Travel With Lee

www.leemyers.com
lee@leemyers.com

Travel opportunity...
As there are canyons and then there is the Grand Canyon, there are lakes, and then there is Baikal. “A primordial deep lake of diamantine clarity,” as Peter Matthiessen wrote in Baikal: Sacred Lake of Siberia, it is, among other things, the world’s oldest lake, the deepest (5750 feet at its lowest, with an additional four miles of sediment above the bedrock. The great Baikal Rift, by far the deepest depression on the planet, is seven times as deep as the Grand Canyon), and the most voluminous (holding an astounding 17 percent of the world’s fresh water; if all the world’s rivers were to drain into an empty Baikal, it would take a year to fill). And, to cap off the superlatives, it’s unquestionably the most interesting (100,000 freshwater seals, called nerpa, inhabit its northern waters, in the middle of a vast continent!), and surely the most hugely beautiful lake in the solar system.
Travel With Lee has a wonderful journey that will trace the deeply revered lake’s spindly 350-mile length (it’s less than 50 miles at its widest), visiting little fishing towns and remote shores, gazing into its fantastically clear waters, sensing what its laureate Valentin Rasputin calls “its supernatural beauty ... alive, majestic ... not comparable to anything and not repeated anywhere, aware of its own ancient place and its own life force.” The experience ends, exalted, in trans-Baikalian Buryatia and its capital, Ulan Ude, a fascinating enclave of Mongolian Buddhist culture.
Space is limited for the 8 July 2006 departure.
Days 1 & 2: USA to Moscow • Day 3: fly to Irkutsk • Day 4: Irkutsk • Days 5–12: circumnavigate Lake Baikal by rail, road, and boat • Day 13: drive to Ulan Ude • Day 14: Ulan Ude • Day 15: fly to Moscow • Day 16: return to USA.
geoex