Charlie has spent the past few days exploring the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with me, helping to continue with my theme of visiting places that nobody (or very few) people that I know have visited and which are unique. Pripyat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone were certainly unique.
Seeing Chernobyl, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, was certainly a moving experience. We were able to get closer than I thought we would but the highlight of the couple of days here was exploring Pripyat, the main town very close to the power plant itself.
In Pripyat we were able to explore inside many of the buildings including houses, military accommodation, a restaurant, a hospital, a supermarket, a hotel, a cinema, a school, a sports stadium and much more. I think officially you are not supposed to enter the buildings as some of them are dangerous due to being abandoned in the 1980s but it was amazing to see life just left behind when the evacuation was called. Of course some things were moved during the decontamination sweep but a lot of stuff was just left as it was, such as a test written on a blackboard and names of doctors on duty in the hospital.
Charlie was featured in a lot of photos that I took while in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone but I have posted only the best selection in this post.
Luckily neither me or Charlie became radioactive during our visit, but we did visit an area with higher than average radiation, with our guide demonstrating how the radiation detector would alert us if anything went wrong.
We are back in Kiev now, and I will make another post tomorrow with some photos of Charlie’s experiences in Ukraine outside of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.