They would drain lakes in a region that is famous for its rugged beauty - a landscape of glaciers, ice-fields, mountains and fjords.

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With its comparably haunting scenery, including rice fields in the south and misty mountains in the north, its temples, some of which predate Angkor Wat, and its relative lack of crowds, Laos, ready or not, may just be it.

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She placed the images incongruously against utopian, postcard scenes from nature -- mountains, flowers and green fields -- or against backdrops modeled on the stylized landscapes of traditional Japanese screens.

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Iraq's terrain, by contrast, ranges from mountains to swamps, and many fields have no water nearby.

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The story is about a mysterious man named Smelty John, who is the only one to notice a certain beauty that wafts across the ocean, over the mountains and though snow-bound fields toward him.

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There is an excellent view from this meteor-created landmark, looking out over the surrounding mountains and the St Lawrence, with picturesque fields and villages in between.

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The ice fields in the Himalayan mountains have receded dramatically from their breadth and depth in the 1980s, according to the Australian environmentalist.

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And fertiliser-maker Akron is preparing to develop apatite fields in the Khibini mountains, an area used for reindeer grazing above the salmon-rich river system that runs south from Lake Imandra.

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But an old woman, a shaman, stayed to tell Khabarov of mountains full of gold and gems, and of Dauria's fields of grain enough, he reckoned, to feed 20, 000 and get flour to Yakutsk in two months instead of four years.

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