Boys play with a drainage culvert used for flood control in Las Pinas, Metro Manila February 28, 2016. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

Tanzania, 1964. A touching moment between primatologist and National Geographic grantee Jane Goodall and young chimpanzee Flint at Tanzania's Gombe Stream Reserve. (Photo by Hugo van Lawick via National Geographic)

A spiritual leader (R) of the Huni Kui Indian tribe blows an herbal powder into the nose of a tribal member during a ceremony outside the village of Novo Segredo along the Envira river of Brazil's northwestern Acre state, March 9, 2014. Many indigenous groups, including the Huni Kui, Ashaninka, and Madija, live in villages in the Brazilian rainforest near the border with Peru. (Photo by Lunae Parracho/Reuters)

Only the most intrepid urban explorers cross the tattered ruins of the old Iron Curtain to endure the excessive bureaucracy, military paranoia and freezing winds of the East to hunt for the ghosts of an empire. Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn’t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union.

“The Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae now found in the wild only in the Australian island state of Tasmania. The size of a small dog, it became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936. It is characterised by its stocky and muscular build, black fur, pungent odour, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding”. – Wikipedia. Photo: A Tasmanian Devil bears it's teeth at a quarantine facility August 31, 2005 in Hobart, Australia. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

Flying pigeons pass over Nepalese street vendors near the earthquake damaged UNESCO World Heritage Site, Durbar Square in Kathmandu on May 20, 2015. Nearly 8,500 people have now been confirmed dead in the disaster, which destroyed more than half a million homes and left huge numbers of people without shelter with just weeks to go until the monsoon rains. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)

A twelve foot long giant hamster has surprised Londoners along the South Bank, Millennium Bridge and Clapham Common on May 26, 2016. A 4-metre pedal-powered mechanical model hamster, which has been created in the likeness of Jaffa the hamster, who is listed as one of the 10 oddest discoveries made by Kwik Fit technicians in customers’ cars. (Photo by Joe Pepler/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

In this Saturday, Oct. 24, 2015 photo, a Lebanese Shiite supporter of Hezbollah with a tattoo on his head that reads in Arabic, “Oh Ali”, beats his chest during the holy day of Ashoura, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon. A growing number of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon are getting tattoos with religious and other Shiite symbols since the civil war in neighboring Syria broke out five years ago, fanning sectarian flames across the region. (Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP Photo)