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Comment by pieter1976 | Hacker News Reader

pieter1976

Two years ago I was lucky enough to visit Chernobyl with an organized tour out of Kyev. Strange to think of part of this planet as a forbidden zone, even stranger that it's a tourist attraction.

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It's kind of turned into the world's weirdest nature reserve.

-Definitely. I had a tour there a couple of years ago, and the takeaway memory (in addition to the slightly eerie feeling of having been dropped into a massive Fallout game) was as we walked across a bridge over a small canal, I saw the biggest sturgeon-y fish I'd ever seen.

The guide shrugged and observed something along the lines of 'This is what happens when #2 in the food chain suddenly becomes #1.'

Considering the number of people who now go on Chernobyl tours, I am just waiting for the Lonely Planet crowd to label the place 'spoiled' ;)

Another amazing 'weird' nature reserve is the DMZ between South and North Korea. You can see the most amazing birds of prey there hunting animals in the area between the propaganda villages.

There are far worse places in this world than Chernobyl at this point. Agra, India and war torn Syria comes to mind.

But the concept far worse is very... human and emotional.. Chernobyl is uninhabitable for my years to come. But Agra is just really dirty. It is impossible to compare the tragedies of Syria, Agra and Chernobyl.

You can not downplay something just because it does not look as bad.

Sorry, I'm not too familiar with India; why is Agra such a bad place?

Just use google image search for Agra. Outside of a complete war zone, it's easily the most vile place I've ever visited in my life. Hell on Earth.

Type "agra filth" in Google search. That is how the ENTIRE surrounding area looks.

Care to show some of these images? I do a search for Agra and all I see are nice images of the Taj Mahal and similarly nice architecture. A search for "Agra, India" shows some trash strewn on a beach/river-front, but no indication of a war zone or hell on earth.

Type "agra filth" in Google search. And those pics are being generous, I wish I could share the ones I took last month.

That's what I did, got images of the Taj Mahal and other beautiful buildings.

You guys have a merry search bubble it seems! :-)

http://www.escapethecity.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/Agra-Taj-M...

I did that, but I saw typical touristy looking pictures. Can you clarify further?

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