Shortlist, Ala Daghlar (Colourful Mountains) by Mehrdad Fathi

For me, as a fan of science fiction, travel and photography, discovering new places is like entering a parallel world. Ala Daghlar (Colourful Mountains) is an astonishing natural phenomenon found in Iranian Azerbaijan. These mountains, covering an area of about 70 square kilometres, start at the city of Mahneshan in the Zanjan province and extend to parts of East Azerbaijan. According to geologists, they date back 15 million years to when ponds, rich in iron deposits, fixed the colour of their minerals and sediments into the mountains as they rose, causing them to appear as different-coloured stripes.