[TheInterceptor]

This is the first thread I'm opening on TBHP, first time writing a travelogue, first time really writing anything long other than for academic purposes. So kindly excuse the lack of flamboyance or flair (Disclaimers first ).

This was a trip I did in July 2017, but got around to writing a travelogue only now. I did 2 more trips even before this which I wanted to write travelogues for too, but didn't get around to doing it, those trips were longer and hence I'd have to write more, one to Kenya and the other to Florida and New York – so yeah, I’m lazy and chose the shortest trip to write about.

Ukraine – Not really a country that pops into your mind when you think of holidays. But last year when I heard that a tour company that I follow had organized a tour from Dubai to Chernobyl, it got my spine tingling. I was immediately interested, but didn’t have the finances to do a tour since I had just moved into the UAE and was running on fumes. And so I told myself next year.

So, in 2017 when they announced the tour to Chernobyl, I signed up without blinking (well actually after doing a bit of research on safety first).

Now the next hurdle was to convince my overly paranoid parents that I was going to spend my hard-earned money to go to a nuclear wasteland that is inhabitable for the next 25,000 years. Sweet.
But thanks to a few Youtube documentaries and online articles, I was able to successfully convince dad and mom that I wasn’t going to return as a zombie. Or with an extra limb.

Well enough with the boring introductions, lets get down to business.


Ukraine is the second biggest country in Europe, its currency is Hryvnia (which I still don’t know how to pronounce). The tour was a package tour. Now I know a lot of people don’t like package tours, but there are some places where you have no other option, entry to Chernobyl is restricted for tourists and can be done only through government authorized tour operators.

Our tour was organized by Escape travels, they had tie ups with a local tour operator for the Chernobyl tour. It was a short trip, 3 days and I went with a friend who happens to be a brilliant photographer. I can’t handle or understand anything larger than a smartphone camera and hence, most of the jaw-dropping photos are from my friend.

https://www.instagram.com/adityakavoor/ - this is his Instagram profile, you should check it out.

A few photos to keep you guys interested: -

Radioactive content ahead.


You will find Soviet era posters like these around Chernobyl.


One of the last standing statues of this man - Lenin.


Abandoned amusement park at Pripyat gives a feeling of gloom.


Under that dome lies Reactor number 4. The one that blew up causing the worst nuclear disaster in the history of mankind.


Souvenirs. Stalkers was the name given to the crazy people who crept into Chernobyl post the disaster to steal and loot from the abandoned homes of its residents. Chernobull - radioactive Redbull maybe?


Pripyat 1970. The city built near Chernobyl nuclear plant to house the employees and families. This is the signboard near the entrance to the city.


A cash register from the 1980's. Note the floor in the background filled with abandoned gas masks.


Souvenirs. Toilet paper, anyone?


More to come.

[libranof1987]

Interesting place to visit!

How was it getting into the Exclusion Zone? Does the tour operator/authorities carry a device to measure the radioactivity?

I'd watched the Top Gear special in Chernobyl; the visuals (enhanced by the dramatic narration and music) portrayed an eerie calm!

There's something weirdly poetic about visiting such places of mammoth historical significance: be it Poland or Chernobyl.

Do share more details and pictures.

[TheInterceptor]

Day 1

We flew Air Arabia from Sharjah to Kiev. Nothing much to write about, standard A320 Airbus with no free meals and no entertainment for about 6 hours. But hey, at least they had better-than-most economy airlines legroom.

We landed at Kiev Boryspil airport at about 12.45 PM and directly proceeded to the Visa on arrival counter.
Indians were granted Visa on arrival in Ukraine from March 2017 IIRC. This is where things started going downhill.

The procedure for Visa on arrival was that you had to fill a form online in the Ukrainian government website, take a print out and submit it at the VOA counter. But thanks to the efficiency of the Eastern Europeans, their website never worked and most people turned up without this, including us.

This meant that each person had to sit and fill the whole form (4-5 pages) on a computer and they had only like 3 computers and a disgruntled Ukrainian lady for assistance.
After about an hour of waiting, my friend and I had our visas and proceeded to the immigration counters.

At the immigration counter, both of us were pulled out by men in military uniform holding assault rifles and taken inside for interrogation.

Outside the interrogation room we found a bunch of Indians waiting. They were randomly pulling out only Indians for interrogation.

The interrogation was just as you would have seen in the movies, I’m not going to get into the details, but they wanted to know everything.

