Two years ago I was lucky enough to visit Chernobyl with an organized tour out of Kyev. Strange to think of part of this planet as a forbidden zone, even stranger that it's a tourist attraction.
-Definitely. I had a tour there a couple of years ago, and the takeaway memory (in addition to the slightly eerie feeling of having been dropped into a massive Fallout game) was as we walked across a bridge over a small canal, I saw the biggest sturgeon-y fish I'd ever seen.
The guide shrugged and observed something along the lines of 'This is what happens when #2 in the food chain suddenly becomes #1.'
Considering the number of people who now go on Chernobyl tours, I am just waiting for the Lonely Planet crowd to label the place 'spoiled' ;)
Another amazing 'weird' nature reserve is the DMZ between South and North Korea. You can see the most amazing birds of prey there hunting animals in the area between the propaganda villages.
But the concept far worse is very... human and emotional.. Chernobyl is uninhabitable for my years to come. But Agra is just really dirty. It is impossible to compare the tragedies of Syria, Agra and Chernobyl.
You can not downplay something just because it does not look as bad.
Care to show some of these images? I do a search for Agra and all I see are nice images of the Taj Mahal and similarly nice architecture. A search for "Agra, India" shows some trash strewn on a beach/river-front, but no indication of a war zone or hell on earth.
