As the world reopened cautiously in 2021, our correspondents seized the chance to venture out in search of stories that would astonish, delight, provoke and enlighten. We went from the heights of a Himalayan ski slope to the ocean depths off the Philippines where amiable giants dive, and from a rugged island where a whistling language is still used to an Italian atelier where robots carve the sculptures. If the pandemic often kept our reporters confined to urban settings in 2020, this year afforded them the chance to explore deep into the countryside. We observed a (bogus) diamond rush in rural South Africa and accompanied Indigenous hunters in Taiwan. We trekked to Canada's beaver dams, swam in a contested stream in northern Israel and returned home to a Tuscan village sliding back in time.