It takes one historical event or Netflix Original Series to trigger a traveller’s curiosity. And though dark tourism isn’t something new, it’s definitely on the rise as many jetsetters cash in on more meaningful places to visit. Here are just three to inspire your next trip…

CHERNOBYL
Your interests don’t have to be morbid for this one but visiting the abandoned site of Chernobyl is like entering a haunting past and immersing yourself in history. Over a long weekend,
explore the ghost town of Pripyat with its eerie and unsettling deserted playground, the Red Forest, and the New Safe Confinement structure around Reactor 4, which exploded back in 1986. You can even meet the few self-settlers stillalive today who live inside the Exclusion Zone. To top that off, most pre-booked tours or packages will include a stay in Kiev, and a visit to the Chernobyl Museum for more indepth stories about the disaster. The site has been reclaimed by nature and is a fascinating trip for an insight into what happens when dangerous environments are created by an accident.
Fly to: Kiev with Qatar Airways direct from Doha.

DMZ BORDER
If you desire to get a sneak peek into one of the most closed countries (North Korea) in the world, a visit to the DMZ is a must. Seoul, South Korea is the closet major city to the DMZ which can only be visited on an organised tour with a mandatory military escort. Be sure to pick a tour with good points of interest including; the Joint Security Area, which is where you have the chance to physically stand in North Korea itself and shop original North Korean items from the gift shop; then there’s the Mt Odu Observatory from where you can safely view day-to-day life in North Korea through free, ultra-zoomed binoculars; as well as the Infiltration Tunnels built in the 1980’s; and, lastly, Freedom Bridge which connects the two sides and could be used if ever they were to be at peace. At most, the DMZ is a place where you’ll gain more of an insight into a humanitarian crisis that the world does not know enough about.
Fly to: Seoul, South Korea with Qatar Airways direct from Doha.

RWANDA
The small landlocked country of Rwanda is where the most recent and most brutal large-scale genocides took place in 1994. When it comes to Dark Tourism, the country’s many memorial sites are indeed one to shock and awe visitors. The Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre is the best known and most visited individual site for tourists to see, located near the centre of the capital Kigali, which also offers a few more sites of its own that are worth exploring. However, it is in Murambi where the reality of these atrocious tragedies come to life. A “display of the dead” shows possibly the darkest, starkest, grimmest, and most shocking side of humanity in that at Murambi whole bodies are on display, half-decomposed, half- mummified by lime, which turned the bodies white. The experience is gutwrenching and not for the faint-hearted. But, more importantly, it also serves to prevent genocide denial and acts as a memorial to the hundreds of thousands who were slaughtered.
Fly to: Kigali with Qatar Airways direct from Doha.