In course of our 10 day long stay in Alaska, we visited Barrow for a couple of days. Barrow, statistically, is the northern most city(!) of United States. Hardly a city, I would call it a settlement, an eskimo settlement on the banks of the Arctic Ocean. It is the home of the Inupiat eskimos of Alaska. It is 350 miles north of the Arctic circle, 800 miles south of the north pole. There is no road connecting Barrow to the rest of the world. The only means of reaching there is by air (2 flights daily from Fairbanks) and an annual visit by a barge in August when the ice is miles away from the shore.

We had booked a vacation from Alaska Airlines that included to and fro air tickets from Fairbanks, hotel accomodation in Barrow and day long sight seeing. The aircraft that carried us from Fairbanks was a small one. The front section of the aircraft was for carrying cargo. The
seat numbers started from 7. There were not many passengers. We talked to some of them and found out that the passengers pretty much belonged to 3 categories. First, tourists like us, they constituted 60 percent. Secondly, the residents of Barrow, returning from some business and lastly, family of Barrow residents visiting them in the mild summer months.

Some locals travelling with us asked us if we are relatives of 'Raju'. When questioned back about Raju, it turned out that Raju is the sole representative of the Indian Subcontinent. He is a Pakistani cab driver in Barrow. Since not many brown skinned people visit Barrow as tourists,
most of them assumed, we must be Raju's relatives.

Crossing the Arctic circle during our flight went unnoticed, for the pilots did not announce anything. The more we went north, it grew more cloudy. Finally, when the flight crew announced that we are ready for landing, I looked out and saw nothing but dense fog all around. After circling over the invisible airport, suddenly the plane descended and we landed in the middle of nowhere.

The first shock came in the shape of the terminal building. A shabby little structure, looking more like a shabby storage facility greeted us with the words 'Welcome to Barrow'. No fancy vestibuled gates, we had to climb down the aircraft and walk in the chilling wind to the terminal. We found about 2 dozen people waiting in the lounge. Most of them were waiting to fly out of Barrow. We were looking for the baggage claim area when the Alaska airlines personnel informed us that our
bags would be delivered to our hotel!

Announcements were made to the effect that the tours are going to start very soon. The tourists are to walk outside and board one of the 2 buses waiting on the other side of the road. We came out and saw the first sight of Barrow. I can't possibly describe my first feeling of seeing
Barrow. A few facts raced through my mind: 350 miles north of Arctic circle, Eskimo village, no roads to anywhere. What lay in front of the eyes was a very flat very barren land hiding its existence in dense fog. A few crumbling buildings standing on both sides of a dirt road. A
couple of rickety tour buses (looking a lot like the yellow school buses) are standing close by. Not a single living being anywhere. And, what a mind numbing silence! It was an eerie feeling that still comes back whenever I close my eyes and think of the first glimpse of Barrow. Intimidating, to say the least!

Our tour guide was Amoulik, a young Inupiat Eskimo guy, born and brought up in Barrow. He taught us our first Inupiat word 'Suvaad' meaning hey, whats up?

This is extremely arctic landscape and climate. It is pretty much flat and the land is almost barren. We saw only one little patch of some dull green grass growing near the arctic shore. Other than that, there is absolutely no vegetation. The temperature at noon was about 30 degrees with a strong wind chill. The local kids were wearing shorts and tank tops. Barrow has a population of about 4800 with 65% native eskimos. Of the rest, some are for job and they hate it, others came because of the money. Yes money... there is a lot of money for unskilled
workers. We talked to a cab driver who works as a school bus driver during the day and that fetches him $25 per hour for 40 hours a week. Add to that some overtime hours plus income as a cab driver and he already has saved 90% of this retirement funds in 5 years. He also enjoys absolute job security.. no job cuts or layoffs in Barrow.

Amoulik showed us around the town. The bus made a lot of noise, but to our relief, it was comfortably heated. The temperature wasn't outrageously low at this time of the year. But I guess, the arctic factor numbed our senses to a good extent. I found tourists from Wisconsin
shivering in excitement no less than their co-traveller from Arizona. We saw the the Police station, the naval base, the college, the meat storage facility, the Stuaqpak (grocery). We visited the college where students were working with their projects. They have all the best technologies available. The subject for their projects were very interesting and they
all were extremely relevant to the place: comparative study about heat retentivity of igloos vs modern tents, weather and ocean currents analysis, study of fossils preserved naturally in the snow for millions of years. The only school in Barrow is a huge affair. Amoulik said that the
cost of the school is more than the cost of the state of Alaska (Alaska was bought from Russia at the dirt cheap price of 2cents an acre). It has best computer labs, excellent heated pools, basketball courts and gyms. Amoulik boasted, 'you name it, we have it here'.

