Shapatou: Yellow River Oasis on the Silk Road

Traveling toward Shapatou National Nature Reserve, we came upon a viewing tower for tourists being constructed on the bank of the Yellow River--at exactly 38º00'N!  Shapatou was a major crossing on the Silk Road, where Tengger Desert sand dunes meet the Yellow River.  A section of the Great Wall rises up east of the river, crumbling but still impressive.  Ancient travelers crossed the river on rafts made of inflated sheepskins, which are still used to give rides to the tourists.

            The 50-year old Desert Research Institute is within the park.  We found a graduate student, Dr. Liu, studying soil samples in her laboratory.  Forty researchers work at the Institute, which pioneered a straw-squares system for control blowing sand.  This technique is especially important for keeping sand off the railroad tracks through the desert, from Inner Mongolia to Gansu.

            Desertification is a major concern in this part of China. 

blowing sand treatment

Tree planting is happening all over the country, as a carbon sink and an attempt to control sand storms.  Winds on our second day in Shapatou gave us a small taste of the sand storm potential, which sometimes is so heavy in the spring that haze from China whitens the sky in our Sierra Nevada home.

Our rooms were right in the park and we enjoyed the river and wetlands at dusk and dawn. The meeting of sand and river at this ancient human crossing is truly spectacular.  Riding camels up the dunes was unforgettable, and surprisingly comfortable, though there were jolts when the camels stood up and sat down.  It was a treat to dip our feet in the cold river after a long day of walking.

            If quiet contemplation of Yellow River history and nature if not enough, there are also bungee jumping, zip-lining, hang gliding, sand sledding, dune buggy riding and jet boating here!

            Next stop is a half-day drive south along the Yellow River to the big city of Lanzhou.

(Thanks to our guide, Kinder Shu Jinde, for use of the Yellow River marsh photograph)

National Parks of Yinchuan: Playgrounds or Preserves?

            The city of Yinchuan (38º30'N; 106º20'E) sits near the Yellow River, in the shadow of the Helan Mountains just south of Inner Mongolia.  We visited several national parks in the area including Sand Lake, known for its birdlife.  A huge entrance arch in the shape of a crane greeted us, along with a bank of fee collection stations.  One must pay the entry fee, then also buy a boat ride, the only way to really see the lake.  Dave, being a senior, got to go in for free to scope out the boat docks.  We decided to enjoy the birds outside in the fish rearing ponds instead: Grey Heron, River Lapwing, Great Crested Grebe, Grey headed Lapwing and White Wagtail.

            The same situation repeated itself in the other parks; massive entrances, beautiful fountains, gleaming buildings, marble staircases and plazas, along with high entry fees and extra costs for trams, boats, movies, etc.  It is an interesting cultural contrast in park presentation, with grandiose facilities  (plus fees) accompanying landscape preservation.  At the Helan Mountain rock art preserve, thre were magnificent museum displays of petroglyph replicas.  We were happy to get outdoor onto the canyon trail with the real petroglyphs.  There, hundreds of intricate petroglyphs date back as much as 6000 years, and exploring the canyon became one of our favorite experiences in this region.  The interpretive signs were well done.  True to form, the stream through the canyon had been re-sculpted into a series of man-made pools.

            A few miles away, two Buddhist Twin Pagodas sit on a windswept hillside true to the ideal of feng shui: with “the mountain behind and the river in front.”  Hundreds of bells on the towers gonged, blown by the wind.  Here there was a staircase with twin lions, but no grand entrance arch or high fee.

            Our final stop was a “wetlands national park” located in the city, built for the 50^th anniversary of the Ningxia  Autonomous Province.  A huge staircase led up to Romanesque arches framing a stadium, at the edge of an artificial lake, with water from the river that runs through the city.  Birds and fishermen were enjoying the lake while wedding couples took photos amid the columns in the afternoon light. 

            Playground or preserve?  China has impressive examples of both.  Our next stop is the Shapatou National Nature Reserve, on the Yellow River south of Yinchuan. 

