I’m back home from my short but amazing trip to Ukraine to see Kiev and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This isn’t the sort of trip that I usually go on as it was mostly all planned in advance but as I said at the start of the blog I like exploring the unknown places around the world that you can’t see anywhere else. Chernobyl is one of a kind and certainly something you can only do here.
I won’t spend any time trying to persuade you that it’s a place you should go as most of you will probably have a good idea whether it’s a place for you before you even visited my blog but will have been looking for further information and photos to cement this yes or no view into your mind. I found it to be worthwhile to get away from the usual tourist trap trail (except for Kiev of course) and see something unique but it’s certainly not for everybody. There were a lot of rules in place, such as not being allowed out of the hotel in Chernobyl at night, but like my trip to North Korea a few years ago if you don’t mind following the strict rules and want to go somewhere to learn something then it is worthwhile.
People tend to think that a visit to Chernobyl is all about death and destruction. Sure a lot of destruction happened, and some people did die, but after visiting I found it all to be about life. The life of the locals, the events that happened and even the life that has returned to the area in the form of workers and reclamation of Pripyat by nature. I already knew that I wanted to visit but was still in awe and surprise when I finally arrived.
Now on to my planning for my next trip. I’m hoping to visit Central Asia next year as I’ve been looking to go there for a while. There are a couple of trips in the Uzbekistan / Kazakhstan / Kyrgyzstan area that I noticed in the past 12 months but I couldn’t afford them which is why I chose Chernobyl. They say everything happens for a reason and I’m glad I made this choice as I had a great time.