And at about 5.15 PM, about 4.5 hours after landing, we were out of the airport. PHEW!

Day 1 was planned for sightseeing around Kiev, a traditional Ukrainian dinner and exploring the nightlife that Kiev had to offer.

The rest of our group had carried on into Kiev for city sightseeing (we were the only Indians in our travel group) and one guide had waited for us outside the airport the whole time.

We got into a taxi and headed to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra or Kiev Monastery of the Caves and joined in with the rest of the group. This is a historic Orthodox Christian monastery built in the 11th century.

The magnificent Kyiv Pechersk Lavra overlooking the Dnieper river.


The other side of the river is the suburbs of Kiev where most people reside. Note the Statue of liberty like structure in the picture (will get to that later).


The bell tower of the monastery from which the previous 2 photos were clicked.


The Catherdral inside.


Some shiny egg like thing I saw in the monastery grounds.


After this, we walked through a park with war memorials and military equipment on display towards the Motherland monument.

A few pictures of the park.

Walkway towards the Motherland monument.


It was pleasing to see so much green coming from a desert.


Military equipment.



War memorials in the park.




The Motherland monument is a 62m tall stainless steel statue. It also has a World War 2 museum inside it.


The Motherland monument seen from the Bell tower of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Interestingly, the tip of the sword of the Motherland monument was cut off because it was higher than the Lavra.


We then went to the Pechersk Hills, one of Kiev’s most picturesque and ancient places on the banks of the Dnieper. This was another beautiful park in the heart of the city with a few memorials.

So green.



Statue known as the Bitter Memory of Childhood. This memorial was to honour the victims and preserve the memory of the "Holodomor" tragedy. A devastating famine which took place in the 1930s as a deliberate act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.


Another interesting fact was that the world's deepest metro station was right next to this park, Arsenelna Station. It is over 100 meters deep and the escalator ride takes 7 minutes to get you down!

We then proceeded to The Independence Square or Maidan as it is more popularly known. This is main square in the heart of Kiev like most other European cities.
This is a main site for protests and riots throughout the history of Ukraine and was most recently the epicenter of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution.

I heart Kyiv sign.


Thankfully was pretty peaceful when we visited.


The entire area under the square is a shopping mall. This is the entrance to the mall.


We then checked into our hotel which was just a 5 minute walk from this square - Hotel Khreshchatyk. It was a nice 4 star hotel in the heart of Kiev.

This was followed by a traditional Ukrainian dinner at a fancy restaurant and some of us nocturnal creatures went out to explore the thriving nightlife of Kiev.

End of Day 1.

[TheInterceptor]

Day 2

Today was the big day for us. The main reason we were on this trip. Chernobyl.

Our tour operator had split the tour for this day. The not-so daring ones in the tour had the option of visiting some boring Ukrainian villages. Well in the end, most of the group went with the safe option of Ukrainian villages leaving just 4 of us who wanted to risk our lives and experience unearthly levels of radiation. But oh boy was it worth it!

Chernobyl – A brief history.
Chernobyl was one of the main sources of power generation for the USSR. It relied on Nuclear energy for generating electricity.
There were multiple reactors operating, the one that blew up was Reactor 4. Reactors 1, 2 and 3 were operational and Reactor 5 was under construction (construction was abandoned after the disaster).

Chernobyl disaster – On 26 April 1986, due to human error, Reactor 4 exploded. Although only 2 people died immediately as a result of the explosion, hundreds died in the subsequent days as a result of acute radiation exposure and thousands were affected by airborne radiation and its effects are still being suffered by subsequent generations of families who were present at Chernobyl at the time of the explosion.

The number of casualties, both immediately and in the future, from radiation sickness, is expected to be high, although the exact number may never be known.

The ones that were immediately affected were the fire and rescue personnel called in to douse the fire and USSR military personnel (mainly pilots who flew choppers over the reactor to survey damage and for fire and rescue activities).

As with most cases in the cold war era, USSR tried to hide this disaster from the outer world. But due to the high intensity of radioactive leakage, radioactive clouds had spread all across Europe and Sweden was one of the first countries to identify this and report to the world that a nuclear plant somewhere in Europe was leaking badly. The sudden jump in radioactivity levels was enough to prompt a full-scale alert in Sweden, which initially believed the accident had happened at its own nuclear power station, on the Baltic coast. The evacuation of 600 workers had been ordered before experts realized that the source of the radioactivity must have been within the Soviet Union.

