Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: Chernobyl A SoloEast Daytrip into the Exclusion Zone
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: Recently, Courtny and I had the chance to visit Chernobyl, AKA the site of the worst nuclear accident in history.
It’s a trip that sounds risky at first. After all, there are still extremely radioactive regions in the zone. Because of this, the only way in is with an approved, organized group. We chose SoloEast based on their sterling reputation. Best. Decision. Ever. Our tour guide, Alex, gave us and our group the tour of a lifetime.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: A row memorializing the many villages that had to be evacuated after the disaster. Each sign represents another village.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: Walking through the Exclusion Zone is a sobering experience - these were peoples’ homes. What you see today is just a shell of a region, frozen in 1986.
Picture of Chernobyl
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: After a brief time among the now-woodland villages, we were off to see the first major highlight of the tour: the world-famous Reactor 4.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: Getting this close to the reactor was a surreal experience. This single location had an enormous impact on the history of Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and the world as a whole.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: Up next: the highlight of the entire tour. We spent a total of about 2.5 hours wandering around Pripyat, the most famous city in the Exclusion Zone.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: The symbol of the Soviet Union. Like I said: Chernobyl was frozen in 1986.
Picture of Chernobyl
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: The Pripyat amusement park was scheduled to open on May 1, just five days after the disaster.
Picture of Chernobyl
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: A soccer stadium now stands in ruins across the street from the amusement park. Like the park, it was never used. The first game was scheduled for, you guessed it, May 1986.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: The final stop of our tour was the Duga Radar. This radar was used by the Soviets in the Cold War to detect US missiles.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: The Duga Radar’s interference with radio signals helped feed some of the most famous Soviet conspiracy theories. Theories such as Soviet mind and weather control were partially born because of this radar.
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: As a powerful hailstorm moved in on us, there was a small part of me that believes the weather control stories 😉
Picture of Chernobyl
Caption: Our time on the Chernobyl tour with SoloEast can only be described with one word: unforgettable. For a full-length blog post about the experience, head over to the Educational Globetrotters site: https://egtrotters.com/2019/09/10/soloeasts-day-tour-to-chernobyl/
To book your Chernobyl tour, head to tourkiev.com. Thanks for reading! Can’t wait to share more of our adventures!
