World Travel Stories

Category: Boats

  • Lake Baikal Mysteries

    LAKE BAIKAL, JUNE 2002 – It’s early in the morning when our train arrives in Irkutsk station, the first city of importance in East-Siberia we approach after two nights.  But before we visit this beautiful city we go straight onto the bus that takes us to Lake Baikal (Ozero Bajkal), known as the deepest lake of the world, and holding one fifth of the fresh water of the entire planet.  But it is a lake also covered in mysteries… – no, not a cousin or niece of Nessy over here – but a lot of strange natural specimen to be found and some still to be discovered.  

    The road from Irkutsk towards Listvyanka – a small place on the shores of Lake Baikal – is surprisingly good, thanks to the former US president Eisenhower, who sponsored the building of this road for an upcoming top-meeting between the US and the former USSR –  a meeting that never took place, due to the U2-incident…  Anyway, the road was here to stay, and this road stays open all year, also in the midst of winter, when temperatures reach – 40 C.

    Homestay in Listvyanka

    Day one in Listvyanka. We check in at the local homestay and meet the host family.  The Siberian people make a very friendly impression on us, and the houses are basic but clean and cosy…  This is going to be a nice and quiet couple of days over here.  The appartments we stay in are the former houses of the scientists who used to work here in times when the Lake Baikal museum was still the reseach centre for studies of the lake.  Now they work at Irkutsk, associated to the university.  Behind the houses a lot of walking paths and things to discover.  On one of my walks I noticed an old factory nearby, including a lot of pipelines in the forest, a (almost empty ?) facility that looked like a military base,  and large hydrogen or oxygen tanks in the woods.  These woods are great to walk in, and the little hills that can be climed offer a great view of Lake Baikal.

    Lake Baikal, the museum and houses
    Part One of the mystery

    The Baikal Museum

    The visit to the museum is quite an eye opener.  The mystery of the lake begins… Next to maquettes of the lake (a tectonic crack of over than a mile deep really, filled with glacial water) and steamboats of the past, stuffed animals and birds, and a lot of black-and-wite photographs, the real exitement is the displays of the species that live in the lake and are not to be found elsewhere in the world !  Next to fresh water seals, Omul fish (often on the menu over here and delicious !), also little transparent fish that live in the deepest regions of the lake.  An iron bar that has been lowered into the same depth and thus totally deformed by the water pressure, is lying next to these species on formol.  What an exciting place this is !

    Mystery boat trip

    But the mystery was not over yet ! On day two we go onto the lake with a small boat. It is raining but the it feels good to be on deck and feel the cooling effect of this huge lake.  The temperature of the water is 4 degrees C.  The captain jokes about the lack of lifevests on board – “you survive only a few minutes anyway in there ” – and yes this water is very cold as I could experience when I went feet bathing the other day – going in with feet only is said to extend your life by two years, swimming in the lake will either extend your life with 25 years or kill you immediately. So we are on the boat and after some time (playing cards, having indoor picknick etc…) the mist rolls in… and within a few minutes we are covered in a thick mist and visibility is reduced to zero metres.  At this stage our captain climbs on the roof of his cabin … to set up the radar.  Luckily this device seems to be working fine, but some of us are a bit stressed anyway when he comes in a little while later, to claim his binoculars that he had lended to some of us for sightseeing…  And some time later, we arrive on the dock again, almost without knowing we were that close to the shore. Another surprising day at lake Baikal !

    Mist covering lake Baikal Baikal at sunset

    The soul of Lake Baikal 

    But for me the real mystery atmosphere is to be found at sunset, when the sun is gradually hiding behind the mountains, still leaving a trace of its light on the lake, and the mist is covering the lake once again and mixes in with the clouds and the yellow and the red.  These moments when Lake Baikal stole my heart.  It was hard to leave this place the following morning…

    I am still here but I can already feel the desire to come back again – to be continued.

  • Three days on the Yangtze river

    CHONGQING, SEPTEMBER 1999 – One of my goals when coming to China was to see the world famous ‘Three Gorges’ on the Yangtze river.  The way to see them is by taking a ‘cruise’ onto the Yangtze river.  I went for a three day trip from Chongqing to Yichang.  Most of the trip was done using a big ‘cruise’ ship.  Don’t imagine this ship as being a luxury ship however. To the Chinese these boats are often the only way to get away fom their village.  

    The ship has some ‘luxury’ cabins for tourist (which are clean cabins but not at all luxury ones…) and the rest of the ship is standard cabins that are used by Chinese people, with communal showers and bathrooms.

    Porters carrying the luggage

    From the moment you arrive on the docks, porters try to convince you to carry their luggage.  It’s hard to convince them you have already hired a porter.  Taking your backpack yourself onto the ship would be a big offense to these men.  The porters also carry the rest of the ‘load’ of the ship – like the laundry (sheets etc…), the food and other goods that need to be transported.  Everything is loaded manually.  It’s interesting to be on the ship and watch the loading process – it takes many hours.

    During the three days, the ship stops several times to allow the tourist to visit some little village, sometimes there is a temple – for the Chinese this is just their endpoint or the place they have to load or unload their goods.  Most of the little villages will disappear because the water level will rise 135 metres when the Yangtze dam will be completed.  Millions of people are to be relocated because of this dam project.  Along the sides you can already see white housing blocks that will become the new homes of these people.  Their current houses will be ‘dismantled’ stone by stone.  Nothing is wasted here.  What struck me however was the amount of waste on the river.  In fact the whole river is a floating garbage dump.  Everyone throws their garbage from the ship into the river !

    Old and new villages
    Lesser three gorges

    A main attraction is the visit to the ‘Lesser Three Gorges’.  These are very narrow gorges with only shallow water levels.  It takes small boats to visit them.  I also went on a tour with one of these small boats.  The sights are really spectacular.  It happened a few times that the little boat got stuck – the boatmen used bambo sticks to keep the boat floating.  Suddenly the boat stopped near to the side.  Everyone had to get off.  It appeared that our boat had an engine problem.  When we were all on the shore of the river the boat left and went for spare parts… We were left alone in the middle of nowhere. Half an hour later the boat arrived again and we could go on.

    After this exciting trip, we boarded the big ship again and were ready to continue on the Yangtze.  That was however not possible : the ship had an engine problem and could not leave !  After 8 hours, a couple of beers and a lot of fun in the karaoke bar, the ship finally left the dock again.  It was already late in the evening.  In the middle of the night I woke up by the sound of a bell.  I walked out of the cabin and saw that we were in a giant lock.  It was the temporary lock of one kilometre long that is built due to the dam project.  The Yangtze is blocked here by a temporary dam and the ships have to use this lock to go further.   A few hours later we could go ashore and our wonderful cruise was over.

    But we had one more big event coming up: the excursion to the dam project.  This is really the most giant project I have ever seen.  A complete city is built where the construction workers live, housing 50.000 people in total.  The building site itself is unbelievable.  Giant trucks are dwarfed by the walls of the dam and locks that are being built.  The rock dust in the whole area blurs your view.  My black boots were white covered with dust when I left the construction site.  As a tourist you have only limited access to this site.  There are obviously a lot of guards and they do not like you taking pictures of everything.

    Dam construction site

    Currently, phase one of the dam project is terminated. The dam project is scheduled to be complete in 2007,  the ‘Three Gorges’ will be history then.