“The place is quiet and so alone. Pretend there’s something worth waiting for” – Richey James Edwards. In December 2015 I finally made the sad and solemn trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The accident at Chernobyl which occurred in April 1986 shocked the world and was one of a few controversial blemishes during Soviet era-USSR.…
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“It’s a radiation vibe I’m groovin on” – Fountains of Wayne. It had been a truly incredible day of travel and to a place with a sad history – the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It’s a day I’ll remember for a long time, but after this final part of the story, it’s time to close the…
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This ain’t no “Friday’s Featured Food” for yousens so it’s not. But to keep with the alliteration, I’ll rock it out on a Friday and it is food, I’m just not “featuring it.” You may not have built up an appetite reading my previous Chernobyl Exclusion Zone posts. So after visiting Reactor Number 4 (ouch)…
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“There’s silence in the air, there’s silence in the ground. A presence moving through the rivers in the moonlight. Desolation all around. The wind blows through abandoned buildings, photos scattered on the floors, possessions of a vanished population. Safe haven for my soul.” – Tim Wheeler (Ash) Of course, it wasn’t the song from my favourite Northern Irish…
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It doesn’t get much more crazy than heading on a backpacking journey to “Reactor Number 4”. Indeed, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone attracts less tourists per year than Antarctica, North Korea and Iraq. Here there are 13,000 tourists per year. That’s only 35 people per day on average! And I mentioned in parts 1 and 2…
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“I can feel the warning signs running around my mind” – Noel Gallagher. So far the day tour of Chernobyl has the mind constantly churning with thoughts. Against a dirty, smoggy, swollen sky it hardly seems appropriate to smile at any point. It’s easy to know that something bad happened here. You just sense it…
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“Your joys are counterfeit. This happiness corrupt political shit” – Richey James Edwards. So in the fourth installment of my trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, I report on the journey driving down a Soviet built “road” through a dense forest to a radar system, often known as DUGA 1. This part of the tour seemed less…
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As with most of my journeys, I go to places without a huge amount of advance research. I find it clouds my method of thought and gives me an opinion of what to expect before I arrive. Sometimes, we go with the flow. I headed to Chernobyl with a clear head and the memory of…
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Following my trip out of Kiev to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and being based in the Tiu Kreschatik Hostel, we arrived at the CEZ entrance. The area beyond this checkpoint is out of bounds for tourists and ordinary people. You need a pass and you need to be there as part of a guided and…
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When backpacking in Ukraine, I organised a day tour of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covers an area of 1,000 square miles and straddles the official land borders of Belarus and Ukraine. When I backpacked to the city of Bobruisck in Belarus in 2007, I remember reading about how close I was…
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