"I had dreamed of seeing the Wakhan Corridor ever since I was a little kid, growing up in Hunza valley, in northern Pakistan," writes Gohar Abbas, a journalist based in Islamabad. "My father and grandfather would tell me: 'it is where we come from,' and my imagination would fly to the narrow valley jutting out of Afghanistan’s northeastern edge." Here is his story of he he finally made it to one of the most remote places on the planet, and what he found there.  

"Life has become so scary and so full of blood," writes Abdulmonam Eassa, a photographer in Eastern Ghouta, the last rebel bastion on the doorstep of Damascus that last week was submitted to an intense five-day campaign of air strikes and artillery fire that killed some 250 civilians and wounded three times as many.

"Before, the shelling was concentrated in the areas where rebels and the government troops were clashing. But now, any place can be a target, day or night."