On a personal level I was deeply saddened to see such a great and powerful river subdued into a flat and lifeless lake. Over the preceeding months I had the great privilege to become the first person to experience the entire upper section of the Mekong from ground level. I had studied its temperament from its playful folly across the Tibetan Plateau to the violent mood swings that erupted periodically when obstructions attempted to divert the flow. I had gaped in awe at kilometer after kilometer of gigantic gorges and attempted to calculate approximately how many billions of tons the river had eroded away along a single 100 kilometer stretch. My calculator did not contain enough digits!

Until now the river had twice shocked me with lessons in my own mortality and instilled me with a million moments of wonder. Constantly alive and relentlessly transforming the world through which I traveled the Mekong to my mind is in fact a living, evolving entity.

In front of us lay a motionless body of water, devoid of character and strength. It was fed by the Mekong yet it contained none of the traits that I had come to know and deeply respect throughout the journey. On the web news we encountered just before starting this section we read that down stream nations were experiencing some of the lowest Mekong water levels on record, negatively affecting millions of local farmers and fishermen. Yet where we were, just a few hundred kilometers north of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar the river was nearly full. The unfortunate fact was that the majority of the water was being withheld in China to fill the two operational hydropower dams.