On January 22, 1977, 24-year-old P.K. Mahanandia set out on a four-month bicycle ride from Delhi, India, to Boras, Sweden, to be with the woman he knew was his soulmate. Their amazing love story became the subject of a best-selling book by Swedish author Per J. Andersson.

Mahanandia met Charlotte Von Schedvin in 1975, completely by chance. He was working as a sketch artist in Connaught Place, a shopping and business hub in Delhi, and Ms. Von Schedvin, from Sweden, was visiting India as a tourist. One day, as she was walking around the city, she noticed a curly young man with a sign that read “a portrait in 10 minutes for 10 rupees” and decided to test the claim. She sat down for a portrait, but something made the man nervous, as his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Disappointed with the result of his drawing but intrigued by the man, she decided to return the next day for a new one, but the result was no better.

The Swedish tourist would later learn that P.K. Mahanandia had very good reason for being nervous. The moment he had laid eyes on her, the artist remembered a prophecy his mother had made when he was only a boy. Mahanandia was a Dalit, the lowest caste in Indian society, and faced discrimination from upper-caste students growing up, so whenever he was said, his mother would tell him that he would someday marry a woman “whose zodiac sign would be Taurus, she would come from a far away land, she would be musical and would own a jungle”. As soon as he saw her, he knew she was the one.

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A Buddhist nun has melted the hearts of millions of Chinese after it was revealed that she has adopted and raised over 30 girls abandoned at the gate of her temple over the last 37 years.

Master nun Changmiao, who joined the Buddhist Hailian Temple, in Ningdu, when she was 15 years old, adopted her first daughter in 1980, when she found her abandoned on the side of the road outside her temple. The infant had ants crawling all over her body, and while curious onlookers gathered to see her, none of them were willing to do anything to help. So Changmiao decided to take her in and raise the girl as her own. Little did she know that this was only the first of many daughters, all of them rescued.

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Game2:Winter is an upcoming reality TV show where 30 participants will compete against themselves and the dangers of the Siberian wilderness – including brown bears and extreme temperatures – for a prize of $1.7 million. But the most shocking thing about this show is that, just like in the Hunger Games, “everything is allowed, fighting, alcohol, murder, rape, smoking, anything.”

News about this seemingly brutal reality show first broke out about a month ago, but reports were coming mostly from obscure news outlets and the whole idea seemed so extreme that I was pretty sure it was nothing more than a prank. Then I read that contestants had to survive until April 1st, 2018 – April Fools’ Day – and I was convinced it was fake. But the news never really went away, and now the Siberian Times newspaper announced that this Russian real-life version of the Hunger Games is actually happening, and it promises to be just as ruthless.

Ever since watching the hit TV series ‘Lost’, 35-year-old Yevgeny Pyatkovsky, a millionaire from Novosibirsk, Russia, had been wanting to create a reality show about surviving in the Siberian taiga, with little, to no help from the outside world. Now, thanks to technological advancements in surveillance equipment and online streaming, he is ready to make his idea a reality.

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A Franciscan monastery in Cochabamba, Bolivia, recently made international headlines after adopting an abandoned schnauzer and making him one of their own.

How the “world’s hairiest Franciscan monk” ended up at the San Francisco de Cochabamba monastery, four months ago, is still  a mystery, but what matters is that he’s now one of the family. Named Carmelo, the adorable schnauzer has become known as Fray Bigotón (Spanish for ‘Friar Mustache’) on the internet, after photos of him dressed in his own little Franciscan robe went viral online.

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A few years ago, most of the 2,000 or so villagers in Donggaozhuang, northern China, were struggling to put food on the table by growing wheat and corn. Now, dozens of them are millionaires and more on well on their way of making six-figure fortunes after switching to selling yarn online.

Donggaozhuang’s success story started with the idea of one villager, who set up an e-shop on Taobao, China’s largest online commerce platform, to sell yarn. Things went way better than he had anticipated, and in just three months, he made a profit of $2,900, a small fortune, considering that the highest minimum wage in China is currently around $330 per month. Word of his booming business spread like wildfire around Donggaozhuang, and the village elders soon approached the man, asking him to teach other members of the community how to set up their own online businesses.

