Checkpoint

We are entering the area of Chernobyl. I check the fuel reserve and tire repair kit. I don't want to be marooned in the middle of nuclear desert.

The gas tank must be full before entering this area as all gasoline stations look like this one.

This is one of the credential control points that lead into the "dead zone." Special permission is required to enter this zone of exclusion.

 

This is where they used to give careless or unlucky visitors a chemical shower.

 

Each time I pass into the zone, I feel that I have entered an unreal world. In the dead zone, the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell me something...something that I strain to hear...something that both attracts and repels me at the same time. It is divinely eerie...like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks.