Takinoue (Painted Pink with Shibazakura flower fields), Hokkaido, Japan

Takinoue  is a town located in Monbetsu District, Okhotsk Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan with total area of  766.89 km².

In the Ainu language, the Takinoue area is called Ponkamuikotan which roughly translates to "Village of the Small Gods." The name Takinoue, which literally means "Above the Waterfall," originates from the first Japanese settlers who founded the city upstream from a waterfall.

Takinoue is famous for its mint production and produces 95% of the mint available in Japan. Currently there is about 10 hectors (25 acres) of land dedicated to mint farming.

Takinoue Park is famous for Shibazakura or Pink Moss. The 10,000 m² park attracts thousands of visitors every year between May and June when the flowers are in full bloom. Takinoue is surrounded on three sides by mountains. It shares the fourth side with Monbetsu City.

long the walkway, you can stop at the view post to admire all of the flowers, including some tulips; but for flower aficionados, this might be a little strange.   On Honshu, flowers bloom by type according to the season but in Hokkaido, they seem to all bloom at the same time.  This flower collaboration makes for a really enjoyable view.

Usually Shibazakura have only five petals, but if you’re somehow able to find one with six or more petals, it’s good luck!  For those hoping for a little luck, you might have fun searching for some of these “lucky” flowers.

Abraham Lake, Phenomenon of frozen bubbles, Western Alberta, Canada

Abraham Lake is an artificial lake on North Saskatchewan River in western Alberta, Canada. The lake was created in 1972, with the construction of the Bighorn Dam, and named after Silas Abraham, an inhabitant of the Saskatchewan River valley in the nineteenth century. Abraham Lake has a surface area of 53.7 km2 (20.7 sq mi) and a length of 32 km (20 mi).

Abraham Lake is home to a rare phenomenon where bubbles get frozen right underneath its surface. They're often referred to as ice bubbles or frozen bubbles. This has made the lake famous among photographers.

Photographer Fikret Onal explains the phenomenon: "The plants on the lake bed release methane gas and methane gets frozen once coming close enough to much colder lake surface and they keep stacking up below once the weather gets colder and colder during  winter season."

The Cellular Jail, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India

The Cellular Jail, also known as Kālā Pānī (derived from Sanskrit words 'Kal' which means Time or Death and 'Pani' which means Water), was a colonial prison in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. The prison was used by the British especially to exile political prisoners to the remote archipelago. Many notable dissidents such as Batukeshwar Dutt, Yogendra Shukla and Vinayak Savarkar, among others, were imprisoned here during the struggle for India's independence. Today, the complex serves as a national memorial monument.

Although the prison complex itself was constructed between 1896 and 1906, the British had been using the Andaman islands as a prison since the days in the immediate aftermath of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.

Shortly after the rebellion was suppressed, the British executed many rebels. Those who survived were exiled for life to the Andamans to prevent their re-offending. Two hundred rebels were transported to the islands under the custody of the jailer David Barry and Major James Pattison Walker, a military doctor who had been warden of the prison at Agra. Another 733 from Karachi arrived in April, 1868. In 1863, the Rev. Henry Fisher Corbyn, of the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment, was also sent out there and he set up the 'Andamanese Home' there, which was also a repressive institution albeit disguised as a charitable one. Rev. Corbyn was posted in 1866 as Vicar to St. Luke's Church, Abbottabad, and later died there and is buried at the Old Christian Cemetery, Abbottabad. More prisoners arrived from India and Burma as the settlement grew. Anyone who belonged to the Mughal royal family, or who had sent a petition to Bahadur Shah Zafar during the Rebellion was liable to be deported to the islands.

The remote islands were considered to be a suitable place to punish the independence activists. Not only were they isolated from the mainland, the overseas journey (Kala Pani) to the islands also threatened them with loss of caste, resulting in social exclusion. The convicts could also be used in chain gangs to construct prisons, buildings and harbour facilities. Many died in this enterprise. They served to colonies the island for the British.

By the late 19th century the independence movement had picked up momentum. As a result, the number of prisoners being sent to the Andamans grew and the need for a high-security prison was felt. From August 1889 Charles James Lyall served as home secretary in the Raj government, and was also tasked with an investigation of the penal settlement at Port Blair. He and A. S. Lethbridge, a surgeon in the British administration, concluded that the punishment of transportation to the Andaman Islands was failing to achieve the purpose intended and that indeed criminals preferred to go there rather than be incarcerated in Indian jails. Lyall and Lethbridge recommended that a "penal stage" should exist in the transportation sentence, whereby transported prisoners were subjected to a period of harsh treatment upon arrival. The outcome was the construction of the Cellular Jail, which has been described as "a place of exclusion and isolation within a more broadly constituted remote penal space.

Solitary confinement was implemented as the British government desired to ensure that political prisoners and revolutionaries be isolated from each other. The Andaman island served as the ideal setting for the government to achieve this.

Most prisoners of the Cellular Jail were independence activists. Some famous inmates of the Cellular Jail were Diwan Singh Kalepani, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt, Maulana Ahmadullah, Movli Abdul Rahim Sadiqpuri, Maulvi Liaquat Ali, Babarao Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bhai Parmanand, Shadan Chandra Chatterjee, Sohan Singh, Vaman Rao Joshi and Nand Gopal. Several revolutionaries tried in the Alipore Case (1908) such as Barindra Kumar Ghose, Upendra Nath Banerjee, Birendra Chandra Sen. Jatish Chandra Pal, the surviving companion of Bagha Jatin, was transferred to Berhampore Jail in Bengal, before his mysterious death in 1924. Savarkar brothers Babarao and Vinayak didn't know of each other in the same jail but in different cells, for two years.

In March 1868, 238 prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide and of the remainder Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged.

Hunger strikes by the inmates in May 1933 called attention to the Jail Authorities. 33 prisoners protested the inhuman treatment meted to the prisoners and sat in hunger strike. Among them were Mahavir Singh, an associate of Bhagat Singh (Lahore conspiracy case), Mohan Kishore Namadas (convicted in Arms Act Case) and Mohit Moitra (also convicted in Arms Act Case). These three freedom fighters died due to force-feeding. Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore intervened. The government decided to repatriate the political prisoners from the Cellular Jail in 1937-38.

for more details = Cellular Jail

other place to explore in Andaman and Nicobar Islands