Land Rover Journey of Discovery into Russia
Amazing expedition through Chernobyl and abandoned Submarine factory
By Shahzad Sheikh
A Land Rover Discovery passes silhouette graffiti, which hints at the story behind the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, as the Journey of Discovery team explores the exclusion zone.
Land Rovers are on an amazing journey through Ukraine and Russia, and have sent out these pictures from Chernobyl and the ghost town of Pripyat, as well as from a former Soviet Submarine base.
26 years ago in April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl powerplant exploded leading to the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster. The Land Rover Journey of Discovery team has been inside the exclusion zone that surrounds the plant (which is still leaking radiation even now) including the town of Pripyat, just 3km from the reactor, and once home to 50,000 people. The place is still highly radioactive.
An abandoned child’s toy car is just one of many moving monuments to the life-changing moments caused by the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.
The reactor itself sits under a makeshift cover of concrete, steel, lead and metal sheeting. Plans are in place for a better cover or sarcophagus, but those plans have been in place for 10 years without any progress. Worrying.
The Journey, which actually plans to cover 13,000km from Birmingham in the UK to Beijing in China, is aiming to raise $1.6m for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The millionth Land Rover Discovery beside an underwater submarine canal in the former secret Soviet submarine base visited by the Journey of Discovery.
Along the way they also visited the submarine base featuring gargantuan submarine holding pens. Based in Balaklava, Ukraine, the base was supposed to be able to survive a direct nuclear hit, and to be able to shelter and sustain 3000 people for over a month. The Crimean coast submarine shelter is now a museum.
You can follow the journey:
www.landrover.com/million
http://www.facebook.com/landrover
