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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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LAKE BAIKAL - RUSSIA

Sacred Beauty:

Lake Baikal


             Local people have always recognised the special beauty of Lake Baikal – modern Russians call it ‘pearl of Siberia’.  The Buryats, who arrived in the region with the Mongolian warrior Genghis khan in the 13th Century, practised Shamanism and chose the craggy rock outcrop now known as Shaman Rock, at the tip of Cape Burkhan on Olkhon Island, as a site for their rituals.  Practising shamans lived in a cave at the foot of the rock.  The Buryats also used Shaman Rock as a place of judgement, forcing those accused of crimes to stay here overnight in winter.  If a criminal survived exposure to the cold, he was set free; if he succumbed, he was clearly guilty.

              In the 17th Century, Tibetan Buddhism arrived in the area from Mongolia, partly absorbing and partly displacing Shamanism as the local religion.  Converts took over the cave as a sacred site and inscribed the walls with Buddhist prayers that can still be read by visitors.

              Some artefacts discovered in the area go back much further in time.  Rock paintings of people, bulls, dogs and swans, estimated to be more than 4,000 years old, adorn the rose-white limestone rocks at Sagan-Zaba Cliffs on the lake’s western shore, and Bronze- and Iron-Age tools and weapons have been found at sites dotted all around the lake.

Where on Earth?

            Lake Baikal is in southeastern Siberia, sandwiched between the Russian federal subjects of Irkutsk Oblast and Buryatia.  It is on the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway between Moscow and Vladivostok, which skirts the southern part of the lake.  Irkutsk, at the lake’s southern end, has an international airport.

Location: Lake Baikal, Russia

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