Budget Indian Travelers can there be a more unlikely location for visitors than the corner of Ukraine that was the site of one of the most notorious and disturbing incidents ever to cast a shadow across our planet? Three decades after the nuclear disaster there, the name Chernobyl still inspires dread.

When an explosion tore through Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl power plant on April 26, 1986, it was the worst nuclear accident the world had ever seen.

Clouds of highly radioactive particles were released into the air during an attempted routine shutdown of the power plant north of Kiev in the former Soviet Union (now Ukraine).

Today, the number of tourists seeking to head deep into Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone, a 30-kilometer radius of contaminated land around the power plant, supports several tour firms.

Even though recent instability in eastern Ukraine has pushed the country off most travelers’ radars, Chernobyl still looms large in the global consciousness.

Fears regularly circulating about the fallout zone, last year it was contamination via forest fires, seem to stoke just as much fascination, drawing a steady stream of tourists.

There are even hotels inside the Exclusion Zone. Visits are governed by security checks and by strictly guided tours. Visitors travel to the site, a two-hour drive north of Ukrainian capital Kiev, by tour bus.

Once there, they sign a disclaimer warning against touching any objects or vegetation, or even sitting on the ground.

Leaving the site is also highly regulated. Body scanners test for high levels of radiation. If the scanner alarm sounds, guards sweep the individual for radioactive dust before they’re allowed to leave.

Ghost Town Pripyat

The payoff is access to a city frozen in time. The empty city of Pripyat, evacuated after the accident, is a snapshot of Eastern Europe before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The zone’s post-apocalyptic atmosphere exerts a strong pull.

Rusting boats list in the River Pripyat. A Ferris wheel stands motionless among steadily encroaching trees. Traces of life in the former USSR are scattered everywhere, from children’s school books to Soviet propaganda posters.

The Chernobyl accident is ranked level 7, the highest on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

The severity of its widespread environmental and human cost has only been equaled by 2011’s disaster at Fukushima in Japan.

Contaminated rain and wind depositing radioactive dust were recorded as far afield as Sweden and Wales. Research continues to examine the complex effects of increased exposure to radiation on ecosystems.

Peaceful meadows inside the zone suggest nothing out of the ordinary.

But tour guides hover Geiger counters over rusted debris littering the grass. Background radiation around the Exclusion Zone can be up to 10 times the normal level. Slow-growing vegetation, especially prone to absorbing radioactive particles, tests even higher.

The most intriguing part of the Exclusion Zone is the ghost town of Pripyat.

Founded 2 kilometers from the power plant in 1970, the city soon swelled to nearly 50,000. Its entire population was evacuated after the disaster.

Now abandoned and overgrown, Pripyat still resembles a shattered snapshot of the typical Soviet city it once was. Visitors crunch through broken glass and sidestep bushes sprouting through corners of apartment blocks. Textbooks are strewn in empty classrooms and a chipped swimming pool lies empty beneath rotting wooden beams.

Traces of the former USSR are everywhere. Vivid Soviet murals dance on walls. Faded gas masks in children’s sizes lie in their dozens, a reminder of an era when fear of attack hung thick in the air.