Chernobyl exclusion zone – November 2019

When I was over in Ukraine, I booked a day trip to the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

The whole place always fascinated me, and I kind of wanted to see were not many people had been to, in a forbidden fruit kind of way.

It was an all day trip, we left in a minibus from Kiev, took us about an hour and a half to get to the start if the exclusion zone.

The tour guide was really sound, can’t remember her name, but she was super informative. Once in the exclusion zone, we visited various places, such as the actual village called Chernobyl, mainly used by scientists for research. We were also told that some people lived in the exclusion zone, which by definition, was illegal, but the authorities give whoever moved in an unofficial bye ball, left them be. We seen an old KGB/army base, and also seen this ginormous radar detector – it had to be seen to be believed – think the concrete holding the structure up was 27 or so metres deep.

We got to see the powerplant, and the structure covering the blown up reactor – if truth be told, I didnt expect to get so close to the reactor, but it was great to see. Amazingly, there are still a few thousand work at the powerplant, to keep an eye on things. After that, we got a feed in the workers canteen, we had to go through some machine that checked for our radiation, not sure how accurate it was. The food was ok, bit drab, but filled a hole.

We were then taken to Pripyat, the “new” city built beside the plant, to house all the workers.

The town/city was a bit strange, in that it looked well laid out, as if it was a good base design, but just abandoned and overgrown.

We also got to see inside a school and the gym/swimming pool – probably wasn’t strictly legal, but hey, great to see this abandoned place.

The tour guide told us some interesting stories, one of which sounds a bit kinky. The story goes; one of the tours she took, a Russian tourist guy came up to her and said “hey, I heard that the Chernobyl liquidators and other people involved in the clear up (men and women) were having orgies in the swimming pool, is that true?”

She said she had never heard that story, and later on the asked one of her colleagues, who had been a liquidator at Chernobyl, if this was true, and he didn’t give her a straight answer I.e dodged the question – who knows, maybe something did happen, we might never find out the full story.

The radiation really varied, some places it was relatively lowish, other places it was quite high, but as we were there for 1 day, we were told the radiation was no worse than a transatlantic flight.

I’m really happy I seen the exclusion zone, and would definitely recommend it to anyone, even if the place was a bit eerie looking.

Kiev – November 2019

Back in November, I flew to Kiev in the Ukraine, spent a few days there – got a deal on flights there, I thought I may as well, why not? See somewhere new.

The flight was about 3 hours, had everything booked and sorted beforehand – as soon as I got in, got the taxi to my hostel.

The area I was staying in wasn’t upmarket by any means, bit I’ve seen worse places. Luckily enough, there were a few Irish people staying at the same hostel, as was one of the employees, and we went out for a few beers, and seen some thing in the bar, where people were helmets, downed shots while the barman hit their head with a hammer and set some bit of cloth on the helmet on fire – bit weird, still, something different.

The following day, I went to a shooting range outside Kiev, fired a on AK, a pump action shotgun and a glock – it was a good experience – not something I’d do again, but something I can say I’ve done.

Back in Kiev, it seemed a bit grey, bit not as grim as some people had made out – everything was dirt cheap, and the metro was good, even though some of the metro stops were really deep, nearly felt dizzy and light headed going down the escalators.

The people seemed ok, no real issues, and I went to a Georgian restaurant, food was really nice. Some of the old buildings seemed pretty, and the city was very, very hilly.

I done a pub.l crawl too, seen a few bars – nothing out of this world.

Would I ever go back again? I don’t know, if I got cheap flights, I might explore more of Ukraine, as it seems am interesting place. Worth seeing if you’ve never been.