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Rampant deforestation is the nemesis of these primeval thickets of Venezuela and neighbouring Brazil; towards cattle pastures, infrastructure improvements and commercial agriculture (what’s with the growing love for soybeans?!). Then is the struggle for survival of one of the most ancient indigenous tribes existing in the Amazons – the Yanomamis – against their much fitter modernworld brethren. Victims of disease and genocide, the controversy-riddled plight of one of the most primitive races was brought to light in Patrick Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado, and has proved to be quite an albatross around the neck of the current Hugo Chavez government. But hey, I was on vacation here; with the emerald of the forests on either side and the sapphire of the sky above for company, the ‘Heart of Darkness’ opened up before me to the page where Joseph Conrad had said (albeit of a different continent!), “Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth, and the big trees were kings.”

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Source :- IIPM Editorial, 2006