As I have mentioned earlier, there is no paved road in Barrow. Due to extreme conditions and the remoteness, all of them are dirt roads. In July there wasn't snow anywhere, only brown muddy streches. To keep the dust down, sprinkler vahicles made rounds on the roads all day. Vehicles? Well, obviously one wouldn't expect beamers and convertibles there. Pickup trucks and hummers predominated that scene. Almost all households have ATVs (All terrain vehicles) which are just perfect for the dirt roads.

We saw a few snowy owls. It is a white owl, now rare and protected but a delicacy in Inupiat cuisine. Talking about cruisine, their staple food is meat. With the advent of Stuaqpak they get all the modern days food, but their traditional food is whales, seals, caribous, snowy owls
and pretty much everything that they can lay their hands on. Amoulik showed us a house with a few caribou antlers on its roof. He then pointed out the pick up truck parked in front of the house. There were 2 freshly butchered caribou heads on it. The owner had hunted them the
previous night. Amoulik mentioned that he is looking forward to the forthcoming dinner invitation at theirs. It was ghastly!

All around the town there were white bones, that of walrus, seals and mainly whales. Amoulik was talking very naturally about the killing methods and how they eat the raw heart, kidney and intestine of the whale. It was as natural to him as giving a lecture on how to brush your teeth. He gave us a short lecture about whaling.

Whaling is very elaborately planned out ritual. They can hunt 20 to 22 whales each year. The whaling seasons are spring and fall. The process starts with seal hunting. With the seal skin they make the boat in which they would go hunting. Once the boat is ready, they go into the ice
in the ocean and wait for a whale to come by. There is a 24 hour watch for whale. Average size of the whaling team is about 15 with one captain, one steerer and one or more harpooners. Once the whale is spotted, the steerer steers the boat closer and the harpooner throws the harpoon. There is a small bomb at the end of the harpoon. As soon as the harpoon enters the whale body, the bomb detonates and kills the whale. The target is either the eye or the neck or the kidney. That way the whale is killed instanteneously.

Once the whale is killed, they take out the heart, kidney and the blubber from the whale (these are the delicacies). With these they have the first feast at the whaling captain's house. Next feast is when they bring the boat ashore. That time they ferment the intestine with the whale
blood and feast on it. Once the whale is brought ashore, they take the carcass to the butchering arena. Here about 15 men butchers an average 50 ton whale in about 24 hours. The third and the
last feast is for everyone in the town. Whoever wants a part of whale meat gets some. After the third feast the boat is dismantled and the skin is used for blanket tossing ritual. Each whale hunting calls for three feasts and each hunt calls for a new boat.

In course of our tour, the bus stopped near the arctic shore. I possibly cannot do justice in describing the feeling to stand in front of the arctic ocean. One huge grey mass of water gradually fading into the foggy horizon with fringes of loose dirt on the shore. There were a
couple of small ice bergs floating a few miles from the shore. The sight was not charming, its not exotic, but it evoked a feeling of calm poise, a hint of dormant danger camouflaged in serious meditation.

It was lunch time and we came to the best hotel in Barrow, appropriately named, Top of the World. This isn't Sheraton or Hilton we are talking about... it is a small hotel with a couple of dozen rooms, a tiny lounge where ancient inupiat exhibits live in perfect harmony with modern gadgets like TV, microwave, ice machine and yes, a computer with internet access via satelite. Free coffee was being served and everybody flocked near the table where the coffee pot was standing. Since we were staying there for the night, Amoulik said it would be wise to check in during this 90 minutes break. We got an ocean view room in the first floor. Right outside our window was a dirt patch (read beach) and beyond that lay the ice cold waters of the Arctic ocean. What an experience!

