UPDATE: The Chernobyl ghost town story website has been declared a mostly-hoax. (Fooey.)

Last week I discovered (through Neil Gaiman's webjournal) a link to a rather unusual travel journal: a description, with pictures, by a young Ukranian who likes, now and then, to take her motorcycle on a spin through the Chernobyl dead zone. Her father is a nuclear scientist, part of the team doing continuing research in the area, so through him she can get permission to enter. Apparently the radiation isn't at dangerous levels in most places, if you stay on the road...

When I went to check it again today, before writing this, I discovered that she's made a few changes since last week, mainly improving and streamlining her English. I kind of liked it as it was before, because it gave me a better hint of Ukranian language patterns. As far as I can tell, there are few substantive differences, except for a more detailed explanation of the 1986 accident and a different picture of herself on the second page.

Here are two fragments of the earlier text, preserved in an email I sent to a couple of people last week:

from the first look ghosttown seems like a normal town, someone put their washing hungs on a balcony, some windows open, other clothed, here is taxi stop, there is grocery store... then, you read this slogan on building- "party of Lenin lead us to the triumph of a communism"- that helps to realise that clothes hung on balcony for 18 years and that town is empty..

[...]

The most exciting thing about rides in Ghosttown is to hit a red line on my bike's tacho and break this silence with roar of a wounded dinosaur and then to close throttle and listen how all those ghosts cursing 1100cc kawasaki engin.

contents of the purple tricycle are copyright 2004 carrie lynn king unless otherwise noted.