Other countries in Europe too started noticing the radioactive cloud and this pressure ultimately forced USSR into admitting the explosion at Chernobyl about 3 days after the explosion.

The discharge of radioactivity was so great that by the time the fallout reached Sweden, 1,000 miles away, it was still powerful enough to register twice the natural level of radioactivity in the atmosphere.

Chernobyl at present – 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.

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.

Now you can even stay inside Chernobyl. There is an old Soviet style Hotel functioning inside. We had lunch from this hotel. The lunch room had one old tiny TV playing Despacito on loop. Yeah, even in a radioactive abandoned ghost-town we couldn’t get away from this song!! .


How safe is Chernobyl for tourists?

This Youtube video should answer your doubts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok9bPgKt_WI&t=596s

Moreover, our tour guide who has been visiting Chernobyl almost every single day of his life for the past 7 years has had no health problems at all. Authorized tour guides are subjected to frequent health checks by the authorities.

If you stick to the rules set by the tour guides, you will be safe. Some of the rules and guidelines they give you in advance are: -

• Wear closed toe shoes, full pants and full sleeved shirts – this is mainly to avoid contact with soil, vegetation and water. The soil here is highly contaminated since most of the trees that were standing at the time of the disaster in 1986 died and are buried in the soil. The present vegetation could be contaminated since it grows out of the same soil. The water in the Chernobyl reserve is highly contaminated as it was mainly used to cool the nuclear reactors.
  Apparently on our tour guide’s last tour (about a week before ours), a Russian tourist had sat on the soil for some photos or she fell or whatever, each tourist is scanned on the way back from Chernobyl at the military checkpoint and this lady’s pants triggered the alarms in the machine for high levels of radiation and she was asked to leave her pants behind. She had to go back to Kiev pant-less .

• Bring passports – You will be denied entry if you don’t have your passport with you.

• Photography restrictions – No photography allowed at the military checkpoints and no photography of any other nuclear reactors other than Reactor 4.

Now onto the tour.

[TheInterceptor]

Day 2 - continued

Chernobyl is about a 2 hour drive north of Kiev. Transportation was in a Mercedes Benz van pictured below. There was a TV inside showing interesting documentaries about the Chernobyl disaster.


Once at the military checkpoint at the beginning of the 30 km exclusion zone, we were all asked to exit the vehicle with our passports for verification.

After this, we went to an abandoned village in Chernobyl.

Most of Chernobyl has been taken over by vegetation in the past 30 years and these signs are scattered all over the woods.



Residents at the neighboring workers’ city of Pripyat and nearby villages weren’t told of the deadly radiation covering their homes at first. As official USSR military buses began evacuating the area, people were instructed to bring only a suitcase, since they would be able to return in a few days. But this was a lie and they were never allowed to return.

An abandoned family house and their Lada. A family was considered wealthy if they had a Lada back in the 80s. All that wealth but of no use.


Deteriorated interiors of the Lada.


A military vehicle.


A Soviet building in the village. Kind of like a Town hall. Where they used to preach against the US. Reclaimed by nature.


Inside the Town hall.


Broken windows and wallpaper peeling off.


Communist posters.


Welcome to Chernobyl. Notice the pipeline running near the sign. Those pipelines are still functional. There are people living inside the Exclusion Zone. Workers mainly who are brought in 2 week shifts. They are accommodated inside the zone. There is even a functioning Post Office inside!


Deserted road. The Exclusion zone has an 8 PM curfew, all tourists have to exit before 6.30 PM. Imagine how creepy this place would be at night.


We were then taken to a Kindergarten near the Nuclear plants where workers at the plant used to leave their children when they went to work.


You can see dolls and even medicine bottles of the children.


Where the kids took their naps.



A cycle which kids would have fought for in its time, now sits outside alone and broken.


The notice board at the Kindergarten.


After that we went to the central area of Chernobyl where there was a museum (which was sadly closed for renovation). Some of the remote controlled machines used during fire and rescue and to control the disaster.


Neatly maintained garden near the museum and post office.


One of the last statues of Lenin not yet taken down.



Some weird statue.


Names of all the villages near Chernobyl that had to be evacuated due to the disaster.


After this we were taken to the hotel for lunch.

Sipping on Borscht listening to Despacito.


Souvenirs for sale at the hotel.


To be continued.

[TheInterceptor]

Day 2 - continued

Finally we went to see the actual reactor that blew up. The Chernobyl Nuclear disaster released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Yet the last reactor at Chernobyl was only shut down in the year 2000!

