Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places

by Adam Fletcher

  I picked up a little more bread. “You’re seriously telling me you don’t find this food delicious?”

  She pushed her plate over to me. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  This meant that I got to eat more, which was great, but that Annett stayed hungry, which wasn’t. After dinner we went to the community centre, took a yoga mat, pushed it against the wall, and watched a movie. It was a documentary with a long non-English name and designed to remind us how interconnected we all are. It was nice, and true, but weird to be watching it here, since we’d all come to the ashram to get disconnected.

  “Did you like it?” Annett asked, as we slopped and sloshed our way back to our lodgings. We’d forgotten to bring a torch on the trip, and so were navigating by mobile-phone light.

  “It was very thought-provoking,” I lied.

  “Liar!” she shouted, louder than she’d intended. She recalibrated her volume. “Stop trying to make the best out of everything. I hate it when you do that.”

  We discovered our hut had taken on the pungent aroma of a blocked-up sewage system, on account of its blocked-up sewage system. “Damn,” I said, as the toilet seat slipped off, again, while I was sitting on it. An unidentified bug stared up at me from the shower basin.

  “I heard you swear,” Annett said when I returned. I crossed the room quickly, attempting a strategic retreat to the safety of my upper bunk.

  “You didn’t.”

  “I did. You hate it here as well.”

  I had the bunk’s ladder in my hands. “I don’t. I’m having a lovely time. I’m excited to learn more about the Hare Krishna faith. It’s good to get out of the city and back to basics.”

  “Liar!” she said again, and rolled over to face the wall. “Argh. There’s ants everywhere.” She rolled back.

  “Suffering is—”

  “Fuck you!” She punched me as I fled up the ladder to my bunk. “That enough suffering for you?” One of the Canadians walked past, on her way to the bathroom. Our door was still open because it was still broken. It was awkward.

  Day one was over. Just four to go. Hopefully tomorrow we’d find God.

  The next morning the bell rang. We heard the Canadians getting up to do their volunteering stint. A few hours later, Annett and I sauntered over to the kitchen for our breakfast. The camp felt more like an organic farm than a place of worship. It had a generous vegetable patch and favoured wood, and was decorated with mosaics and yin-yang symbols. There was an outdoor raised wooden platform for yoga and meditation. About ten Hare Krishnas had their own accommodation on the far side of the camp, and they mostly kept to themselves. We found the rest of the camp—a dozen or so people, most American, dirty and irritable because they’d been labouring for hours. We’d strolled in fresh from the shower, yawning and waiting to be presented with the breakfast everyone else had harvested, cut, and cooked for us. No one sat with us while we ate it. We learned we were the only people paying more to avoid the volunteering. From this point on, the others viewed us as work-shy millionaires slumming it for a reality TV show.

  “I hate it here,” Annett said, as we took a post-breakfast stroll.

  “It does take some getting used to,” I conceded. “But we’re here now. Let’s have a full day here today, huh? Do the yoga and the new-age stuff and then see how we feel after?”

  One of the volunteers, an American called Cindy, was studying to become a yoga teacher, and so there were three hours of yoga that day, instead of two. A lot for an absolute newbie like me. We collected our mats from the back of the room, found some space, and sat waiting for the session to start. Cindy was extremely enthusiastic about yoga, particularly about its healing properties. An enthusiasm shared by hands held in a prayer position. A soft soundtrack of bells and chanting played from a portable stereo. We tried to mirror the positions she demonstrated. She taught us the Sanskrit words for everything we were doing, which was commendable. Many dogs were present and downward facing. She slowly walked the room, telling us about our breathing and what we were feeling, and then invariably she would grab my hips or stomach and nudge me nearer to the desired shape. One-and-a-half hours passed quickly. It wasn’t unpleasant at all. I was a convert. I wasn’t sure I needed the second class, and a half-hour afternoon session, but Annett and I did it anyway, groaning through the positions as our bodies voiced concern about this sudden spike in pivoting, posturing, and prostrating.

