[SVK Rider]

What a travelogue
Really very much interesting.
Do we have similar places in India?

[theMAG]

Originally Posted by SVK Rider

..
Do we have similar places in India?

Ideally, such places should not be replicated again on earth- either by intent or negligence! For the one planet that is known to harbor life, having a place turn uninhabitable for 20000 years is not a good scorecard.

[Night_Fury]

This is one hell of a trip. I mean, there aren't many who can boast they went to Chernobyl . Great write up and excellent pictures. Can't help feel a bit jealous

Originally Posted by TheInterceptor

An unused railway bridge. We saw catfish the size of sharks in the reservoir under the bridge. These catfish have no predators and hence grow huge.
Attachment 1691114

This reminds me of an episode of river monsters by Jeremy wade. he actually goes to this channel that used to feed the reactor 4 in search of a mutilated cat fish. crazy guy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mufnY-VTV8

[audioholic]

Fantastic thread and what a trip! I somehow like to read and see such haunted places and it gives me a chill when I imagine how the entire place would be after rapid abandoning. Especially when we talk about daily use items lying around from years, and decades of uncontrolled vegetation growth. I am scared about the radiation part and whatever videos I have seen on YouTube, the people have worn protective clothing. I was surprised about you going there with regular clothes.

Sorry if I missed it, but was the restaurant you told you had lunch inside the restricted zone? Then what about the people who work here and the food that is served?

Originally Posted by theMAG

Ideally, such places should not be replicated again on earth- either by intent or negligence! For the one planet that is known to harbor life, having a place turn uninhabitable for 20000 years is not a good scorecard.

True. Such is the destructive effects of a nuclear tragedy. The only advantage the European countries have is sparse population and huge uninhabited spaces. Thats not the case in our country and not even in my wildest dreams can I imagine such a thing happening here.

[crdi]

The food looks yummy! Hope it tasted so.

Excellent photography too! Kudos to your friend for the frames.

Somehow feel that some stuff is purposely arranged for an extra eerie feel.

[hemanth.anand]

I got some strange tingling sensation in my body after reading this thread. I literally got goosebumps.
Thank you so much TheInterceptor for sharing this. Also a special thanks to your friend for the wonderful pictures.
I would love to visit this place sometime. This was a very sad incident in the history of mankind.

20,000 (or 2,50,000 years as per your guide) years!!! I don't know if the entire earth will be inhabitable after those many years. Some human like you may visit earth from some other place and go back and write a travelogue.

What a way to start your first travelogue on TBHP. Welcome and thanks again

[basilmabraham]

Wow what a travelogue. I am amazed at the variety of places we Keralites manage to end up in. Kudos to you and your friend.

This thread is a collection of some of my favourite videos - top gear episode, dome construction, River monsters (I was thinking of Jeremy Wade when I read about the catfish, and then someone liked the video).

[TheInterceptor]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

It intrigues me why was it so ? What is the condition of those workers ? The literally stood next to the reactor 4 while building that dome !

Your guess is as good as mine.

Originally Posted by Night_Fury

This reminds me of an episode of river monsters by Jeremy wade. he actually goes to this channel that used to feed the reactor 4 in search of a mutilated cat fish. crazy guy!

Wow, thanks for this. I haven't seen this episode of River Monsters. Time to search for the full episode.

Originally Posted by audioholic

I somehow like to read and see such haunted places and it gives me a chill when I imagine how the entire place would be after rapid abandoning. Especially when we talk about daily use items lying around from years, and decades of uncontrolled vegetation growth.

Sorry if I missed it, but was the restaurant you told you had lunch inside the restricted zone? Then what about the people who work here and the food that is served?

Kind of like the city in I am Legend right? (Will Smith movie)

Like I said there are people who work inside the Exclusion Zone brought in 2 week shifts, same applies to the hotel employees as well. Our guide assured us that our lunch wasn't organic and local produce (ironically that's what everybody wants nowadays ), ingredients were brought from outside the zone.

Please watch the video on Post #19 in this thread, you can see the hotel and its rooms.

Originally Posted by crdi

Somehow feel that some stuff is purposely arranged for an extra eerie feel.

You are right. Chernobyl is a photographer's wet dream and you can find such "set-ups" everywhere. People do this for the perfect shot. My friend however didn't touch anything. He cared about his life more than a perfect photo.

[AltoLXI]

When I saw the word "Chernobyl" in the travelogues thread title, I expected what would follow. Honestly I had mixed feelings when I went through your travelogue.

Another BHPian, rohitoasis, had posted this a couple of months back. I had a similar feeling then when I watched the documentary.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...ml#post4272323

First, your travelogue is very unique. I have seen travelogues where people have written about places covering holocaust, places where not many have ventured into, adventure tours, driving in treacherous terrains etc. But your travelogue is different - it is beautifully written with no pretensions and has excellent snaps. Hats off to your resolve to venture into a place where many would not dare to, knowing all the risks involved. It needs a special mindset for such adventures.

