I can vividly remember the day that my mother called me inside the house and warned me not to play in the open grass outside. A nuclear disaster had happened in Russia and not much was known other than the radiation readings were high up in many parts of northern Europe.
Russia was forced to admit something bad had happened after Sweden had raised the alarm after extreme radiation rises. It was early may 1986. Days after the disaster at Chernobyl. A few years later the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine inherited the problem of Chernobyl.
Twenty years later, back in 2006 or so I came across the website of Elena Filatova, an Ukraine girl who road her motorbike trough the desolated and restricted areas surrounding the former facility of Chernobyl. She documented those expeditions online and provided a lot of extra information and history about the area, the disaster and Ukraine history in general. The website is still online today and is occasionally updated.
I backed her project with some dollars and we exchanged a few e-mails. As I wrote in my introduction I have a broad interest in the unexplored areas and history in general. Eastern-Europe already was a place I liked to visit much and quiet soon Ukraine was next on my list. Elena told me it would be difficult to enter the zone, but for me there was no turning back.
In September 2008 I took a plane from Amsterdam to Vilnius, Lithuania and from there to Kiev, Ukraine. I had about the week time to figure out how things worked over there and get myself into the exclusion zone. But soon I learned that almost nobody spoke English and people were not very eager to speak about Chernobyl(understandably). The times I was able to have a conversation people showed me the way to the Chernobyl museum a few blocks away in center of Kiev.
It felt as a mission impossible, like I had run into a wall. I decided to visit Odessa for a few days as an alternative, I had never seen the black sea anyway. But even purchasing a train ticket seemed impossible. I got some help from a friendly gentleman who spoke English. I didn't had the guts to ask him how to get into Chernobyl, I was already happy with my train ticket to Odessa in a sleeping cabin instead between the cattle or worse.
The night train to Odessa took about 12 hours. I brought some vodka and soon I had made friends with the couple I was sharing the cabin with. Each wagon was separated from the other wagons and each one had a (not so friendly) lady serving snacks and drinks. I have to say, although the train was terribly slow, it was a pleasant ride. The next morning I arrived in Odessa.
Odessa had a pleasant almost Mediterranean vibe, the architecture reminded me somehow at Barcelona. There were plenty of restaurants where you could sit outside and enjoy the vibrant streets. I'm not sure how things work in Ukraine, but somehow it seemed to be international wedding day or so. There were so many brides everywhere...
The next day I went to Arcadia beach at the black sea, and it was raining and cold. I took a taxi back and while chatting with the driver it suddenly hit me. If you want to know something or have anything done in a city anywhere in the world, talk to cab drivers. At least that was the case in the pre-Uber time. Cab drivers hold the key, but be careful they might get you into some nasty places too!
That evening I was back on the train to Kiev, knowing exactly where to go to get me to Chernobyl. The big taxi stand in front of the central station. Why didn't I think of it earlier? I had two days left after I arrived in Kiev. I asked around at the taxi stand and within a few minutes I found a driver that would bring me to exclusion zone. He knew someone over there that could get us in. Total costs $150. (About a months salary in Ukraine at the time)
The next morning I was picked up at the hotel and we drove for about an hour or more towards the north. Through small villages and lots of woodlands. Until we arrived at the border of the zone. The gate was closed. I was not allowed to take pictures and the military dressed people who told me that looked not very inviting. They only repeated the words: problem, problem, and needed my passport. We waited two hours until a car came out of the zone and the guy within was the person that would bring us in. Again we waited an hour and the words "problem" seemed the only thing that was actually said.
Eventually the gate opened and we could enter the exclusion zone. Within a few minutes we arrived at the town called Chernobyl, ten miles south of the reactor. It was surprisingly busy as I had imagined no people would live there. It turned out to be mostly military people and I was told the town was save to live in since the reactor's fallout had gone north-west and not in this direction. Which I knew was true.
Again we were stopped, problems were uttered and documents signed. I took the time to take some pictures off odd looking military vehicles whit nuclear radiation warning signs in front of them. I was not allowed to leave the car.
After the problems and documents were taken care off we went towards the river Dnepr.
There was a vast amount of ships that were left there to rust and rot away. The ships were too heavily exposed to radiation during the disaster that they could not be used anymore. We continued our way towards the reactor and passed many overgrown houses on our way there. Until we arrived on a bigger straight road towards the north and were stopped again by military people. We had arrived at the 5 mile zone, the most heavily contaminated place surrounding the exploded reactor #4.
This time no problems and after some paperwork we could continue towards the reactor. But first we pulled over to stop by the memorial site of the liquidators. A site erected in memorial of the fire fighters that went inside the exploded reactor to pour concrete underneath the melting core to prevent it from sinking into the riverbed. Which would have caused an even bigger disaster by polluting the water for ages to come. The fire fighters all died, most of them within 30 minutes due to radiation disease.