Since yarn had worked so well for Donggaozhuang’s first online entrepreneur, everyone followed in his footsteps and they all started making money. Realizing the potential of their businesses, many sold their lands and put their farming days behind them to focus solely on their e-shops. They started buying wool, turning it into yarn and selling that on Taobao.

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Two Muslim women in India have recently filed complaints against their husbands – who happen to be brothers – for divorcing them via WhatsApp.

The “triple talaq” is a controversial clause in Sharia Law that allows husbands to instantly divorce their wives by uttering the word “talaq” three times. This allows men to throw their wives out of the house for literally any reason, without fearing any legal repercussions. The practice is frowned upon by the vast majority of Muslims and banned in most of the Islamic world, but not in India. Here, triple talaq is still frequently used, keeping women in a perpetual state of fear that their husbands could “give them talaq” if they say or do anything that displeases them.

Ironically, more an more Indian Muslims are using modern technology to make the archaic triple talaq divorce even more effective. Data shows that a growing number of men are now sending the words to their wives via email or messaging apps, which is perfectly legit. ‘How can that be legal?’ you ask, well, according to the law, the woman doesn’t even have to be present when the words are spoken, she need not even be aware. If the guy says them, it’s done!

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Tacos are generally low-cost fare in Mexico – you can buy one from street stalls for as low as 10 pesos (¢50) – so how can one cost as much as a fully optioned family car?

Juan Licerio Alcala, the executive chef at the Grand Velas Los Cabos Resort, a luxury vacation destination in Baja California, and the creator of the world’s most expensive taco, says that the mind-blowing $25,000 price tag of this delicacy is justified by “the technique and the harmony that you will lift from the plate”. That’s a pretty vague explanation, but he assures those interested in sampling his creation that “it’s worth it”.

But if you don’t feel like taking Licerio at his word with 25 grand on the line, maybe the list of ingredients will give you a better idea of what you can expect from the world’s most expensive taco. To make the opulent dish, the Mexican chef takes a corn tortilla speckled with 24 carat gold flakes, which he then fills with Kobe beef, langoustines, Almas Beluga caviar and black truffle brie cheese. Then, the taco is dressed with a salsa based on Morita chiles and Kopi Luwak coffee, before being sprinkled with some edible gold flakes.

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Tong Junhai, a 44-year-old man from China, recently achieved international fame, after a video showing him inflating a tyre tube using only one of his nostrils has gone viral online.

On February 25, Tong Junhai stunned a crowd at Huancheng Park, in the city of Xi’an, northwestern China, with a very unusual stunt. Dressed as a Kung Fu master, the man started boasting that he could inflate a medium-size tyre tube using only his nose. And to show people just how difficult the task is for a regular person, he invited a naysayer to try it himself, using his mouth. The man tried blowing into the rubber house, but to no avail.

When it was time for Junhai to show off his bizarre skill, he got into a half-squat position, put the hose to one of his nostrils, blocked the other with his thumb, and started pumping air into the tube. You can see the blood veins on his forehead popping out as he struggles to push the air out of his lungs and into the tyre tube, but eventually, he pulls it off.

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Finding a place to park your car in Park Slope, Brooklyn on a daily basis is apparently an almost impossible task, which is why some people are willing to pay a whopping $300,000 for a simple parking space.

$300,000 is enough to buy an apartment in some parts of New York, but on Union Street, in Park Slope it will only buy you a parking space in a garage condominium. The last spot at 845 Union Street sold for $280,000, but the most recent one available is already $20,000 more expensive, and experts predict that prices will keep going up.

Howard Pronsky, the owner of the 300-space parking garage at 845 Union Street, said that three decades ago he bought the place for $29,000 per space, and while the price has steadily gone up since then, it only started growing exponentially when other garage owners in the area sold their properties to residential developers. Park Slope is running out of parking spaces, and people are willing to spend a fortune for peace of mind.

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For the last 22 years, the Promised Land of Pigs, a unique farm in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, has been a haven for hundreds of pigs that would have otherwise been slaughtered and sold piece by piece at a supermarket. Here, they enjoy a peaceful, comfortable existence complete with hugs and weekly massages until the end of their natural lives.

