Baïkal-Bangkok - Long before departure

The beginning of the project

This project was initiated in autumn 2001, while I was "admiring" the Daewoo building under a gray sky through the window of my work in Paris. I was dreaming of far-off countries, working on dam projects around the world, my nose in climatic and hydrologic data. I then told myself that it would be best to see for myself.

The intellectual and cultural preparation

Since the journey was planned, I have crammed my brain with stories of expeditions [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 22], history books [18] and scientific and geographic books [13, 14, 17, 19]. Those books have successively made me dream, carried me away, aroused my interest to know more. Each reading drew me closer to those regions, their culture and to this journey.

Much of this preparation has taken place in an inspiring environment, since in 2002, I was fortunate to supervise the heightening of an existing dam in the heart of the rain forest in Gabon. This was a difficult but very rewarding experience that has prepared me psychologically for this trip and confirmed how much water, more than energy or drops of H2O can be a very strong link to unite people!

My biggest difficulty won't be the Himalayas, but rather the foreign languages. I am therefore learning Russian, and will stop on my way to Siberia in Irkoutsk in order to take a Russian course. Besides, I am initiating myself to Chinese. Then, I hope that English, German or Spanish will be useful before I can be able to have a conversation with locals so as to be accepted.