AGE OF DISCOVERY

Like colonial explorers, 21st-century travellers are setting sail for new frontiers in river cruising.

Like colonial explorers, 21st-century travellers set forth on the world’s waterways to seek new territory and treasures. Susan Kurosawa surveys the frontiers of river cruising.

We’ve dallied

on the Danube and the Douro, roamed the Rhine and Rhône, sailed the Seine and Saône, voyaged along the Volga, mucked about the Mekong and idled on the Irrawaddy. The travel industry loves “repeaters”, those unimaginative souls who return year after year to pastures known and adored, but operators must increasingly cater for those who, like conquering invaders, lust for new territory and spoils.

Our seemingly unquenchable thirst for the 21st-century phenomenon of river cruising is forcing tour companies to consider lesser-known regions and waterways and to introduce more inventive and, yes, “immersive” shore excursions. This doesn’t mean the language of brochures has become more realistic. Holidaymakers are still being rallied to “discover” the likes of the Danube and the Ganges. In Australia, we can “explore” the Murray more than 150 years after Burke and Wills, no expeditionary charts, camels or firearms required.

It seems no trickle of water or minor tributary is safe, even Africa’s hippo-filled Chobe and Zambezi rivers, where travellers are merrily invited to “follow in the steps of Livingstone”, but hopefully not to his wretched end, ravaged by malaria.

Even a few “new” rivers in Europe are being opened up, such as the Meuse, which flows through the Netherlands and Belgium and has surely been around longer than tulips and windmills. Likewise, we can be “pioneers” along the Brahmaputra, which might surprise the inhabitants of the four densely populated countries it traverses.

Such hyperbole aside, the push into Asia and the Americas will continue: wait for diversions into places such as the largely undeveloped Chindwin in Myanmar, the slow-rolling Mississippi and the far reaches of the Amazon. I wonder at the reaction of locals as ever more outsiders colonise their waterways, casting ship-shaped shadows, flocking ashore in their hundreds, audio sets plugged under the obligatory logo caps, toting water bottles large enough to irrigate the Atacama.

When I cruised the Irrawaddy aboard Belmond Orcaella a few years ago, our little group was reminded that many villagers would not have seen tourists, so, if we liked, we could hand out pens or other small

possessions they might appreciate. In cruise-speak, this itinerary item is “meeting colourful villagers”. We thought that sounded a grand idea until we were stalked by packs of enterprising young girls intent on selling us the Bulgari soaps and branded Biros they’d scored from a previous lot of Belmond Orcaella cruisers.

“You don’t like Bulgari?” one lass asked me. Without waiting for my reply, out came her stash of Crabtree & Evelyn from a rival cruise operator.

And so in an exchange both ironic and surrealistic, I paid her one American dollar for a tiny bar of English lavender soap. I didn’t question her ethics but admired her initiative. “I am a small businesswoman,” she told me. No arguing with that: she was tiny, barely reaching my elbow.

By now she will have realised that five-star travellers rarely buy scented soaps on their holidays. I like to think of her selling village-woven textiles and crafts, such as the exquisite jewellery made from lacquered watermelon seeds I saw on my second cruise in Myanmar. That vendor was doing brisk trade, earning enough, she told me, to allow her children to dream of a university education. I like to think the local chamber of commerce is now giving classes on how to “engage with colourful tourists”.

Tourism certainly can be a double-edged sword, despoiling as well as contributing. The best river cruise companies espouse fair trade practices and sound environmental principles, and it isn’t hard to check credentials and to work out that larger does not necessarily mean better, especially on rivers such as the ever-popular Danube or Rhine. At some moorings, the tourist vessels sit in parallel rows, three or four abreast, so passengers on the outer ones must walk through the foyers of the others to get ashore or reboard. This can lead to ship envy when guests realise they have chosen poorly and theirs is the one with no spa tubs on the sun deck, no chocolate buffets during high tea and a sorry lack of serving staff in dirndls and feathered felt hats.

Whatever model you choose, and no matter how gloriously overblown the brochurese, there will be constants. Your “balcony” will likely be a Juliet version: a safety railing in front of your “panoramic” window and not large enough to step onto. Unless you have booked the top accommodation, a “suite” is not necessarily a series of salons, as it would be in a hotel, but simply a cabin, a word that is clearly insubstantial in the world of brochure writers and communications strategists. Twenty-four-hour butler service is much touted, and rarely required, and then there is the problem of the butler’s expectations versus your own meagre needs. Butlers want to buttle, to pick up and deliver your laundry, to shine your shoes and keep that minibar purring. Butlers assigned to me, however, are forever puzzled by my inadequate demands, horrified at my handwashing of sturdy black knickers that hang like a colony of bats in the bathroom, despairing of my lack of detailed questions about itineraries and entertainment.

Passengers must also prepare for ever-moreintricate displays of towel art to appear on beds during turn-down service and to identify with certitude the fluffy creations with floppy ears and rolled appendages. “Nice elephant,” I confidently announced one morning. “Ma’am, it is a monkey. That is a tail, not a trunk,” replied Marino from Manila with a sigh and a defeated swipe of his duster.

He told me he had started his career as a housekeeping attendant in the 1980s at a hotel in Strasbourg that catered to coach-tour groups. “So, is river cruising the new coach touring?” I asked him. He nodded, and laughed heartily; I all but cried. Plus ça change.

Susan Kurosawa is the travel editor of The Australian.

Butlers assigned to me are horrified at my handwashing of sturdy black knickers that hang like a colony of bats in the bathroom.