The Hindu Business Line : Ahh… Alaska

If a single word were to be selected to represent modern-day American-ese, “awesome”, I have reason to believe, would win hands down. The tour guide in Chicago gushes that my magenta silk scarf is ‘awesome’, the host in Seattle drools that Krispy Kreme donuts are likewise, and the 19-something undergrad from Maine who turns bus driver during her summer job in Anchorage dilates her eyes in wonder on hearing where we come from, exclaiming, “awes ome!!”

But it is in Alaska — the US’s largest State — that the word begins to get its rightful due. Here awesome is: The vast tundra with its permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil), bordered with jagged icy peaks; floatplanes lifting gracefully off placid waters; standing face-to-face with a blue tidewater glacier as blocks crack-up and crash into the Pacific ocean; Orcas swimming peacefully alongside a catamaran, otters paddling lazily in the icy waters, sea lions sunbathing on a rocky horizon.

Though Juneau is the capital of Alaska, most tourists who opt for the land journey over the cruise converge at Anchorage, the largest city (population around 3 lakh). Alaska’s demographic density is one person per sq mile. The city is ablaze with colour — fuchsia, geranium, begonia, lobelia, antirrhinum, petunia — bursting with a vitality that stems from 20 hours of sunlight and fertile glacial silt. Veggies are known to grow to massive dimensions, and the proud record-holder is a cabbage that weighed a 100-something pounds! As our guide quips, “That’s a lot of coleslaw and sauerkraut we are talking about.”

After a walk down 1st Avenue, we take in a film on the Aurora Borealis; we are deeply disappointed that the most spectacular show on earth, the Northern Lights, are a strictly winter phenomenon. Anyone who has witnessed it talks about it in reverential tones, and an instant commitment is made to return to Fairbanks, further up north, in the future for this magnificent Arctic occurrence.

For seafood aficionados, Alaska is paradise gained. Halibut and salmon — pan-seared, batter-fried or in chowder state — is here, there and everywhere, and the must-do is the Alaskan king crab. The crab itself isn’t humungous, but the legs are nearly a foot-long, easy to cut through, and as luscious as they come. Typically served boiled, along with pilaf or mashed potatoes and veggies. Stupendous when washed down with a pint of Alaskan Ale. Those who are true connoisseurs can grab the offer to get the legs ($30 a pound) dry-ice packed and delivered anywhere on the globe. Just to give you an idea, the husband regrets not having taken it up!

‘Flight-seeing’ tours

Floatplanes at the Lake Hood seastrip in Anchorage.

The other thing that is an absolute must-do in Alaska is a “flight-seeing”. With much of this region inaccessible by land, a plane that is fitted with floats as well as wheels is the average Alaskan’s total transportation solution, and airplanes are to Alaska what yellow cabs are to New York. There are nearly 70,000 floatplanes in the State and three million freshwater lakes large enough for them to land on. Not surprising that one in every 75 Alaskans holds a commercial pilot’s licence (our tour guide confesses he learnt to fly at age eight).

Lake Hood is the seaplane “airstrip” that’s next to Anchorage’s international airport, and a hub for bush flying. A two-hour ‘flight-seeing trip’, including a glacier landing, can cost around $400 a head. Though this is highly recommended, if you cannot summon up the nerve, don’t miss taking a trip to the vicinity of Lake Hood just to watch a de Havilland Beaver or a Supercub taxiing down, lifting off or landing with a flourish. It is a truly mesmerising sight.

Glacial marvels

Out of Anchorage, we board the Alaskan railroad train to southern city Seward. The train passes through some stunning territory, including marshlands full of skeletons of spruce; trees that died when seawater came inland during the Alaskan earthquake of 1964 (a massive 9.2 on the Richter scale and lasting five minutes). We are told to keep off the glacial silt mudflats along the coast; they are hard when dry and quicksand when the tide comes in. Then it’s past emerald forests, and the Spencer glacier — our first tryst with this awe-inspiring frozen behemoth.

It is during the Kenai fjords cruise at Seward, after we chug out of Resurrection Bay and past the Harding ice field at 30 knots, that we get our first real close-up of sheer glacial splendour. The captain of the catamaran turns off the engines as we stand a hundred yards short of dazzling blue verticality of the Aialik glacier, all aboard stunned into silence. The only sound is the loud report — like desultory pistol fire — every time a huge block of ice from the slow-moving mass (one metre a day) breaks off and hurtles into the ocean, even as puffins look on impassively, orange beaks providing a startling splash of colour.

Act III of the drama unfolds some 300 miles up north, a mere whisker south of the mystic Arctic Circle. On the agenda is a 14-hour drive through the vast, 6-million acre Denali national park. We spot caribou (reindeer when domesticated), grizzly bear, the Alaskan red fox, beavers, wolf, sheep, moose and the stray bald eagle. Not by far in the numbers we had hoped, but enough to make a raconteur of every visitor. The plum on the pudding is a sighting of Mt McKinley, the continent’s highest peak, all the more precious as only a third of the visitors here are so fortunate. Then there’s lunch at an original ‘gold rush’ log cabin, with gold panning in the stream nearby for dessert. For the less gold-struck, there’s an introduction to Alaska’s native transport: Teflon-lined wooden sledges tugged by a pack of frisky huskies.

‘Til it’s season again…

The grand finale to the six-day tour is the 8-hour railroad trip from Denali to base camp (Anchorage) on the Denali Star Train. There are no glaciers to be seen from the double-storied, all glass carriage of the Gold Star first-class service: just an unblemished landscape of spruce — aspen and birch, crisscrossed by rock flour laden rivers that give the waters a distinctive grey hue.

We return to Anchorage, for an overnighter before we are to head back home. And we aren’t the only outsiders who will leave on a jet plane in the days to come. The human machinery that keeps the State up and moving through the high tourist season comes from outside: waiters, cab drivers, front-office receptionists, even tour guides are here for summer jobs!

By mid-September, it’s curtains down. Only the truly Alaskan will stay on. And the really hardy ones will come in March to participate in the Iditarod, the 1,049-mile dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome, perhaps amongst the toughest tests of endurance ever. Till the summer brings the next wave of tourists, all ready to be awestruck.