Built for over a million people, the city of Ordos was designed to be the crowning glory of Inner Mongolia. Doomed to incompletion however, this futuristic metropolis now rises empty out of the deserts of northern China. Only 2% of its buildings were ever filled; the rest has largely been left to decay, abandoned mid-construction, earning Ordos the title of China's Ghost City.

These Filipino icons of ingenuity were originally re-crafted from abandoned US army jeeps after the second world war, and helped to establish a new system of urban transportation. Jeepneys are being phased to help ease city congestion, but the move will also cause unemployment for experienced drivers – and higher fares for commuters. (Photo by Claudio Sieber/Barcroft Media)

This is Raymond, an orphaned koala that was found abandoned beside a road in Brisbane, Australia. He was named after the man who found him.

A wild monkey has stunned animal lovers after it adopted an abandoned kitten and cared for it as his own. The young long-tailed macaque monkey was spotted in a forest protectively nuzzling and grooming the ginger kitten, making sure no harm came to it.

Bosnian worker Sefik Salihovic drives a steam engine in the Bosnian town of Banovici, 140 kms (86.9 miles) north of Sarajevo, on Monday, November 24, 2014. Every day, steam engines over 60 years old, defy their age and still pull wagons of coal from Banovici's coal mine to clients in nearby towns. But in the summer some of them turn into the only tourist attraction this impoverished north Bosnian town has to offer. (Photo by Amel Emric/AP Photo)

Pickles the cat was once abandoned and had a hard time finding a home because of his size until he met a couple who have a heart and home big enough to take him in.

Mystical Forest. Tracey Jennings photographed this seven-gill shark in a kelp forest just off the shore of Simon's Town near Cape Town, South Africa. You don't need to travel far from cities to visit Narnia. This 7 gill shark was photographed in a kelp forest just off the shore of Simonstown near Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Tracey Jennings/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year Contest)

Indian policemen carry the body of one of their colleagues killed in a rebel attack in the town of Dinanagar, in the northern state of Punjab, India, Monday, July 27, 2015. Indian forces fought an extended gunbattle Monday with militants who attacked a moving bus and stormed into a police station in a northern town bordering Pakistan. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)