At 01:23 on 26 April 1986 a routine procedure at the No 4 nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Soviet Ukraine went disastrously wrong. There was a massive steam explosion and a prolonged open-air graphite fire. Masses of radioactive material was lofted into the atmosphere by updrafts from the flames. In coming days it would be spread by the wind and settle over the surrounding countryside, necessitating a complete evacuation of over 100,000 people.

More than three decades on, the soil itself is still powerfully radioactive. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation extends for 30 kilometres in every direction around the reactor, which itself sits beneath an immense concrete sarcophagus.

Despite this, it is still possible to visit the zone. Indeed, tourism is encouraged. Years of abandonment and radiation have transformed the landscape and hollowed out towns and cities, but life is by no means absent. Animals abound in the silent forests. Trees still grow. Some residents even remain, having refused the evacuation order when it first came all those years ago.

1. The Red Forest

This area received some of the highest doses of radiation following the disaster. Pine trees, showered with radioactive dust, turned a reddish-brown colour, shed their needles, and died. Many were then bulldozed and covered over with earth by “liquidators” – the name given to the 500,000 workers who helped clean up after the disaster.

Now, however, new saplings poke through the soil. Wildlife flourishes. The population of wild boar has surged. Deer wander freely. There is even evidence that bears have returned to the region, after an absence of centuries. Eagle owls, egrets and swans all proliferate now that humans have been removed from the equation.

2. Pripyat Amusement Park

This amusement park – featuring a ferris wheel, carousel, and dodgems – was due to open on 1 May 1986. The Chernobyl accident took place just a week before. The grand opening was cancelled. The families that might have visited were evacuated from their homes. For years and then decades thereafter the ferris wheel stood quietly rusting, turning only once in 2017 at the hands of a group of Polish tourists.

3. Azure Swimming Pool

The tall windows are shattered. Trees reach in from the woods beyond. This swimming pool remained open in the years following the disaster, used by liquidators and research scientists alike. In 1992 it was finally abandoned, its deterioration remaining forever several years behind the rest of Pripyat.

4. Middle School No 3

There were five school in Pripyat. This is just one of them. The corridors now are echoingly empty, peppered with pages torn from textbooks, scraps of worksheets, the remnants of brightly-coloured display boards. In several rooms the floors are carpeted with discarded gas masks. Hundreds of child-size masks were kept to hand during the cold war. After the disaster, they were removed from their lockers and cast aside by scavengers in search of the silver contained within their filters.

5. The Reactor

The first sarcophagus to cover the damaged Reactor No 4 was put into place as a matter of urgency. Its construction took just over 200 days. Other reactors on the site continued to generate electricity for several years after the disaster, and the sarcophagus was necessary to afford the workers who tended to them a degree of protection.

By 2007, however, the original sarcophagus was nearing the end of its life. A new one was put in place, around and on top of the first. This gigantic shell consists of thousands of tonnes of concrete, and cost billions to construct. It is taller than the Statue of Liberty. It should last nearly 100 years.

6. The Cooling Channels

A network of artificial channels and ponds were once used to cool the reactors of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. During the disaster significant quantities of radioactive material were thrown into these channels by the explosion. After many years this deadly sediment has sunk to the bottom of the water and been covered over with silt. Now giant catfish – some up to three metres in length – live happily here.

7. Chernobyl

This town is mostly abandoned. The houses where residents still remain bear placards on their doors to tell workers that the structure is inhabited. There are two small general stores, a police station, a hotel for visitors and tourists, and a canteen. Lunch, when it is served, consists of freshly-prepared traditional Ukranian food.

Who would stay here? Researchers are always present in Chernobyl. The Zone of Alienation represents an opportunity to study, among other things, the effect of radiation on flora and fauna, and to model how radiation might spread following a terrorist attack involving a dirty bomb.

8. Monument to the Chernobyl Liquidators

Of the half a million liquidators who contributed to the clean up effort which followed the Chernobyl disaster, 90% subsequently suffered from radiation-related health issues. Strokes. Paralysis. Cancers. While they were looked upon as heroes at the time, many surviving liquidators now struggle to get by on meagre pensions. They have been, by in large, forgotten.

This monument, made of concrete and installed outside what was once the fire station, depicts seven men in bulky suits, with respirators and helmets, wrestling with fire hoses and digging equipment. There is an inscription. The inscription reads, “To Those Who Saved the World”.