Reactor 4 and the water reserve used for cooling the reactors.


Reactor 5 which was under construction at the time of the disaster and since left abandoned.


Reactor 4 and 5


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.


The Reactor 4 monument and the actual reactor itself behind under the dome. The reactor was left exposed until 2016 until the dome was used to cover it to contain the spread of radiation.


This dome was an international project funded by multiple countries. It was built nearby and slid over the Reactor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7aMcKinrWY

Since 1986, this area has seen a huge jump in wildlife population. Mainly deer, bears, foxes and even wolves. Even though the individual health of the animals weren't good, the numbers kept rising.
A wild fox we saw.



The city of Pripyat. Built exclusively to house the workers at the power plant and their families.


Pripyat was a city of wonders for its time. It had everything, good road infrastructure, a gym, its own supermarket, a football stadium, a hospital and a school. And all this back in the 70s. If this city was still standing, it would have been one of the biggest and most advanced cities in Europe. But sadly it is not.


Apartment complex with retail spaces below.


A Telephone booth.


Now the roads have been taken over by vegetation.


This is the perfect location for a zombie flick.



Whatever is left of the supermarket. Notice the aisle markings in blue on top.


A cupboard inside the school at Pripyat.


Notes of the school children.


Textbooks.


Gas masks used during the disaster just dumped in the school.


Somebody had set this up for a perfect photo.


As signified by the clock with no hands, Pripyat is a place truly left behind by time.


Basketball court inside the gym.


Locker rooms near the massive swimming pool in the gym.


Amusement park at Pripyat. The amusement park was sadly never used as it was just a few days away from opening when Chernobyl exploded.


This ferris wheel is quite popular. It is seen in almost all videos/articles about Chernobyl.


Full of rust.


Highly radioactive too. The geiger meters kept beeping away loudly near the rides.


A bench on the way to the park.


In the woods about 10 kilometres south from Chernobyl nuclear power plant, one of the most remarkable parts of the Exclusion Zone is the eerie Duga-3 radar station. Once one of the most secretive spots in the old Soviet Union, this vast construction of antennae and aerials was once pointed in the direction of the United States, listening in for incoming planes and missiles. On maps, it was marked down as a children's summer camp, while the locals were told it was a radio tower. Around 1500 high-grade technicians, scientists, and military personnel worked and lived here, wrapped in the highest levels of Cold War secrecy. Today, there is just one soldier guarding the peculiar complex.

This radar was also called the Russian Woodpecker, due to the sound that radios would pick up from this radar that sounded like a woodpecker.


This thing is massive. Pictures don't give you the clear picture of its sheer magnitude. It is also full of rust and looks like it could fall apart any second.


This was the end of our Chernobyl excursion. We had to rush back to the checkpoint before 6.30.

Each person gets checked for radiation on their way out (image off google for representation).


We got back to our hotel and discarded our shoes and pants.

End of Day 2.

[TheInterceptor]

Day 3

There's nothing much to write about this day, our flight back to Sharjah was at 2 PM and that gave us very little time do anything. So we just strolled around the old parts of Kiev.

So this post is mainly going to be just a random photologue of sights around the city and Ukrainian food.

Quite a grumpy sign for a cafe.


Souvenirs!


And a little more.


One for your American friend, Russian friend and Turkish friend.


There were quite a few cool souvenirs to buy. This is the one I bought (yes that's me). Also notice the caps and helmet in the background.


And some random stalls.



A trippy little park.



At another square (forgot the name)


Random sights in town.




A volvo.


A Seat.


Ukrainians in traditional attire.



Food!


Sadly, I forgot the names of most of the dishes, so kindly excuse the crude captions

Bread with cheese and jam.


Lamb.


Duck.


Potato pancakes


Varenyky - basically dumplings with various fillings.


Eggplant with cheese and chicken filling.


Baked snacks.


And a few others.




I hadn't seen a single Indian anywhere in Ukraine but as soon as I board my return flight, it was full of Mallus. Apparently Ukraine is a popular choice for higher education as most of them were students return home for vacation.

We literally are in each and every corner of this world.

Thanks for reading.

The end.

[aah78]

Note from Support: Thread moved to the Travelogues section. Thanks for sharing!

[Leoshashi]

Awesome thread. Rating it a well deserved 5*. Somehow, such eerie places have caught my fascination like no other.

To be honest, I'd consider myself super lucky if I manage to visit these places in my lifetime. The titanic wreck is another one.