  After the second session we headed to the temple for an “orientation session,” a chance to find out more about the faith. So far, just as in Israel, Palestine, and Ghana, no one here had tried to indoctrinate me. It didn’t seem like any of the religions wanted to save the soul I didn’t believe I had. I was starting to take it personally.

  Inside the temple we found the Hare Krishna from check-in lighting candles for the subsequent chanting session. Annett and I were the only two people in the temple, looking for orientation. The man lit some incense and we breathed in deeply as we sat on the mats in the centre of the room, waiting for him to join us.

  “How are you enjoying your stay?” he asked as he sat down.

  “It’s very nice.”

  “Muchas gracias.”

  “I’m interested in learning a little more about the religion. I’m beginning from… well…” I squinted. “A rather minimal understanding of your faith. Is Hare Krishna a god, or was he a mortal?”

  “A god. The one God.” The man sat perfectly still, his back straight. “We believe no matter the religion, whenever someone prays to their god, they are praying to Krishna, for he is the supreme god.”

  Annett adjusted her crossed legs and leaned forward. “And the chanting and dancing is how you connect to Krishna?”

  “Sí. The soul is mostly asleep, we believe. Dancing, chanting is how we awaken it.”

  I was happy to boogie for godhead. It was certainly better than years of Bible study. “Have you ever seen the Sufis whirl?” he asked. We both nodded. “So. It’s similar.”

  Hare Krishnas have a talent for intense earnestness. There’s a serious, otherworldly quality to the attention they give you. It’s as if you’re the only thing that has ever or will ever exist. This man had an abundance of focus. Meeting his gaze for too long pinched.

  Annett pushed up her glasses. “And you also believe in reincarnation, right?”

  “Yes. We believe that souls are immortal. Your deeds are judged after death and then you are reborn as a higher or lower life form.”

  “I like the idea of that,” she said. “But it seems a bit, well, simplistic? Is there, like, a chart with the rules and what scores what points?”

  “No,” he said, between slow, measured blinks. “Just certain basic rules: chanting Hare Krishna, yoga, not eating animals, living in harmony with nature.”

  I cleared my throat. “What about, like, really, really bad people? Hitler, Stalin or… erm… that guy from Gladiator. Russell Crowe? What will they become in the next life? Dung beetles?”

  “Lesser beings,” the man said. “Exactly what is not known.”

  “Hmm.” I scratched my cheek. “I think the only fair punishment for Russell Crowe would be to reincarnate him as himself.”

  Annett suppressed a fit of giggles. The man sat perfectly still. His face did not betray him. He would have been a hell of a poker player. “And just to be clear,” she said, cocking her head. “No meat? That’s a fixed thing? No wiggle room there? No sneaky 2am burger?”

  The man shook his head. “No meat.”

  She frowned.

  “Sex?” I asked.

  “No sex.”

  Annett shrugged. This hurt. Me.

  “Sex is about pleasing yourself, not pleasing Krishna.”

  “Wine?” she tried.

  “No.”

  “Yeah… I’m out,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  A redheaded woman in dungarees arrived at the door. It didn’t look as though it was her first time on a farm. It was time to chant. The man beckoned h
er over, and we all sat together on the mats while he set up a harmonium, an instrument that looks and sounds like a mixture of an organ and an accordion. It’s played using a hand pump. The man began to play.

  “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna,” he chanted. The woman joined in. Incense tickled my nose. “Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.”

  I bowed my head too, let the sound and ambiance of the temple float over me. “Hare Rāma Hare Rāma.”

  I felt too self-conscious to chant.

  I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I closed it again.

  “Rāma Rāma Hare Hare.”

  “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna.”

  “Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.”

  I balled my hands into fists. I should have been joining in. I wasn’t fully engaging in the experience that I had wanted. Annett had an excuse; her gods were Darwin, Dawkins, and Daiquiri. Me? I had slots open.

