“Mekong” Mick’s Wildass Adventure–Chapter 8: On Tuesday we left the Australian adventurer clinging to a boulder in the river, half dead. Here’s the last installment of Mick’s incredible tale…
I have never been so beat in my life. I laid there in the freezing water for several minutes before noticing I was dizzy and shaking then started to worry that I might pass out in the water. I stood up and staggered on slippery river rocks to shore falling over twice. I could see some Tibetan houses just upstream and made for them. As I walked I could hear that my breaths were short and gasping and my lungs felt like they were getting burnt with each breath I was no longer shaking. I had hypothermia. I was so tired that for a moment I considered crawling into the space blanked I carried along with a sat ph and first aid kit in my PFD but sense got the better of me and I pushed on towards the mud walled homes.
I made my way up to a big old Tibetan house and knocked heavily at the door. No response. I wondered if I had the energy to make it to the next house when a sweet old Tibetan granny opened the door. As one would expect, she was a little shocked to see a swaying foreigner with hypothermia leaning against the door frame but within moments in true Tibetan style she had me warming by a fire sipping yak butter tea. It was the best cuppa I ever had. Dry clothes and blankets appeared, I was lucky to be so close to help. Such wonderful people.
I really did not expect to find my kayak and equipment again as the nature of such gorges is that there are few natural eddies and such for floating boats to get stuck in and the flow rate is at around 6 kilometers an hour so by the next day it could be anywhere within the next 100km and many stretches had no roads alongside. We had a replacement set of basically everything in case this happened but both my cameras were in the boat and I felt very disappointed to lose photos of such an incredible area that had never been visited by outsiders before.
I hailed a passing car the next day and headed for Zongdjian to meet up with our new director Brian Eustis and my fiancé, Yutah. I anxiously scanned the river below at every opportunity as we drove along the bumpy dirt road yet it was only visible about 30% of the time and with each passing kilometer the chances of finding the boat diminished. More than 40 kilometers downstream from where I took the swim I spotted a tiny red dot on some rocks above a set of rapids some 200 meters below us. I stopped the car and to my utter delight identified the boat. A stiff 2 hr hike down and back up a steep avalanche ensued and with the assistance of a Tibetan passenger I retrieved the boat. I was surprised to see that nearly everything was still inside although totally waterlogged. Out of 5 rolls of film and 60 digital photos shot, only one roll of film was not destroyed by the water. Fortunately it contained several key land marks in the heart of the gorges so I could at least prove that I have paddled the section (There is no other way in or out to get photos) but it seems that the Mekong wanted to keep some of the most amazing sites in its most turbulent inner sanctums a secret from the outside world for a little while longer.
Navigating the Mekong gorges of the Kham has been without doubt one of the most challenging, dangerous and rewarding experiences of my life. I have never experienced another environment more hostile or unforgiving nor more magnificent and beautiful. One of the last great wilderness areas in China lies between Chamdo and Northern Yunnan and it has been my great privilege to be the first person to experience it. With expressways and sealed roads being cut along much of the Mekong’s course north and south of this section, one hopes that the Authorities might see the value in leaving just a few islands of unhindered natural beauty to the earth and out of the relentlessly grinding wheels of “development’. Until now the extremely inaccessible nature of the gorges has provided effective protection against most human folly yet this could all change with just a few simple road network planning decisions. If there is one thing I learnt while traveling through Kham Tibet it is that there is no gorge or environment through which man cannot cut a road and his ambitions.
Thus ends the story of Mekong Mick’s battle with the Mekong Gorges. This was probably the hardest, most dangerous part of his First Descent expedition. But we’ll keep checking in on Mick, as he wends his way slowly to the South China Sea…
Mekong Mick, Self-Portrait: “Heh-heh. I made it…”
(Photo: Courtesy Lynley O’Shea)
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