IN glorious sunshine tourist minibuses pull up next to a gaudy sign advertising “Chernobyl ice cream”. Dozens of eager trippers disembark to have their papers checked by police as they wait to enter the nuclear disaster’s radiation-blasted 30km Exclusion Zone. Before their doom-laden journey through one of mankind’s most apocalyptic chapters, there is a chance […]
IN glorious sunshine tourist minibuses pull up next to a gaudy sign advertising “Chernobyl ice cream”.
Dozens of eager trippers disembark to have their papers checked by police as they wait to enter the nuclear disaster’s radiation-blasted 30km Exclusion Zone.
Before their doom-laden journey through one of mankind’s most apocalyptic chapters, there is a chance for some — decidedly tacky — souvenir hunting.
Tat being hawked from two cabins includes Chernobyl-branded condoms that glow in the dark.
There are also luminous fridge magnets, postcards that can be sent from Chernobyl, gas masks and white hazmat suits for that chemical-warfare look.
T-shirts are on sale emblazoned with the word “radioactive” — hardly likely to calm anxious relatives or friends back home.
There is soon a queue of Britons, Americans and Germans eager for a memento of their “dark tourism” trip.
The recent gripping Sky series Chernobyl — which tells the true story of the nuclear power plant’s fallout — has sparked a tourist boom, with bookings up 40 per cent, according to a local travel agency.
At 10am, the tourist vanguard is off into this eerie Cold War time capsule where it is forever 1986.
My guide, Yuriy Morozov, 42, confirms more visitors than ever are flocking to the disaster zone.
The dad of two said: “People want to see Chernobyl for themselves after the TV show. They are fascinated.”
Soon we arrive at the looming Reactor No4. At 1.23am on April 26, 1986, it exploded, spewing 400 times more radiation than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in World War Two.
Plant workers and firefighters, who were sent to contain the meltdown, would later die agonisingly slow deaths as their skin turned black and peeled away.
More than 300,000 people were evacuated from a contaminated area covering 1,000 square miles in what was then the Soviet Union.
Farms in the region reported animals born with grotesque deformities. There were foals with eight legs, headless calves and piglets with eyes as large as potatoes.
The blame for the world’s worst nuclear disaster and its cack-handed aftermath fell on Soviet incompetence and its cult of secrecy.
One local told me: “It was like giving a gorilla a hand grenade.”
The official short-term death toll was just 31. Estimates of those who perished afterwards vary between 4,000 and 93,000.
Now encased with a 300ft, 30,000-ton protective cover, No4 has a monument of cupped hands in its shadow as a memorial.
For many among the tourist throng it is a place for a solemn moment of quiet reflection. However, others see it as the ideal spot for a selfie.
One German holidaymaker even dons a gas mask for his picture — despite Geiger counters showing radiation levels at the spot are safe.
Brit tourist Daniel Birtles, 42, arrives with a more sedate tour group. The dad of two, from Northwich, Cheshire, enjoys historic and adventure holidays, travelling to Auschwitz last year.
An aircraft engineer, he said: “I’m here to learn why it happened. It really hits you when you see stuff that was abandoned when people fled.”
When Daniel told friends he was going to Chernobyl they joked he would “come home glowing”.
Retired couple John and Shauna Keil, from Canada, are also here on holiday. A former air traffic services worker, John, 68, said: “People gave up their lives to cap No4. We’re here in a respectful way to learn about the history first hand.”
In the nearby city of Pripyat, the eerie streets where 50,000 once lived and laughed now lie silent like something from a movie set.
Tourists clamber through the dusty, disintegrating buildings with cameras and selfie sticks.
A classroom is still strewn with exercise books, a piano stands ready for recital, two flippers lie in a drained school swimming pool.
People gave up their lives to cap No4. We’re here in a respectful way to learn about the history first hand.
John Keil
It is a ghastly taste of what the aftermath of a nuclear war would look like.
A favourite spot for day trippers is an abandoned theme park, which was supposed to open a week after the disaster. Its giant Ferris wheel is silhouetted against grey clouds and bumper cars rust and crumble.
Though radiation levels have been passed safe for short periods inside the Exclusion Zone, hot spots still exist.
As long as you stick with your guide, a Chernobyl visit will see you subjected to radiation levels no higher than an intercontinental flight or dental X-rays.
A small supermarket in Chernobyl stocks baseball hats and T-shirts branded with the ghost city’s name in the local Cyrillic language. Staff say they are lucky to sell one a day.
Mum-of-one Ira Ischukh, 52, who works in two-week blocks before moving away from the zone’s radiation levels, says: “I see nothing from tourism.”
Driving on through the lush forest, guide Yuriy leads us to a log cabin in what appears to be the deserted village of Kupovate.
Then, waving from her doorway, we see babushka Hanna Zavorotnya, 85, who has survived life in the Exclusion Zone against all medical odds since 1986.
She and other members of her collective farm had been evacuated after the blast yet, three months later, she came home.
When government officials objected, she told them: “Shoot us and dig the grave. Otherwise we’re staying.”
Today there are 119 elderly so-called “self-settlers” left alive in the Exclusion Zone.
Yuriy says: “You can’t tell how radiation will affect each human. Some live with it, others die.”
Hanna grows her own crops, draws her water from a well by hand and brews potato vodka in a wooden shack she shares with her sister Sonya, 82.
She shows me the hoof prints of moose and boar that have raided her well-tended vegetable patch of onions, garlic and strawberries.
You can’t tell how radiation will affect each human. Some live with it, others die.
Yuriy Morozov
Wild animals have thrived in Chernobyl as man fled, encouraging a wave of eco tourism.
Hanna tells me: “We eat fish from the river and berries and mushrooms from the forest. I’m fine.
“This village is my motherland. I was born here and I will die here.”
Ukraine opened Chernobyl to tourists in 2011. Its government said nearly 72,000 visited last year — up from 50,000 in 2017.
A private tour for two foreigners costs around £200.
Sergii Ivanchuk, owner of travel firm SoloEast, which last year took nearly 12,000 tourists to the site, said: “Travel to Ukraine has become cheap. Fewer and fewer people are interested in religion, but we have cheap beer and Chernobyl.”
James Finnerty, from Wigan-based firm Lupine Travel, says inquiries have spiked 50 per cent following the TV show.
He said: “We have a big surge in interest in tours to Chernobyl, mostly citing the series.
“It’s a unique place and brings history to life. It’s a sombre environment, like visiting a battlefield.”
Back at Hanna’s little cottage in the woods I politely decline her offer of homegrown gherkins.
Raising a toast of her vodka, she insists: “The tourists are wonderful. They bring me ice cream and help me with repairs to my house.”
As the day wanes, holidaymakers pass through radiation scanners as they leave the Exclusion Zone for their hotels in Kiev — leaving Hanna to her beautiful but damned woodland wilderness.
