Back to School - around the world

As children all over the world return to school, for some the journey getting there can be long and arduous.


Grade school pupils are reflected in the water as they walk between rice paddy fields, on their way home after attending classes in Mogpog, Marinduque, August 19, 2014. The students said they walk for more than two kilometers, including walking between rice paddy fields, from Monday to Friday to go to school and back home.


Students hold on to the side steel bars of a collapsed bridge as they cross a river to get to school at Sanghiang Tanjung village in Lebak regency, Indonesia's Banten village January 19, 2012.


Children returning from school walk along a railway track in Dhaka May 29, 2014.


Students walk across a flooded street during a heavy downpour which brought traffic in parts of Manila to a standstill September 10, 2008.


Girls walk through a street as they return from school at the Kibera slum in Kenya's capital Nairobi May 19, 2014.


School children walk past anti-government protesters lying on the ground at Democracy Monument in Bangkok December 11, 2013.


A boy walks through an alley littered with the pile of smoldering waste, while heading to school during early hours of the morning in Karachi December 5, 2013.


Schoolgirls walk in the Muhalla 832 Mechanik neighborhood in Baghdad November 12, 2007. 


Xu Liangfan, 37, escorts students on a cliff path as they make their way to Banpo Primary School in Shengji county, Bijie city in Guizhou province March 12, 2013. Xu, who started working at the school last year, is the headmaster of the school and teaches mathematics and gym class. Located halfway up a mountain, the school has 68 students of which about 20 live in the nearby Gengguan village. Students from Gengguan have to edge their way along the narrow cliff path to go to class every day, alongside Xu who would escort them. The path, which was carved from cliffs over 40 years ago, is the only route between Gengguan village and the school, according to local media.


Children walk along a road to their school after having their lunch at home in Min county, Gansu province June 1, 2011. The rural primary school, consisting of five teachers and 102 pupils, is located on a mountain measuring more than 2,000 meters (6,562 ft) high.


A Palestinian school boy walks past Israeli border police during clashes with Palestinian stone throwers in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, September 22, 2010.


Elementary schoolchildren wear protective headgear as they walk to school in Tokyo April 25, 2011. Some schools in Tokyo have asked their students to wear the protective headgear on their way to school and while returning home since March 11's deadly earthquake and tsunami.  


A school boy, carrying a backpack, walks past burning fuel tankers along the GT road in Nowshera, located in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province October 7, 2010.


Palestinian school girls walk past a burning garbage bin after stone-throwing youths were dispersed with tear gas by Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Hebron February 28, 2010.


School girls walk across a plank on the walls of the 16th century Galle fort July 8, 2009.


A school girl walks on a road covered with oil and soot at an industrial area in Mumbai December 3, 2009.


Boys on their way to school walk past a building damaged during protests and clashes in 2011 in Sanaa, December 17, 2013.


A Palestinian schoolgirl walks past Israeli border police officers on her way home from school during clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers in the Shuafat refugee camp in the West Bank near Jerusalem March 16, 2010.