Lost in Mongolia: rafting the world's last unchallenged river

250 Pages·2003·1.68 MB·English

by  Colin Angus

CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
MAP
PROLOGUE
TWO YEARS EARLIER
PART ONE GETTING THERE
1 Why the Yenisey?
2 Welcome to China
PART TWO MONGOLIA
3 Searching for the Source
4 Riding the Whitewater to “Carcass Canyon”
5 Lost in Mongolia
6 An “Arresting” Time in Sühbaatar
7 Reunion Stories and Murderous Ruffians
PART THREE SIBERIA
8 Crossing the Border with Serious Baggage
9 The Little Dory That Could
10 The Welcoming Arms of the Mafia
11 Banyas and Dam Fishing
12 Vodka and Old Salts
13 Above the Treeline and into the Tundra
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
I would like to dedicate the book to
the men and women on the shores of the Yenisey
who helped us on our way.

TWO YEARS EARLIER . . .
August 22, 1999
“The Nile, the Amazon, the Yangtze, and then the Mississippi.”
“So what’s number five then?” I asked.
Ben looked up from the National Geographic Atlas. “The Yenisey River.”
I’d never heard of the Yenisey, yet it was listed as the fifth-longest river in the
world. According to the map, the Yenisey’s headwaters were in the heart of
central Asia and its mouth was 3,450 miles to the north, on the Arctic Ocean.
Had anyone ever traveled its full length? Through what kind of landscape did it
flow? My imagination conjured up scenes of a thunderous whitewater torrent on
its way to the sea, dashing down the flanks of the Hangayn Mountains, roaring
through steep-sided canyons, and cutting across expanses of frozen tundra
peopled with nomads who lived in tepees.
“It looks like Camana, on the coast of Peru, would be the best place to start,”
Ben said.
We were in the Banff Public Library researching our upcoming expedition
down the Amazon River. We were due to leave in two weeks, and it was no time
to be daydreaming about other rivers.
Ben’s face was tanned from the weeks we’d spent honing our whitewater
rafting skills in the Rocky Mountains. Underneath the healthy glow, though, a
world-weary tiredness had set in. His curly hair was slightly greasy and hung
listlessly across his forehead and over his ears. Large, dark bags hung below his
bloodshot eyes—the result of too much worry. I knew my own face looked about
the same.
We were about to run one of the world’s greatest rivers, and we were counting
pennies and budgeting beyond belief.
I filed the Yenisey River in the back of my mind and devoted my attention to
the maps of South America in front of me. Still, a seed had been planted.
February 28, 2001
More than a year later, after we’d run the Amazon, Terry Spence, the radio host
at CFAX in Victoria, B.C., leaned closer to his microphone and said, “Tell me
now, Colin, why is it that you want to travel a river—which nobody has ever
heard of—that flows through remotest Mongolia and Siberia? Wasn’t the
Amazon enough for you? I mean, you guys were almost killed in South
America. Haven’t you heard of gardening or cricket?”
I laughed. What could I say?
It was true. We had successfully completed our voyage down the Amazon,
facing death on numerous occasions. Many people believed that it was blind
luck that had carried us across South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic
Ocean. Maybe, but we accomplished what we had set out to do: We had traveled
the length of one of the most famous rivers in the world. We had voyaged every
inch of it, from its source in the remote mountains of Peru to the northeastern
shoulder of Brazil, where it finally empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
In spite of the pain, the rot, the smell, the arguments, the gunshots, and the
altitude sickness, I had never felt so alive or engaged. You cannot capture that
feeling in a photograph or on videotape, or adequately convey it in words—
much less experience it on one of those tourist bus excursion trips. It wasn’t just
the dramatic scenery and the fascinating people that had left their mark on me. It
was the unique way in which, the more I shared time with the river—five
months in total—the more I came to feel and respect its spirit and energy. That is
what was tattooed on my soul.
For me the Amazon offered a view of the world that could never be re-created
by a textbook or a documentary. The river ran past both the squalid and the
sublime with indifference, offering to each a constant but ever-changing face.
Old man river truly rolled along—a mile wide sometimes, swollen with the
runoff of a continent. It was both creator and destroyer, depending on its mood.
Its banks were testament to its generosity and its rage. It carried us through
folded, rugged countryside, its currents sweeping us along like riders on the back
of some giant, serpentine beast.
A river is the lifeblood of the land it flows through. Few parts of the earth are
untouched by the sculpting force of water. Every organism is part of an
intricately woven network of life that is nurtured by a watershed. The sap that
rises in the trunk of a eucalyptus tree and the blood that pumps in the heart of an
iguana are essentially the same fluid that permeates and flows across the
landscape, that saturates the atmosphere and falls from the sky.
Rivers have always been key to the development of complex societies and the
rise of civilizations. Irrigation, transportation, hydroelectric power, and food are
a few of the gifts a river offers. That is why they fascinate me. Whether they are
mythical rivers such as the Styx, historic rivers such as the Rubicon, or the
mighty rivers of my homeland, such as the Fraser, I am compelled to learn all I
can about them and experience them as fully as possible. From the moment it
occurred to me that nothing was holding me back, I had to live and breathe the
Amazon River, not just learn about it from books.
When I read Steinbeck’s Cannery Row as a boy, I envied the idle lives of the
indigent characters. Sitting on a dock, feet dangling in the water, tippling on a
jug of wine—to my young mind it seemed the perfect lifestyle. That was before I
felt the pull to explore and achieve. Whether this drive is conditioned or genetic,
I have come to believe that in life you must strive to achieve—or your spirit will
fade.
Our time on the Amazon provided me with the best of both worlds. I dangled
my feet in the water, sipped the wine, and drank in scenery day after day while
running a gamut that stretched from jagged, sky-scraping, snowcapped peaks to
the world’s largest expanse of lush tropical rain forest. At the same time, we
remained focused on our goal—to become only the third team ever to run the
length of the Amazon. The joy of completing that journey and the excitement of
the accomplishment stoked my desire to run another river.
In some respects I was even more excited about our proposed five-month