Posting a superb video by Top Gear on Chernobyl(one of my favourites)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf6ON6pbDDA

[Soumyajit9]

This is one of the best threads I have read. I could feel close to the location through your narration.
Like Leoshashi mentioned, such eerie and places of destruction have fascinated me a lot too !
Absolutely brilliant pictures shot by your friend, and wonderful narration by you.
Well deserved 5*

[earthian]

I was truly impressed by your decision to visit Chernobyl, Interceptor. While the photographs are great and capture the disaster and its aftermath that took place, i am sure being there would be an experience that probably cannot be documented on film or paper. Sort of eerie quietness and desolate surroundings. The picture of the gas masks abandoned was awesome.
While there are many questions, the following urgently come to mind:

1. You had written that wildlife had increased drastically. If so, wouldn't these pose harm to other living beings, including humans? Would they not spread the contamination since it must be quite impossible to keep them contained in one area. What about birds?
2. What about snow melt and rain waters washing the contaminated area and joining a stream or a river? How contaiminated would be the water?

Above all, a great write up, awesome photographs (please thank your friend) and great attitude.

Thank you very much for sharing.

[TheInterceptor]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

Interesting place to visit!

Does the tour operator/authorities carry a device to measure the radioactivity?

Tour operators carry Geiger counters. Our guide had 2, one he kept with him at all times and the other was passed around the group.

These were the geiger counters used, not the bigger ones used by TopGear.
(Image from Google for representation)

This was how Reactor 4 looked until 2016 before it was covered by that large dome.

Originally Posted by Leoshashi

Awesome thread. Rating it a well deserved 5*. Somehow, such eerie places have caught my fascination like no other.

Posting a superb video by Top Gear on Chernobyl(one of my favourites)

Thank you so much. I loved that episode too.

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

This is one of the best threads I have read. I could feel close to the location through your narration.

Thank you for your kind words.

Originally Posted by earthian

While there are many questions, the following urgently come to mind:

1. You had written that wildlife had increased drastically. If so, wouldn't these pose harm to other living beings, including humans? Would they not spread the contamination since it must be quite impossible to keep them contained in one area. What about birds?
2. What about snow melt and rain waters washing the contaminated area and joining a stream or a river? How contaiminated would be the water?

Above all, a great write up, awesome photographs (please thank your friend) and great attitude.

Thank you very much for sharing.

1. As I mentioned, there is a curfew at Chernobyl at 8PM and one of the reasons for this as said by our tour guide was due to the high number of wolves and bears in the area.
Plus, you are technically not allowed to wander into the woods. It is a restricted area.
This is the only foresty area around this part of Europe and animals tend to stay within the woods. But there are the occasional cases of wolves wandering into nearby villages which are dealt with by the villagers themselves (I doubt they receive any assistance from the authorities since they are not allowed to live in the Exclusion Zone).
There's even a specific rare species of wild horses (some Russian name that I can't remember) that were brought here for scientific tests, and their population is thriving.

2. The only body of water that I saw in Chernobyl was the reservoir used to cool the reactors and I doubt this is connected to any open water source, but I could be wrong.

[asingh1977]

This is one of the best write ups I have read for a long time on the www. Thanks a lot. I have had an avid interest in Chernobyl and the subsequent disaster, so when I saw your thread, I literally jumped in my seat..!

Aspects which are really interesting:

1. What they were actually trying to "do" and caused the disaster.
2. The inherent reactor design flaw.
3. How to prevent (1) they aggravated the situation more.
4. Videos of actually the reactor lid blowing up, and the plume rising.
5. One journalist actually recording it from a chopper -- hardly aware of his exposure.
6. The clean up process -- rudimentary by necessary.
7. The sarcophagus construction.
8. Plight of the firefighters.
9. The actual death count declared by the Hammer and Sickle.
10. Nature taking over.

[Ace F355]

Wow, this is something interesting and unique. Visiting such places sure gives chills and gloomy thoughts, but that's a good reminder to the humanity how some of the miracles of the era could actually prove fatal and disastrous with a little bit of carelessness.

Loved your narration, the pics actually make one feel he/she is visiting the place themselves. Thanks a lot for sharing this thread with us.

[Dodge_Viper]

This is one of the most unique travelogues I ever read. Thanks a lot for sharing. This place started doing rounds in my mind post the Top Gear episode. Can you share the cost details of the tour? How you booked the package, from where? What all things were included etc.