Now coming to the other set of feelings I had when I went through your travelogue.

Originally Posted by TheInterceptor

Chernobyl is uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years or so (our tour guide told us 250,000 years). There is a 30 km exclusion zone around Chernobyl controlled by the military and a further 10 km zone inside where the level of radiation is still too high for long term habitation. There are a few villagers living inside the 30 km exclusion zone illegally.

This is disgusting to say the least. We, humans, tend to pat our back and claim that we are "intelligent" species. Far from it though. This is one such incidence of failure of our "intelligence". Like a child playing with beautiful chinaware and not knowing the consequence of mishandling it, we humans have essentially made a part of this beautiful planet, however small, uninhabitable, technically forever.

Originally Posted by TheInterceptor

The Ukrainian government has now opened Chernobyl as a tourist destination with about 20,000 tourists being allowed inside annually. These tours are strictly controlled. Chernobyl is still impossible for tourists to get to without an official guide. There are strict military-style checkpoints at the 30km zone, at 10km, and at the entrance to the ghostly worker's town of Pripyat. Your name and passport details have to be submitted to controlling authorities seven to 10 days in advance, and the guards check you and your passport numbers at each checkpoint.

The early days of the Zone saw a large problem with local intruders who infiltrated the vast perimeter to ransack Pripyat and other areas, but since 2007 the Ukrainian government has severely clamped down on illegal intruders.

To add insult to injury, the government has made this place a tourist destination, as if it is an achievement which needs to be seen and enjoyed, and then the souvenirs !!. We humans have really a crude sense of "portraying" the results of our misadventures.

[vasanthsm]

Chernobyl & Fukushima, Japan are the only 2 Nuclear accidents to be rated 7 in INES.

If anyone is interested in knowing more about Chernobyl disaster, you can visit the below you-tube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/user/bionerd23

[vb-saan]

Briiliant travelogue! Thank you for sharing

I was just showing the pictures to one of my intern who is from Kiev, Ukraine. She was surprised to see that someone from India has gone to her country with Chernobyl as the destination! She herself has not gone there yet

Looking forward to the next travelogue from you; Jordan must be pretty interesting!

[asingh1977]

Originally Posted by Kn1ght1941

For some strange reason, our own resident industrial tragedy, the Union Carbide factory, keeps coming to my mind. Deja Vu? Maybe.

Yups, that comparison is valid. Both happened due to human carelessness ; and not being in control. For Bhopal the amount of MethylIsoCynate they had stored, was insane. Some auditor had told them: not to store that much. God knows, why they wanted to keep such amounts. The end blame was : sabotage.

Even for R4 (Chernobyl) -- they were performing a "routine experiment" ; but forgot to factor in various design attributes.

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

I saw an earlier video that you had posted on the Dome being built and slid over the reactor.
I was surprised that all the people involved in doing the project were wearing basic gear, mostly everyone had mask, but no gloves or any protective uniform.

It intrigues me why was it so ? What is the condition of those workers ? The literally stood next to the reactor 4 while building that dome !

The dome was built using remote controlled machinery as much as possible. The biggest group to suffer were the firemen who had to scoop away radioactive rubble from the rooftops (where the lid blew off) -- and make the environment construction friendly. Many died due to cancer. They were lured in by the propaganda of nationalism and to-be-patriots. Post studies were sketchy and state controlled. As usual.

[AltoLXI]

Read in this blog:

There was something I found altogether unpleasant about this level of interference. Dark tourism in general, and particularly tourism in the wake of a catastrophic event like the disaster at Chernobyl, might already be perceived as treading the thin line between investigation and voyeurism; but to rewrite the past in this way, for outsiders to come in and mask the truth beneath their own manufactured scenes, retelling the victims’ stories in whatever way they felt would make a better picture: at times, I found it positively distasteful.

The blog also captures what goes on "behind the scenes" of Chernobyl tourism and this scary aspect:

It was hard to imagine that beneath the steel and concrete, in the basement of Reactor Four, lurks perhaps the most dangerous single object on the planet. The solidified black lava formation known as the ‘Elephant’s Foot‘ is a product of the melting core, an object of incredible mass and density, which emits as many as 10,000 roentgens per hour – that’s the equivalent of more than four-and-a-half million chest x-rays, and enough to kill someone in a matter of minutes.

[TrailBlazer007]

Such wanton destruction of life and property, caused by human error. And effects reverberate for many generations to come.

This reminded me of a game i played as a kid: S.T.A.L.K.E.R call of Pripyat. Never dwelt on the meaning of stalker till i chanced upon your thread.

Current consensus of Nuclear waste disposal via geological burying in perpetual holding chambers is thought to be unsafe by quite a few environmentalist groups. The John Oliver episode on Nuclear waste management is quite alarmist in this regard. Do take a look if you get a chance.

[aabhimanyu04]

Rated 5 Stars. This is one trip I will aim to do as soon as I can. Wonderful pictures and history.