Yellow River Delta

                                                                 

CHINA BLOGS
Yellow River Delta 

                                                    

            The Yellow River enters the Bohai Sea just south of the 38^th Parallel (at 37°45'N; 119°10'E), but just a few years ago it occupied a channel right on the latitude line.  Because it carries so much silt—which turns it a yellow-brown color that explains its name—channels gradually fill with sand and the river has repeatedly jumped into new channels across this whole region.  The Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve has China's newest wetlands, built since the last major shift in 1996. 

            Driving from the city of Dong Ying, out to the delta, it was hard to believe a protected wetlands would be at the end of the road.  Construction zones gave way to farms, then to oilfields, and finally to the wetlands at the mouth of China's “Mother River.”  Our first bird sighting was a massive Oriental White Stork, lifting off in a flash of black and white.  Common Terns raced by in the high wind as we walked down beautifully designed boardwalks with intricate rails to birdwatching towers.

            Our guide from the Reserve was engineer Shen Kai, a supercharged bird expert with a huge telephoto lens on his camera.  We zoomed to spots in the wetlands in our rental car, trying to keep his car in sight (our driver is our Chinese guide and interpreter, Kinder.)  The Reserve was created in 1992 to enhance and protect the wetlands for migratory and nesting birds.  At the edge of a huge oilfield, the managers struggle to keep enough “eco-diversions” from the main river to optimize water levels in the marsh. 

            Surprises abounded, including the strength of a howling wind that, thankfully, abated after lunch.  A modernistic 2-story visitor center, built in 2010 looms over the landscape.  From its roof (6 stories high) we had jaw-dropping views of the marsh and the Yellow River heading toward the ocean, just a quarter mile away.  So far there are no services inside; they seem to have spent all their money on the incredible building, but it looks large enough to handle thousands of visitors.  On less windy days, two boats are available for touring the river out to the sea.

     We were there at the end of the breeding season for cranes and saw red-crowned cranes  in flight.  The Reserve draws in more than 280 bird species and is one of China's largest natural reserves.
The Reserve staff treated us to a mid-day banquet in a nearby village restaurant, and yet another banquet that night.   We asked Shen Kai and Deputy Director Li Juanzhang what they would most like the people of the world to know about their Reserve.  They commented on how difficult water management is (we will be exploring some of the human thirsts for water along the upper Yellow River in the next 2 weeks), but agreed that is was a worthwhile, satisfying goal to serve the birds.

    Called the “River of Sorrow” because of its history of flooding human habitations, the protection of the Yellow River Estuary, now alive with birds, is a hopeful sign that the Mother River will long enter the sea with the “birds of heaven” (cranes) winging above.

Itinerary for China and Turkmenistan

On April 15 we will arrive in Beijing, and the next day begin our exploration of the 38th parallel across China at the delta of the Yellow River, where it empties into the ocean right on the latitude line.  The Yellow River Delta National Nature Preserve is an important site for migratory birds, including cranes.  Our route westward keeps intersecting the river as it swings in great loops, north and south of the line.  Cities that we will visit along the river include Yinchuan, at the edge of Inner Mongolia (38°28'North; 106°16'E), and Lanzhou, once a key location on the Silk Road (Marco Polo passed through) and now a major industrial city.  From there we will go to Xining and the Qinghai Salt Lake Institute, where we will be  educated about the region's salt lakes, thanks to a connection made by Dr. Robert Jellison, a local expert on salt lake ecosystems here in the Sierra Nevada.  Qinghai Lake is China's largest lake and shares some traits with Mono Lake:  it is salty, a key location for migratory birds, and is currently being "saved" by the government from ecosystem declines caused by activities in the surrounding watershed.  We will fly across the eastern half of the Taklamakan desert and then drive along the southern route of the Silk Road from the oasis town of Hotan west to Kashgar.  We will also go to Karakul Lake (37º59N; 75º01E) and Tashkorgan, another Silk Road town along the Karakorum Highway on the Pamir plateau.

