Photos

Any visitor to the Sapa mountain range in northern Vietnam would not have missed these gorgeous rice terraces.

Crafted by hand and used as plots for wet rice cultivation, these terraces mark the might of human civilization to transcend the limits of Nature.

Most of the residents in the area belong to the Hmong tribal groups, although there are increasingly more ethnic Vietnamese as well as foreigners in the town.

This photo is taken during winter, after the harvesting season. As such, the plots are largely empty - but in themselves, the terraces are already stunning evidences of the layers of labor that the local people invested, all just in order to earn a living.