GEO Reports

Stockholm and its archipelago are world famous tourist destinations, busy with visitors in the summer months. But in winter things are quiet; Captain Niclas Jornée keeps the islands supplied with his local ferry service. In Stockholm the choir of the Adolf Fredriks Music School prepares for a special St Lucy’s Day concert and the Swedes decorate their city with lights during the season of darkness.

The monk seal is one of the most mysterious and endangered marine mammals in the Mediterranean. Around 500 of them live in Greek and Turkish waters, lurking in hard-to-reach underwater caves. A team from a Swiss foundation is using ultra-sophisticated cameras to try to learn more about their way of life, in the hope of better protecting them.

Human beings have always dreamed of being able to fly. This dream has come true thanks to the largest wind tunnel in Europe located near Milan. Initially designed for aeronautics and aerospace, these indoor simulators are now open to all. A new sport has emerged thanks to these massive wind tunnels: part athlete, part dancer, and part bird, sportsmen and women have learned to tame the 200km winds to create something beautiful. Among them is Laurie Lubbe, who is preparing for the French freestyle championship.

Medieval combat techniques are alive and swishing in Spain. Every year, a big tournament takes place at the foot of the castle of Belmonte in Castile-La Mancha. Men and women dressed in armour face each other in duels, and fight 'battles' using swords and axes.

Horses have long played an essential role for the nomadic peoples of Mongolia, but as Mongolians have adopted a sedentary way of life, they now breed horses primarily for their meat. This has had disastrous consequences, including animal abuse, overgrazing and obesity in large swathes of the population. Naranbadrakh Batkhuu wants to revive the age-old relationship between Mongolians and their horses for the good of the people and the natural world.

In Nepal, in the Thrangu Tara monastery near Kathmandu, nuns have the privilege of creating sand mandalas, intricate geometric configurations of symbols, painstakingly assembled from grains of sand. These astonishingly beautiful creations are destroyed to remind Buddhists of the transitory nature of all things.