A Quick Tour to Chernobyl - Prypiat

Well here we go again! After a few suggestions I re-edited my video and included a pic-dump with photos of the place. Im re-uploading the whole post again. Back in 2011, while in Ukraine, I decided to go and take a look at Chernobyl. I'm all against travel agencies and would always recommend, if asked, to use common sense and just go for the adventure... but this is a military exclusion zone so, as a last resort, I ended paying for the tour. It goes like this, you need to do you research online, but eventually it isn't too hard to find some agency selling "day" tours from Kiev to Chernobyl. The price, around 100USD, includes the round-trip bus ticket (Chernobyl is some 100k N-W of Kyiv, which takes around 2 hours by bus, cause traffic in the capital sucks ), the visit itself ( to the Chernobyl nuclear plant outskirts, and then to prypiat the ghost town ) and a Ukranian lunch ( served and eaten in Prypiat but as they say "with products from outside the exclusion zone " haha! ). Departure was around 0800 and arrival around 2000 at some point near city center. I was joined by 4-5 more guys plus the driver and the guide, who was a young guy serving in the military and speaking a quite fluent English. He gave us a quick briefing about the current situation before going in the exclusion area. Also you have to sign some papers in case any thing bad happens to you, basically saying they want "none of it"... And also aclear, very serious, reminder of touch nothing take nothing is made We cleared the military checkpoints (similar to a national border) and when straight to reactor no4. You get as close as 200m from it a few minutes and that's it, there's also the memorial. From there you go to Prypiat, some 10km away from the plant itself. On the way you get to play with the geiger counter of your guide, showing crazy numbers and beeping like crazy. Another memorial, this one to the firefighters, can be seen on the way to Prypiat. Finally we arrived to the Ghost town, what everyone was waiting for... The place is huge and looks menacing so I knew our guide would be baby-sitting us, but the f**** fact was much worst.. Everything was reduced to a quick tour around the must iconic places, following this guy like he was some kind of post apocalypse prophet. There was almost no time for pictures as you are rushing from place to place (the pool, the kindergarten, the school, the apartment blocks, the amusement park...) Eventually I was hated by everyone else in the group as I kept on getting lost with my camera, so the guide had to come and pick me up. It was frustrating for a photographer-aficionado like me, who was hoping for something like : "Ok guys, see you right here in one hour, behave yourself...." I know the video is short and it kinda sucks, but you get the feeling of what to expect. Also It was February in the Ukraine and we had blizzard the whoooole day, so I would recommend to go on spring (check out the pics online and you will see) Forget about exploring Prypiat by yourself like a young Indiana Jones, I can tell you that much :) Hope the pictures give a better look of what the place really looks like. By the way, not bs, a few months after this I met this russian guy in China...so he assured me he and his pals broke into prypiat, they were caught but manage to sell they were hunting... finally they sneaked into the exclusion zone and got to spend a few days in the area (thats and adventure in chernobyl!!!!) If you got any questions feel free to ask. ps: yeah I did play the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and well its just spot on, I reckon those guys went there and pretty much copied the whole place ! The track playing in the pic dump is "Tscheljabinsk" by College, no copyright infringement intended