his mammoth sarcophagus of ostentatious pomposity at Les Invalides in Paris. Come here yourself and I think you’ll agree. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #275 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

July, 1972. That’s what these people were known as back in 1972 who lived in the Amazon forests south of the Napo River in Ecuador killing anyone foolish enough to enter their territory. The Quechuas living along the north bank of the Napo were terrified of them, calling them “Aucas” – naked savages. I found them, as you can see, naked but not savage.

This was a true first contact. A helicopter pilot friend, Tony Stuart, and I chanced upon them, landing in their clearing. We were literally space aliens in a space ship from outer space, for all they knew was the jungle. They had nothing from the outside world. I gave them a box of matches which was the most exciting thing they had ever seen. Despite their fearsome reputation for killing outsiders including missionaries, they smiled and laughed like anyone else.

They also understood trade and exchanging gifts. Beside the matches, we gave them some rope and a small machete (first metal they had ever seen). They gave (without our asking) Tony a hand stone axe, and me a blowgun. After a few hours it was time to go. Our goodbyes to each other were with huge smiles. I will never ever forget them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #113 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The southernmost portion of the Gobi Desert is called the Alashan in Inner Mongolia. Traversed by Marco Polo in 1273 on his way to meet the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, he said it contained a “mystery.”

For in the hidden center of the Alashan is an area known as Badain Jaran, “Mystery Lakes” in Mongolian. There are some 140 of these small lakes surrounded by enormous sand dunes. The photo you see is of one of these lakes, taken in late afternoon on a windless day, with the giant dunes above reflected on the water.

We were there in October 2017. Traversing the dunes to explore these lakes is a mesmerizing experience. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #32 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Bangaram Atoll, Laccadive Islands, India. The “Lacquered” islands or Laccadives are legendary for the glossiness of the Indian Ocean surrounding them. There are three dozen of these coral atolls over 150 miles off the coast of southwest India – but moorkh Indian bureaucrats insist on calling them “Lakshadweep,” Sanskrit for “100,000. Go figure.

Paintings of the French Impressionists of the 19^th century merged dreams and reality. Here that is for real. The beauty in the Laccadives can be so astonishing that it seems surreal – like when the ocean and sky merge into one in a palette of pastels straight from the brush of Monet. Come to Bangaram and you’ll find yourself living inside a painting. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #172 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Hani people in the mountains of Yunnan have been carving out rice terraces on dozens of steep mountainsides for over a dozen centuries. After the late fall harvest, in winter they flood the terraces in preparation for spring planting. At sunrise and sunset, the light reflecting off them creates a scene of phantasmagorical surrealism. Unknowingly, the Hani have created one of humanity’s most magnificent works of natural art the world has ever seen. What you see here is only one of hundreds of terraced areas. It is a sight beyond belief. Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #156 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)