  “Hare Rāma Hare Rāma,” the man and the woman sang.

  “Kṛiṣ—” I began.

  “Hā—” the man interrupted.

  “Hare,” I repeated quickly, trying to catch up.

  “Kṛiṣ—” I tried again.

  “Rāma,” he repeated.

  Damn it. What were the odds? It seemed like even this religion had too much for me to remember. It had three words.

  “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna.”

  “Rāma Rāma,” I said. No one else said anything. “Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,” the man continued.

  I adopted a new approach—singing along but swallowing the beginning of each word until I was sure what it was then getting louder while attempting to catch up.

  Annett said nothing. The room had taken on a mild Eat Pray Love aura. Yet if this was the peak of the indoctrination, it wasn’t much at all. No one had even asked us for our credit card number yet.

  After twenty minutes, the man stopped the music. He sat in silence for a minute, his head bowed, then got up, blew out the incense and candles, and left. We got up, shook out the knots in our limbs, and followed him outside.

  “I’m not staying here five days,” Annett said, as we walked back across the bog to our room. I stopped to fuss over one of the camp’s dogs.

  “Come on. The chanting was nice.” The dog rolled over accommodatingly. “The Krishnas are nice. No one is trying to indoctrinate us. Which I’m a bit sad about. Are we not worth indoctrinating? How about four days?”

  Annett stepped over the dog. “I’m leaving tomorrow!”

  This was a regrettable development. Annett was the team’s organiser, common-sense possessor, and, perhaps more importantly, Spanish speaker. The team would be greatly diminished if it became just me. It would be the sort of team you’d not want to be on, and quite possibly not even a team at all.

  “Three days?” I countered, leaving the dog and chasing after her. “Let’s make it into a challenge?”

  “No,” she said, angrily, and speeding up her steps. “I’m sick of your challenges. Why does everything have to be a challenge now?”

  I followed her back to our room, where we continued to argue from the safety of our separate bunks, not wanting to risk being any nearer to each other. I bent round the side so that I could look down at her, looking up at me. She was grinding her teeth. “When we started this go-to-weird-places project, you promised me it wouldn’t end in spiritual self-revelations in some temple. Well what was that, then? What’s this place? Why are we here?”

  I sighed. “That bit in the temple was a bit spiritual, I’ll give you that. But we’re out of our comfort zone. We’re trying new things. Is it so bad?”

  “Why are you all about getting out of the comfort zone? You’ve changed this past year or two. I thought it was in a good way, but now I’m not sure. I’m sick of the challenges and the retrospective fun holidays. Sick of you sending me job ads from foreign countries and trying to pressure me into leaving Berlin for one of your stupid pipe dreams. I’m happy in Berlin. I like our friends and our simple life. I don’t want to move and rip all that up for no reason.”

  I rolled over, looked at the ceiling, reloaded, and spun back. “I like it there as well. But we’re not getting any younger, right? It’s better to have adventures now before we get settled again.”

  “I am settled. It’s you who’s running away from things.”

  “I’m not running away.”

  “You are. Every place we go you bug me to stay there. No matter how impractical.”

  I let my arm hang down, thinking she might take my hand. “So what now? What are you saying?”

  “I’m done.”

  All the air left my lungs at once. “Done with what? Us?”

  There was a pause. “That depends on you. I’m done with this. If you want to leave Berlin and travel to weird places for month and months”—she exhaled loudly—“well… you’re on your own. I like my career. I like my friends. I like being an adult. I’m committed. If you want to go somewhere else you can, but you’re going on your own. I’m out.”

  Where there had been air in my chest there was now just indescribable heaviness. “Sometimes new is enough,” I countered, meekly. “It doesn’t have to be better.”

  “That’s your problem. That’s exactly it. Yes.” She was suddenly energised. “You romanticise new in a way that makes you neglect what you already have. If we suddenly pack up a suitcase and move to a farm in Ecuador, what do you think that’s going to be like? In the end, we’ll have the same problems—we’ll have to make friends, we’ll have to find work, we’ll have to eat and sleep. Same problems, different backdrop. You can’t outrun your problems. Or your boredom.”

