The Hindu Business Line : Niagara encounter

You would have probably seen hundreds of pictures or watched numerous programmes on television channels. But nothing prepares you for the actual sight. In one word, it is awesome. You see it even before you are near it. The white spray rising several feet high pushes up your excitement levels that bit more.

The Niagara. If you are on the Canadian side of the falls, as we — a group of Indian journalists — were in early October on the last leg of a trip organised by Essar Steel, the sight is even better than from New York State on the other side of the border. The fall colours, as the trees prepare to shed their leaves, before winter is wonderful enough.

Our bus, packed with tourists to the Niagara Falls, slowly drives to the drop-off point, with the driver giving us a running commentary. Canadian geese lounge on the grass — possibly preparing for a long flight south to beat the harsh winter — and scores of gulls fly gracefully with the falls in the background.

Our driver says we have about an hour to enjoy the falls, click photographs before we get a chance to go even closer to the falls — on the appropriately named Maid of the Mist boat.

You are told that the view of the Niagara Falls from Canada is much better than that from the US side, definitely not an empty boast. The Canadian falls is called the Horseshoe Falls owing to its shape.

The one hour seems to end in no time at all as we click pictures of the falls and of ourselves with the Niagara providing the backdrop — a souvenir to tell near and dear ones that we have been there, the next time a programme on the Niagara is aired on any television channel.

A handful of sparrows — puffier than the ones that are increasingly a rare sight at home nowadays — is just as interesting, and as one of them perches itself on a Cana plant, just for a few seconds as if posing for a few frames, it is an added bonus.

From above, we see the boat in the churning waters, packed with tourists on the upper deck all dressed in blue. Only as we get to board the boat do we realise that it is a raincoat to protect you from the spray, thoughtfully given to you by the company that operates the boat service and one that you can keep as a souvenir. The lower deck of the two-tiered boat is almost empty; even the elderly prefer to be on the upper deck.

Not even the mighty rush of water from the falls deters the gulls. They seem to fly perilously close to the falls while numerous others glide on the fast-moving waters, simply being pushed by the flow.

The town on the Canadian side itself is a tourist’s delight. Major hotel chains have large properties, with restaurants and rooms offering a wonderful view of the falls. It would have been better if the hotels were elsewhere, the concrete structures not spoiling the beauty of the surroundings.

But then, for a town whose main economic activity is tourism that is asking for a bit too much.