In May 2019 HBO released the wildly popular Chernobyl TV series. I enjoyed it so much that 4 months later I was in the nearby city of Kiev and had my tour booked.
HBOs Chernobyl was in no way the first pop culture reference that alerted me to the existence of Chernobyl and the nearby town of Pripyat, I spent thousands of hours playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare, the game that famously displayed Pripyat in the intro cutscene. So I was very excited to get my own snaps of in-game locations.
There are a large selection of companies offering tours of Chernobyl some with gimmicks such as wearing disposable forensic suits (That particular companies tour bus occupants looked very bemused when they realised they were the only people wearing them). But they all offer to visit the same attractions in the same day.
Our tour began in the outer villages giving the guide a chance to explain the exclusion zone and the huge scale of human displacement while standing in the middle of an example of it, an abandoned school.
We did this for several hours, visiting memorials and learning about the disaster in great detail as well as interesting facts such as how difficult being a resident in the Soviet Union made buying luxuries such as cars.
After lunch it was time for the main events. A photo opportunity infront of reactor 4, and a drive surprisingly close to it. Men in suits walking around with clipboards and hard hats next to what is well known for being the most dangerous place on earth is totally surreal but with the visual aid of a Dosimeter, our guide explained that since the completion of the reactors new shelter, it could now be described as "safe".
Afterwards we passed yet another military checkpoint and our tour bus travelled deeper into the forest via a dirt track. There were huge, ominous shadows behind the trees and only once you looked up did it become apparent that it wasn't just dense forest, behind the trees were tower-blocks.
Pripyat wasn't creepy at all. I expected an overcast, foggy wasteland resembling Call of Duty or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And since returning everyone has asked me "was it super creepy?". But it's not at all, it's otherworldly. Nature has completely taken over, swallowing up entire tower-blocks and even a football stadium.
I took hundreds of pictures but I won't leave them all here, it's impossible to appreciate from just looking at a photo the beauty of Pripyat and the bizarre juxtaposition of knowing that it's unsafe to touch anything, or even sit on the ground. (Unless you don't mind forfeiting your clothes at the checkpoint. Something our guide assured us has happened).
I should add that in 2019 because of the age of the buildings a lot of tour companies have begun not allowing visitors inside buildings because the structures have begun collapsing, resulting in the injury of guests.
Even with this rule in place it is 100% worth visiting. I haven't got a bucket list, but if I had, Chernobyl would be on it.