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After more than 3 weeks spanning over 3,000 miles of China, we will fly direct from western China above parts of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekhistan to land in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (37º58'N; 58º24'E).  We will learn about the 500+ mile Karakum Canal that transports water to that capital city and irrigates farm fields along the way, and also visit Merv, site of an ancient Silk Road city that is half-way around the world from Mono Lake along the 38th parallel.  Merv was perhaps the largest city in the world from 1145 to 1153 A.D., with a population of 200,000 back then (it's a ruin now).

We will only stay 3 nights in Turkmenistan before flying on to Istanbul, then Madrid, and finally returning home on May 18.  Following this trip, only Japan will remain to complete our around-the-world explorations (hopefully in September if conditions there allow).   As always, while exploring the water-related cultural and environmental stories along the 38th parallel, we will blog about our experiences when time and internet connections permit.  Your comments about the blogs are really appreciated.

Earthquake in Japan and Asia Travel Plans

To complete our around-the-world exploration of 38th parallel water connections, we had planned to travel in Japan, China, and Turkmenistan in April and May, 2011.  The massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan was at 38°19''N, offshore from the city of Sendai on the east coast of Honshu, just 4 weeks before our trip was to begin.  Since then there have been hundreds of major aftershocks, including dozens greater than magnitude 6 and a few over 7. 

Our itinerary did not have us going to the east coast that was hit so hard by the tsunami and nuclear reactor leaks, but inland to mountainous Bandai-Asahi National Park, then to Niigata (just south of the latitude line), and then by ferry to Sado Island (west of the main island and intersected by the line).  We hope to learn about the captive breeding and release program for endangered Japanese crested ibis on Sado Island, whose success is closely tied to rice culture and forestry practices.

With food, water, and power shortages and an ever worsening nuclear reactor radiation leak situation, now is not the time to go to Japan. The estimated deaths from the tsunami keep growing, now almost 12,000 dead with another 15,000 missing.  What a sorrowful tragedy

We now hope Japan will be the final country visited on our around-the-world travels, and hope to go in September if the recovery has progressed. 

Our friend, Greg Reis, has a thoughtful blogpost about the on-going nuclear disaster: http://gregorreis.blogspot.com/2011/04/japanese-nuclear-disaster-at-fukushima.html

Japanese Red Cross Society Online

• http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

International Red Cross Appeals for Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief

• Australia: http://www.redcross.org.au/japan2011.htm
• Canada: http://tinyurl.com/4l6kb77
• Ireland: http://tinyurl.com/4b5tpbn
• New Zealand: http://www.redcross.org.nz/donate
• Singapore: http://www.redcross.org.sg/Japan-Disaster-2011.phtml
• United Kingdom: http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal
• United States of America: http://tinyurl.com/6kqpjnl

American Red Cross via iTunes and Amazon.com

• iTunes: https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/buyCharityGiftWizard
• Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/4rcy5o3

Korean DMZ: A Wildlife Haven Behind Barbed Wire

The Korean War started on June 25, 1950. Sixty years later, on June 25, we stood inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with a delegation from Pasadena, which has a “Friendship City” relationship with the South Korean city of Paju (37°46'), on the edge of the DMZ. The Pasadena delegation included Alan Lamson and Jane Hallinger as well as Dr. Yung Nam, a Korean-American dentist, who has organized and was dedicating a dental Peace Clinic for residents of the DMZ on this special anniversary. This celebration was at a school in the Civilian Control Area, but plans are to provide another clinic at the Daeseong-dong village (37 °57'N) inside the DMZ. Until we were invited to join this effort, we had no idea that any people actually lived in that zone (controlled by the United Nations), but both South and North Korea maintain small villages within the otherwise closed off land. Most of the 30 students at the Daeseong-dong Elementary School honored us with a drum performance (see the short video clip).They have established pen-pal relationships with a school in Pasadena. This was a unique opportunity for us to enter the DMZ itself, something most tourists cannot do, and made possible by our new friends from Pasadena and our “friendship city” hosts in Paju..
The DMZ is a 150 mile long and 2.5 mile wide strip of land across the Korean Peninsula, more or less following the 38th parallel. With people excluded for 60 years, the land became a haven for wildlife. Behind the barbed wire, many endangered species are thriving, an ironic peaceful outcome from war. The estuary region of the Han and Imjin Rivers and the tideland and riparian vegetation zones are particularly valuable wetlands landscapes for animals. The once ravaged landscape is now green and lush.

