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Brothers on the Bashkaus: A Siberian Paddling Adventure

by Eugene Buchanan

By Christina Callicott

Written by the former editor of Paddler Magazine, Brothers on the Bashkaus is a tour de force of Latvian ingenuity, teamwork and drive, and American adaptability.

After winning the W.L. Gore and Associates' Shipton/Tilman Grant, author Buchanan and his three teammates set out for a moderate float through Siberia. Intercepted at the airport by a team of Latvians, the Americans find that their initial plan has fallen through, leaving them with little choice but to join the Latvians, known as "Team Konkas," on a trip down one of the most difficult and dangerous of Siberia's rivers, the Bashkaus.

The story is worthy of a bestseller. Homeboys go to Siberia and paddle Russian cataraft on Class V river with people they can barely communicate with. Starvation rations, killer rapids, a deep, dark canyon and frigid Siberian rainstorms make for a first-rate epic.

Right away the differences between American and Russian river-running become apparent. The Latvians have crafted their boats' tubes from germ warfare suits glued together with kitchen-sink chemistry. They build frames at the put-in from riverside trees hewn just for the purpose. Later, when a frame breaks in a collision with an undercut rock, the repair shop is close at hand as the Russians eddy out and simply fell another tree to replace the broken one. The environmental toll that such practices take is a fact not lost on the Americans, who grit their teeth at the improvidence.

While the Shipton/Tilman award was designed to promote light and fast expeditions, the Americans find that they've got nothing on the Russians in that category. Starvation rations mean that their trip is anything but an American-style "float-and-bloat." Cubes of pork fat provide concentrated calories, and the diet is supplemented by fishing, foraging and trading vodka for meat with local horsemen infamous for becoming murderous when drunk.

Indeed, stories of starvation and murder by drunken horsemen are just two in a long list of objective hazards that lend an ominous quality to the already dangerous whitewater. A cold rainstorm drives water levels dangerously high. As the gorge deepens and narrows, memorials to fallen boaters hang on the cliffs high above dangerous rapids. Rockfall and landslides are constant threats. Portages become impossible in places, forcing the team into unforgiving whitewater. Team Konkas nervously burns through cigarette after cigarette as they buy time examining the rapids for a runnable line.

While the story's tension is palpable as soon as the Americans find themselves without a river to run, Buchanan relieves the reader regularly with insight into Russian and Latvian history and culture. From Kublai Khan's invasion centuries ago, to the Soviet takeover and fall of the USSR, Buchanan sets the political and economic scene as a way of explaining the Latvian's ingenuity, their desire to run whitewater and their way of banding together to get the job done. His respect for his Latvian teammates is contagious; their sharing, their inventions and their skill are possibly the most impressive aspects of the story.

Buchanan has certainly done his homework on this level. He does a great job explaining the history and nature of Soviet-bloc athletics, which is altogether a different animal than American sports. Furthermore, the story of Russian river-running is the story of the absolute genius of a people far removed not only from their whitewater, which is found only in very remote locations, but also from developments in the sport elsewhere in the world.

Despite the differences between Russian river-runners, with their weight shaving and starvation rations, and American boaters, with their kitchen-sink approach, there are two things that no expedition on either continent will launch without: a river guitar and a bottle of liquor - or 15. At the end of the day, Team Konkas, like boaters everywhere, will raise the drinking flag, raise a toast and strike up the first chords of "Rocky Raccoon." Wherever you go in the world, rock 'n' roll is America's trump card. Team Konkas may know how to fell timber with a homemade saw and swallow chunks of pork fat without gagging, but we know the words to "American Pie," and they love us for it. Long live Russian whitewater!

Christina Callicott loves getting swept away by a good river book.