Next on our schedule was the Inupiat heritage center. It had a museam with many exhibits. A huge whale skeleton welcomed us as we stepped into the main lobby. The locals put up a fine cultural program for us. Men, women, boys and girls danced in the tunes of eskimo music which must be hundreds of years old. They have a circular instrument that looks like the face of a drum. It is made of whale blubber. When you hit its rims with a bone, it makes a drum like sound. There are 2 kinds of beat, one soft and the other one hard. As the program started, the eskimos started dancing to the beats of the instrument. The narrator, a lady atleast 80 years old, asked us to close our eyes and listen to the heart beat of Alaska! It was not even the last frontier, it was
something beyond civilization, something that cannot be conquered. Each dance had some significance.. one was the praises of a beautiful lady, one was that of sailors going out for hunting, one for walrus hunters, a grandmother's song.. one tune blended into the other and time came to a standstill.

It was after 5pm and time was running out for those tourists who were returning by the evening flight. Amoulik said we still have 2 more places to see. The first one was the famous point where stands on the beach an enormous whale jaw. When we went there, the sun was shining exactly over the erect whale jaws. The cloud cover was clearing out very slowly.

The last stop of the day was the place where you could take a polar dip to become a polar bear club member. Anyone who can take a dip in the Arctic Ocean such that he/she gets wet from head to tow, he/she will become a member of the club and win a certificate, a badge and unlimited bragging rights. Hubby asked if Amoulik himself is a member of the club, he rolled his eyes and said 'no way'. That was the last straw... no one from our group gave it another thought. We thought there would be only spectators and no performers at the spot. But to our surprise, we found a man and a woman, both in their bathing suits running towards the water. The woman went in the water till knee deep and the man till waist deep, both came hopping madly out of the
water. We said, they should get a certificate for whatever they did. Amoulik said, 'unfortunately, there is no polar bear cub club'.

After dropping off the day tourists at the airport, we came back to our hotel. The sight seeing tour has ended, but we were yearning for more. Another couple from France expressed similar wish and the five of us called a cab. The cab driver suggested visiting the Stuakpak (grocery) and on we went.

The cab driver was of chatty variety and he informed us that he is from Ohio and his wife is the only Pacific Islander in Barrow. She is from Phillipines. We asked if he likes the place to which he said 'no comments.' We asked why is he here. He showed us some dollar bills and said 'for this'. Then he went on and described the high wages around here. 'You see there is no entertainment here, no movies, no clubs, no nothing. Pay is high. So what do you do with your
money? You save, retire early, then get the hell out of here.' How much does a house cost here? 'A new three bed room house would cost something around $150,000/-'. Wow, thats more than a lot
of places in the lower 48 states! 'Remember, everything has to be brought in here either by air or by barges. The only thing we grow here is ice.'

A trip to Barrow would be incomplete without a glimpse of the midnight sun. Around midnight we looked out of our window. The cloud was clearing, the sun was playing hide and seek through the broken clouds. The ocean was bathing in dull orange light. Absolute silence found a new meaning in my dictionary.

Technically morning arrived. Our stay in Barrow was coming to an end. While waiting in the lobby for Amoulik we started chatting with the locals who came to the hotel every morning to read newspapers. The other tourists joined us and soon we were chatting like old friends. Someone
mentioned that our 10 month old son is the youngest tourist to Barrow till date. That was some achievement... bragging rights so early in life! Unaware of the facts and figures, junior was happy as ever. One of the locals gave him a new name 'Mikuak'. We loved the name, even today we sometimes call him Captain Mikuak.

Amoulik came with grave news: the plane that was supposed to take us back cannot land because of the heavy fog. He took us to the airport where already a handful of people were gathering to leave or receive someone. Locals were nonchalant at the fog news. Apparently, this happens quite often. Someone told us that only a month back the fog was so heavy that everyday for 10 days, flights came from Fairbanks, circled for an hour and then returned back without landing. We
heard that today also the plane was flying in circles and waiting for the fog to thin. At one point they announced that because of limited fuel, it will circle one more time and if the fog does not co-operate, it will go back. There were lot of people around us making bitter expressions. Finally, God heard our prayers and they announced the arrival of the flight. Cheers went around in the lobby. We shook hands with Amoulik and left for more civilized world. The vacation came to an end, but the memories are for a life time.

If some one asks me what I liked best in Barrow, I would say the co-existence of the primitive and the futuristic. Here is a unique land where you get designer sofas and branded electronic gadgets in one aisle of Stuakpak along with the seal skin headgear and whaling harpoons in the
next aisle. I haven't seen such harmony any where else.