Black-capped Kingfisher

The Paju City organizers, understanding our special interest in environmental issues along the 38th parallel, arranged a tour inside the Civilian Control Area along the edge of the DMZ with the DMZ Ecological Research Institute. Jung Rok An is a student at the Korea University in Seoul, only 20 years old, but an eloquent and knowledgeable researcher and organizer of environmental education efforts. He started the DMZ Ecology Research Institute (www.ecodmz.or.kr) along with his father and Mr. Kim, a school teacher, and they now train teams of high school students in research techniques. After a year of orientation and field camps, the students pick projects related to the ecology of the DMZ. We joined a group from 3 highs schools in Seoul on their first day of orientation; on that same day, two other groups , one a full year into their studies, and another group of elementary school students, were taken inside the area by the Institute. At the end of the day, some of the more experienced group shared their thoughts and hopes for the future on our tape recorder...fascinating quotes that we will eventually share in our book. They all hoped that this special place, full of cranes, geese, kingfishers and a host of other birds and mammals, will still be protected, even after the longed-for day comes when peace between the two Koreas opens up this landscape to humans once again. (Our thanks to Julia Kim for permission to use her photo of the egret behind barbed wire)

An Alkaline Inland Sea in Eastern Turkey

A vast inland sea with alkaline water whose strange chemistry produces large calcium carbonate structures underwater, in a dramatic setting with snow-covered mountain peaks, and a lake level that is thousands of feet above sea level...that sounds exactly like Mono Lake, our starting place for this 38th parallel exploration, but it also describes Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey. This was our final stop on a 6-week trip that began in Portugal, took us across parts of Spain, Sicily, Greece, and for the last 15 days, the length of this very large country.

Lake Van also differs from Mono Lake in significant ways. It is much larger: a 270 mile shoreline (Mono's is about 40 miles); an average depth of 560 feet (today, Mono Lake averages about 60 feet deep) with a deepest point that is 1,480 feet! (Mono Lake is only about 150 deep at its deepest point).

Van holds a lot of water, but not much salt. It is primarily a "soda" lake, dominated by carbonates, also containing some sulfates (both key ingredients in Mono), but without our home lake's chlorides--i.e. dissolved table salt. There are fish in Lake Van, but only one species that can handle the unusual water chemistry; Mono Lake, of course, is much too salty for fish. The alkalinity of both lakes is fairly close, around pH 9.8 for Van and 10.2 for Mono. Because Van's water is less harsh, it does have the one kind of fish plus hundreds of species of plankton. Though we did not see many birds on the lake--just a few gulls--the literature says Van supports many migratory and nesting birds. Van even has calcium carbonate structures chemically related to Mono Lake's tufa formations, but Van's are out of sight in the depths, where cyanobacteria build aragonite towers up to 130 feet tall!

What a fitting place to end this segment of our around-the-world travels. We arrived by bus in the city of Van (38°29'N; 43°23'E) on the southeast shore of the lake. Adem, a medical student at the university in Van, was on our bus, and as so many other helpful Turkish people have done, he answered all our questions, was interested in our project, and when the bus deposited us in the city center, walked with us to find our hotel. Following Adem's directions, we took a mini-bus out to the lakeshore where local kids were swimming. We felt the water, which was slippery, as expected. The water here, as at Mono Lake, has been used to wash clothes. We tasted a bit from our wet fingertips (like baking soda), and waded in the water.

