A continent as large as Asia rarely speaks in a single tone.

Its 2025 played out in polyphony — with chords of devotion, chaos, spectacle and fatigue — each a reminder of how much can, and does, coexist.

AP photographs , taken from the Himalayas to the Java Sea, recorded all of them.

Some moments are quiet.

From above, the Rohingya refugee camps at Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar appear as calm, tidy rows — a quiet geometry that masks the dirge of a people in exile. In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, a dove settles on a soldier’s hat during an independence day ceremony. Bright red powder drifts like a quiet fog as a girl celebrates the Hindu festival of Holi in Mumbai, India.

Vibrant motion cut through elsewhere.

Traditional dancers in West Java, Indonesia, prepare to head out, a br

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