Around the Sacred Sea: Mongolia and Lake Baikal on Horseback

by Bartle Bull

Around the Sacred Sea is the fascinating account of a remarkable journey made around Russia's Lake Baikal -- on horseback. This lake is the largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world and is a natural phenomenon of dizzying proportion. This beautifully written narrative is complemented by photographs of outstanding quality, making Around the Sacred Sea both a riveting read and a visual feast.

212 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2000

About the author

Bartle Bull was born in London and educated at Harvard and at Magdalen College, Oxford. A student of the China coast since he first worked in Hong Kong over thirty years ago, he is a member of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers Club. He is the author of Safari: A chronicle of Adventure and the novels The White Rhino Hotel, A Cafe on the Nile, and The Devil's Oasis.

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lake Baikal-oldest, coldest, largest and deepest lake on earth. Born 25 million years ago-she would be a million years old already before a man standing upright could see her. Nestled in the heart of Siberia, she is wedded to a landscape embraced by cold unrivaled except for Antarctica. She controls more water than all five of the Great Lakes combined and rules over 70% of all the fresh water on earth. Called bottomless most of the time by humans who tried to understand her, and failing that, revere her, she is over 2,000 feet deep. Within and around her sacred water, hundreds of unique species call her mother.

These were reasons enough for a 23 year old New Yorker to circumnavigate her.

From Mongolia to Irkutsk and around Lake Baikal- A 1,500 mile circumnavigation on horseback Wonderful account of travels and camaraderie and cooperation. Descriptions of Taiga, Steppes and the unique ecosystem supported by Lake Baikal. Some of the unique animals the group saw included the world's only fresh water seal and the Golomyanka fish that has such high body fat that you can see through the fish and will literally melt if left out in the sun.

Lake Baikal is also threatened. Remember, this is 20% of the fresh water on the planet. Several severely polluting mills are on her shores and pump effluent directly into the lake. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting economic crisis, there is simply no money for pollution abatement. Already fish are born with alarming mutations and birth defects and the people are experiencing clusters of rare cancers.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is from memory. I thought he made too much of a drunken Mongolian guide (who might have had reasons for his bad temper with this lot). I'd have wished for more acquaintance with the original inhabitants, not just European Russians gone native in the taiga and Russian towns that aren't much different here than Russian towns elsewhere. Still, the descriptions of Baikal are tremendous (can't help but be) and the tale of the pollution of the lake - its world-unique self-cleansing at last defeated by heavy industry - will have you tearing out your hair and dashing off letters to the Russian government. Pictures are decent, not more.

Any book on the Sacred Sea, the strangest waters on earth, is worth a few stars. It's not a bad book.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to find published information in English about the Lake Baikal region of Central Asia. Sadly, this book is somewhat dull and didn't inspire me to read any further. The photos are remarkably unspectacular, and the travelogue, while reasonably interesting, didn't really engage me that much. I got far more out of the very brief treatment in Farley Mowat's The Siberians. Strangely, author, Bartle Bull, rated a rants-and-raves cover blurb from the legendary Ranulph Fiennes. I wasn't nearly as impressed as I expected.