I just read Martin Cruz Smith's rather good crime novel,
Wolves Eat Dogs. There's a
Guardian review of the book which states: 'When Cruz Smith is at his best, as he is here, it is impossible to tell how much is research and how much imagination.'
This is very true, and why I did some research early on to confirm that people actually did live and work (legally and illegaly) in Chernobyl's Zone of Exclusion - and whether residents and squatters had moved back to the villages, whether there were organised day-trips to the site, and poachers had moved in to take advantage of the areas apparently burgeoning wildlife.*
Anyway, some rather awesome pictures contained in the following:
reactor4.be
Village of Joy
Article with more amazing photographs
here.
And yes, people do go
urban exploring in Chernobyl & Pripyat.
*All of that seems to be true, but I wasn't able to find any evidence that Chernobyl is the site of an Orthodox Jewish pilgrimage - seems that might be where Cruz Smith was exercising a little authorial imagination.