The Promised Land of Pigs (Beloofde Varkensland) is a non-profit organization founded by Dafne Westerhof, an activist militating for the humane treatment of farm animals. For over two decades she has saved hundreds of pigs, either by buying them straight from slaughterhouses, or taking them in from breeders who no longer had use for them or had become too attached to them to have them butchered. Whatever the reason, she’s always been more than happy to accept new pigs into her “Lucky Family” (Familie Bofkont) and give them the life she thinks they deserve.

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With Women’s Day just around the corner, social networks like Instagram and VKontakte have become flooded with ads from Russian entrepreneurs offering women in Moscow the chance to rent impressive 101-rose bouquets and designer shopping bags for 10-minute photo shoots.

If your boyfriend is cheap, but you want to spark the envy of all your girlfriends without actually breaking the bank, or if you just want to make your boyfriend jealous, and you live in Moscow, Russia, there are a number of online services that you can use to have a gorgeous bouquet and an expensive-looking gift delivered at your doorstep for a 10-minute photo session. You can then post the pics online on March 8 and watch everyone go green with envy.

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From eBay to toy stores and gift shops, there are plenty of places to look for rubber ducks, but if you’re searching for a brick-and-mortar store that only caters to rubber duck enthusiasts, there’s only one place to go – The Duck Store.

It all started a few years ago in Amsterdam, when the owner of a small toy store on Oude Leliestraat, noticed that visitors, most of which were tourists, were particularly interested in rubber ducks. The adorable bathtub toys seemed to always draw people’s attention and put a smile on their faces. Then, one day, the owner read the words of Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman – famous for his giant rubber duck art installations – and was inspired to get rid of the other toys and focus solely on rubber ducks. And that’s how the Amsterdam Duck Store was born.

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Vinny Ohh, a makeup artist and part-time male model from Los Angeles, California, has so far invested over $50,000 into 110 cosmetic procedures in an effort to turn himself into an asexual alien.

People have many reasons for turning to plastic surgery, but becoming an alien is definitely not the most common one. Vinny Ohh claims that he doesn’t identify as either male or female and this ongoing process of transforming into an alien being is meant to mirror how he feels inside. He began his unusual project at age 17, when he got his first lip fillers, followed by two rhinoplasties, several cheeks and brow bone fillers, and many more after that. But the most extreme procedures are yet to come, as Vinny plans to spend $160,000 having his genitalia, nipples and bellybutton removed and his forehead realigned.

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We all loved eating raw cookie dough when we were children, but apparently a lot of adults like it too. DO Cookie Dough Confections, a small shop in Greenwich Village, New York, sells roughly 1,500 pounds of safe-to-eat raw cookie dough every day to people willing to spend over an hour in line for a chance to relive their childhood fantasies.

28-year-old Kristen Tomlan, the founder and CEO of DO Cookie Dough Confections never outgrew her craving for raw cookie dough. She always wondered why there wasn’t a place where people could enjoy their favorite treat, and started contemplating the idea of opening up her own business on a vacation, when she and a few friends stopped at a cookie shop, but instead of buying baked treats, they opted for a tub of raw cookie dough, which they ate in the car.

In 2014, Tomlan almost died after an allergic reaction to an antibiotic left her in a medically induced coma for three weeks, just a couple of months before her wedding. This near-death experience made her realize that life is short and she should follow her dreams. She first started her raw-cookie dough business online, and after getting coverage on a couple of popular websites, she and her husband had to rearrange the furniture in their apartment to accommodate commercial freezers. She soon quit her job in branding to focus solely on her business.

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If you’ve ever been to Switzerland you already know that pretty much everything is expensive there, and the fresh mountain air is apparently no exception. Well, most of it is actually free, but if you want to order a liter of Swiss mountain air collected from a secret location in the Alps, you’ll have to cough up a whopping $167. This is not a joke!

John Green, a British expat living in Basel, Switzerland, is the brains behind “Genuine Mountain Air from Switzerland”, a fledgling online business that promises to ship fresh, high-quality Swiss air anywhere around the world, if you can afford it. Green claims to collect the air from a “secret location” near the town of Zermatt, then bottles it up in glass containers, labels it and ships it to buyers.

Described as “the ultimate present for the man or woman that has everything,” the bottled mountain air also comes with a certificate of authenticity and the exact GPS collection of the place it was collected from.

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