We continued our way and soon the reactor site came into sight. And surprisingly a lot of activity too. I saw many people entering and leaving reactor #1 and #2 while we passed them. Also there were many military looking people driving around in the area. I really did not expect that, since I learned all the reactors where shutdown after the disaster with reactor #4. I sincerely doubt if that was the case back in 2008. Maybe that was the "problem" why it was so difficult to enter the site?
We drove around the Nuclear complex and stopped at the memorial site near reactor #4. I was told only to take a quick picture and get back in, as the radiation in that place was so high that it was similar to 8 x-ray photo's per second. It was both scary as somehow exiting to actually stand in front of the reactor, the place I had read so much about. I took a few pictures and quickly went back in the car.
The next stop would be in Pripyat. The town that housed about 50.000 people prior to the disaster on April 26, 1986. It was founded as the ninth "atomgrad" a type of closed town in the former Soviet union to serve a nearby Nuclear Power Plant complex, such as Chernobyl. The disaster happened on April 26, the town was evacuated in the morning of April 27. A few days prior to Labor-Day, for which a funfair was already setup.
(source unsplash)
We stopped at the town square, a completely overgrown place what used to be the vibrant heart of the town. The place where restaurants, a theater and many activities took place. Now it was a desolated and creepy place. Surrounded by high-rise housing blocks. The thing I remember the strongest was the silence. There was no sound at all. Somehow this place was utterly dead, but it didn't scare me. It felt peacefully in a way. I know that might sound strange, but it is not a scary place. But when you think about the people who lived there, that were moved all over Russia after the evacuation (a way to hide the actual death rate) a sad feeling crawls in.
Pripyat is not a safe place to be for a long time as most of the fallout and radioactive dust and particles went right over the town after the explosion. Also its close to the reactor which is still emitting strong gamma rays. So we did not stay very long. We visited the former police station and drove a few streets passing the swimming pool and the funfair in a distance. My taxi driver had enough of it and the guide was not very willingly to go inside buildings. He had had relatives living in Pripyat and the whole place reminded him about the horror that had happened to them.
We left the area without any question or problems. But we had to do a radiation screening to check if we were between the limits of acceptable radiation. How much that was in Ukraine 2008 I honestly don't know. Probably much more than we would find acceptable now a days. The signs were all green and we were back outside the exclusion zone.
On our way back to Kiev the driver had to get some fuel. A few miles after that the car began to fail. He had put gasoline into a diesel car or the other way around. Anyway, we were in the midst of a forest, it was after sunset and it became pretty cold. He called someone and I could not make any sense out of it. Problem, problem again.
I'm not sure how long it took, but eventually two cars showed up. Fast and the furious kind of cars with lots of noise and bling. Two, not so trustworthy looking, guys came out and talked with the driver outside the vehicle. They had multiple cellphones and looked like the kind of guys that made a business out of shady stuff. This was the first time I felt uncomfortable. The driver had my passport and I was pretty much defenseless against anything they would have came up with. And there I was in the middle of a dark forest somewhere in Ukraine.
But things are not always as bad as they seem. The guys were able to get the fuel out of the tank and replaced it with the right stuff. They drove along us until we entered the suburban areas of Kiev again and then suddenly left. At the hotel I had a good old tourist trap like issue with my driver. All of the sudden he demanded a lot of extra money for the "extra's" had provided. Fortunately I was able to get my passport back from the glove box in the car during the fuel issue.
Eventually I gave him my $5 watch and told him it was expensive it and was all I had to offer. He accepted and left. The next day I flew home.
Final thoughts.
In the summer of 2021 I went back to Kiev for a city trip. I was harassed by greedy and shady cab drivers at the airport. I took an Uber and payed $15 for a two hour heavy traffic drive to my hotel in the center of Kiev. It saved me $150 probably.
Thinking back of my adventure in 2008 I might call myself reckless or crazy at the time. But at the time I did not felt like that at all. I saw an opportunity to travel back in time. Back to history were the time had stopped all of the sudden. It was a way to experience something of the former Soviet Union. I was not scared at all, somehow the world felt more accessible to me than it does nowadays.
Nowadays tourist are lining up for a Chernobyl trip and daily "Exclusion zone" excursions are organized from out Kiev. Okay, there is a new sarcophagus build to cover the reactor, and gamma rays will be lower now, but nothing changed on the beta or alpha rays. The stuff that grows and the buildings of Pripyat that still exist have not changed.
Looking back, it was not the danger of radiation that kept me from going or made me reckless. I was going for an adventure without knowing what could happen. And that adventurous part of going for the unknown is still something that lives strongly within me. I sometimes think that nowadays we're somehow over protective and scared in a way. Everything is dangerous. My experiences as a traveler are the opposite.
The unknown might feel dangerous, but it's not. It's you not able to let go. As long as you think everything in your live is controllable you will find danger and risk in every corner. Living your live without that control burden is a way to become more free, and yest it's scary as hell to let it go.
Thanks for taking the time to read about this adventure and follow me for future post about my other adventures.
Best Thijs