It’s 2 in the morning and I find myself in the Yellow Peril- a huge Toyota truck with non-existent suspension and small sheets of Perspex that serve as windows. I’m sitting on a hard-back bench with a thin swab beneath me as the only insulation from the road’s “unforeseen obstacles.” And it’s raining. Hard. A torrential, tropical downpour that soaks everything, but even now, in the middle of the night, causes steam to rise from the road. Talofa Lava Samoa!
Travel
06
Jul 07
Jul 07
The Lake at the end of the World
First, some statistics. If you could extract the sediment, Lake Baikal would be nine kilometres deep – that’s to say, Mt Everest would fit inside it. In fact, probably several Mt Everests side to side like a row of shark’s teeth, as the lake is 650 kilometres long. It contains a fifth of the world’s fresh water. They say that if all of the rivers of the world were channelled into its empty basin, it would take almost a year to fill.