There is so much we could have investigated here, given enough time. We understand that climate scientists are drilling down through Van Lake's bottom mud because they can find there a half-million years of climate data from the sedimentary record. We'd like to have seen more of the lake's bird life and volcanic features nearby, but this is our last night in eastern Turkey. Tomorrow we fly to Istanbul, spend one night, then fly all the way home for a break before finishing the around-the-world exploration by crossing Asia.

Mt. Nemrut: Where the Gods Lay Their Heads

Today we stood knee-deep in Euphrates River water, north of Malatya in southeastern Anatolia. Only a few miles further east, archaeologists are presently uncovering a 7,000-year old city called Arslantepe. Along this river (and the Tigris, which we will visit soon) some of the oldest known human settlements occurred. This water has supported some of humanity's earliest agriculture and communities, along with the dreams and follies of kings.

On a 7,000 foot mountaintop to the south (with distant views of the Euphrates River valley as it curves east, turns back to the west, and then bends south toward Syria), a 1^st century B.C. king named Antioches built a monument to Roman and Persian gods so he could place his own statue among them. The exquisitely sculpted heads were forgotten by history until they were rediscovered in 1882. Major restoration was not complete until the early 1980s. The remote summit of Nemrut Dagi National Park lies exactly on our line at 37°59'50''. This is one of Turkey's must-see treasures, though it takes considerable effort for travelers to reach the mountain. We opted for an overnight trip from Malatya that required a 3-hour shuttle to a hotel that nestles one mile below the summit. With two other tourists (from Croatia) we visited the 2 terraces and sculptures at sunset and were woken at 4 AM to return for sunrise.

The massive heads, fallen from their bodies above, have a mystical quality that immediately captivates. Fine sculptors shaped the likenesses of Apollo, Zeus, Hercules, Tyche and, of course, King Antiochos. Honey- colored stone reflects the changing light, and the setting, on a summit crowned with small stones that may cover burial chambers, is magnificent. The green valley, rock outcroppings and wildflower gardens reminded us of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite.

King Antiochos left a truly striking memorial behind two thousand years ago, and visitors today can share a bit of his dream of being with the gods on a mountaintop.

As for that wading experience in the Euphrates, we were actually in the Karakaya Reservoir. Turkey has built many dams in this region in recent decades...and that is our next topic to explore when we reach the Tigris River.

Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia

Volcanic ash, hardened into rock and capped by basalt from later eruptions, then eroded by water through the ages, has created a fantasy landscape in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey. Fairy chimneys, towers, and mushroom shapes became houses and fresco painted chapels as local people carved caves into the whitish tuff--but around here everyone uses the name "tufa." In our many years of telling visitors about Mono Lake's tufa towers--the photogenic limestone formed when springwater and lakewater mix--we often heard about the "tufa" formations of Cappadocia, which actually have more in common with the Bishop tuff formed near Mono Lake by the Long Valley volcanic eruption.

Beyond that terminology story, words cannot do justice to this landscape (so we've posted a lot of photos here). The fact that people still live in many of the caves and grow gardens and apricot orchards nearby adds to the Hobbit-y feel of the place. Visitors may stay in "cave hotels" complete with windows, terraces and satellite dishes. Huge horse stables have been carved into some of the larger rocks. Where people have moved out, birds have moved in (we watched a momma bird feed her baby chicks). Entire underground cities in multiple layers provided refuge during long ago raids. A huge, snowcapped volcano stands sentinel in the distance.

Most of our time was spent hiking, seeking the high viewpoints to look down and across the valleys. Many tourists seek similar views in the dawn balloon rides that contribute significant amounts of money to the local economy.

We met Hayriye Ciner selling her beautiful jewelry in one of our favorite parts of the valley. Wildflowers abounded, with Turkey mullein (that exotic pest at home that is native here) and irises decorating the hillside. A fox even gave us a glimpse. Camels are a sign of the historic Silk Road connections to China in this part of Turkey.

We spent 3 days here and barely began to explore the lovely spot, but our eastward journey pulls us on toward the Euphrates River region.