Barging up the Zuari river - the river journey

We're on a slow boat towards the loading site. I'm given a corner on the bridge, and there's nothing to do but enjoy the trip and he surroundings.


Coconut palms, green fields and the occasional temple passing by slowly.

After a period of activity in the boiling hot engine room, the second enging wakes up and lives. Black smoke erupts, our speed increases marginally and people gather upstairs in the wheelhouse to enjoy the breeze and watch the white guy. The wheel, by the way, is pretty close to the only piece of technical equipment on the bridge, apart from the engine controls. No hi-tech navigation systems or other fancy stuff on board this old lady, only experience and complete knowledge of the river and it's ways.


The barges we meet on their way downriver are heavily loaded with iron ore. Down in the port of Vasco lies plenty of bulk ships waiting. Most of them going to China, the world's giant steel consumer.


As the hours pass, the river is getting narrower and the riverbanks even more lush green. A few incidents of meetings with less maneuverable vessels on our way acts as welcome breaks from the slow routine.


The fact that the river is now hardly wider than the lenght of the barge, and they've got to turn this thing around somehow, indicates that the busy action of the loading site is drawing nearer.

Barging up the Zuari river

It's not from the fjords today, it's from the river - the Zuari river - in Goa, India.

What lots of people know about Goa is beach and tourism, and maybe a dash of hippie wannabes, dope and trance music. And they're all here, hippies in the north, charter tourists in the south. And the beaches are beautiful, temperatures fantastic (while it's cold and snowing back in Norway) and life seems good.

But how do the other guys make their living in this little Paradise state of Goa? The answer is, as always in India, a little bit of everything. But the main areas seem to be mining, fishing and shipbuilding.

Iron ore is mined in lots of open works, legal as well as illegal, in the interior. It doesn't look too good, and environmentalists are not too happy, but it pays for a lot of food. The low-grade iron ore is transported down to the nearest river, loaded onto river barges, and taken down to port where it's transferred to the big deep-sea ships, normally bound for Far East.

Tuesday this week I signed on to the "Nitya Sushil" for a trip up the Zuari river to the loading site.


Nitya is, and looks like, an old lady, but she does her job day in, day out.

The captain, Gurudas Naik, suits the ship - not a young man anymore, slow moving and relaxed. And he knows the river as his own pocket.


A long, slow, hot and dusty journey upriver lies ahead.