  I sighed. There was silence.

  “We could have a pretty good go at it though, right?”

  She tutted. “Typical, making jokes again. The English curse. You use jokes as a shield to not feel things. You know that, right?”

  I remembered an article I’d recently read that said whatever first attracted you to a partner was always the thing you resented most at the end. Were we there already? “Well, it’s easier for you,” I said. “You have a career.” I turned back to the ants running along the wall. Due to their collective nature and relentless commitment to anting, they were awful animals to be surrounded by when making a point such as this. Ants never suffer identity crises.

  “I have a career because I created one. That’s what you’re running away from. You always wanted to be a writer. So come back, knuckle down, and write. Not the easy stuff, the important stuff. I think you’re afraid to really try because as long as you never do, you can’t fail. You confuse freedom with having no responsibilities. But that’s not freedom. That’s just selfishness.”

  We checked out the next morning: thirty-six hours after we’d arrived, still Godless. A frigid state of “let’s agree to disagree” settled like frost atop the relationship. I stopped sending Annett exciting-looking job opportunities in Botswana. The next few trips I would take alone. Probably a good idea, because the next place I wanted to go was radioactive.

  9

  Chernobyl, Ukraine: “If someone ask, you scientists, okay?”

  Reactor #4, bumper cars, Ferris wheels, hubris

  In the early hours of April 26, 1986, reactor operators at the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station were conducting a stress test upon reactor #4. This was a planned test and so, even though radiation readings were higher than expected, they saw no cause to worry. They wanted to learn the reactor’s limits, after all. So they allowed it to get stressed. But as radiation levels climbed, the core temperature increased, flows of vital coolant water decreased, and the operators began to grow concerned. The test had run out of control and the temperature needed to come down quickly.

  At 1:23am, they hit the stop switch on the test and inserted control rods into the reactor to slow down the reaction taking place within it. Only the Stop button they thought they were pressing turned out to be an accelerator. Less than a minute after they made that fateful decision, the temperature in the reactor’s core
surged past three thousand degrees Celsius, the water normally used to cool down the uranium became steam, that steam tried to expand, the reactor offered it no space to do so, and the resulting pressure blew the one-hundred-ton roof and let 50 million curies of radiation escape into the night sky. The equivalent of four hundred Hiroshima bombs.

  What began that night as Chernobyl’s problem became all of Europe’s as a ten-day fire raging in reactor #4 spewed enough toxic, radioactive material to contaminate 40 percent of the continent’s mainland. Some believe that if the wind had been blowing differently, all of it would have been rendered uninhabitable. Some 2,600 square kilometres have suffered this fate.

  On the night of the accident, just three kilometres downwind of the ill-fated reactor, fifty thousand inhabitants of the town of Pripyat slept blissfully unaware. The next afternoon, with just an hour’s notice, and still unaware of the scale of the calamity, they were forced to evacuate their homes and leave all but their most important possessions behind. Much of what remained was buried in a large pit.

  Thirty years have now passed. The authorities say people will be able to live in Pripyat again one day; that’s the good news. The bad news is that this day will not come for another 2700 years. Those not wanting to wait so long for a glimpse of their former lives can make a day trip back. The area is slowly opening up to small numbers of brave/stupid/insensitive/curious/macabre tourists who want to see what a modern-day Pompeii looks like—tourists who aren’t satisfied just reading the Wikipedia pages of iconic events from the safety of their couches, and want to get closer to them; see them, touch them, feel them, take selfies in front of them.

  Tourists like me.

  The Fukushima disaster was nearing its fifth anniversary. Natural disasters were on the rise. As well as a blossoming interest in unusual places and the weird things humans did to each other in them, I also had a growing interest in how we treated (or mistreated) the natural world.