UPDATE: Is this story a fraud? See subsequent BoingBoing post: Link
Elena from Kiev recently toured the Chernobyl area on a motorcycle. She photo-blogs the journey here, and it is a truly amazing personal account. This is the sort of intimate, human stuff that makes you drop your jaw and think, good God, the Internet is an incredible thing.
"I travel a lot and one of my favorite destination lead through poisoned with radiation, so called Chernobyl dead zone. It is 130kms from my home. Why favourite? because one can ride there for hours and not meet any single car and not to see any single soul. People left and nature is blooming, there are beautiful places, woods, lakes. There is no newly built roads, but those which left from 80th in fairly good condition…"
Link (via Warren). Recommended Reading: Polidori's Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl, a collection of photographs shot in the dead zone (thanks, Patricio)