Overview

From rafts made from old germ-warfare suits and felled logs to lifejackets stitched together from soccer balls and wine bladders, river running in the former Soviet Union has evolved much like Australian wildlife, completely free of outside influences. Brothers on the Bashkaus follows the exploits of one of the first groups of Westerners to experience this foreign style of rafting on a white-knuckled, 26-day trip down the Bashkaus River, one of the hardest whitewater runs in all Siberia. In the early 1990s, armed with little more than former guiding experience and the prestigious Shipton/Tilman grant from W. L. Gore and Associates--the first of its kind ever awarded for a river expedition -- four Americans stumble into a chance encounter with ten Latvians and soon find themselves on one of the wildest rides in the world. Along the way they deal with everything from language barriers to armed horsemen and rapids lined with memorials to those who perished before them. They battle the elements and fear starvation, finding sustenance in pork fat, sugar cubes, and fish-eyeball soup along the way. More than just a great adventure story, Brothers on the Bashkaus combines a fascinating study of a culture and history with a riveting play-by-play of the paddling maneuvers and survival skills needed to meet the day to day challenges in the canyon. Thrown together with a common mission, these men soon discover the bonding qualities of the river, a medium that dissolves cultural barriers as easily as sediment. The Bashkaus creates a common bond regardless of race, religion, or nationality--one in which strangers truly come together as brothers.

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Recent Praise for Brothers on the Bashkaus A Class-V ride through both big waters and a fast-changing culture. -Jon Bowermaster, National Geographic Adventure author/adventurer This is a book in which the author is on fire with his subject. Eugene Buchanan studies, chases, and pours down one of the world's wildest rivers in a journey sometimes terrifying, often chilling, but always mesmeric and drenched with resonance. The story is swiftly moving, yet it superbly delineates the cultural and political context out of which this expedition arose. Buchanan is a gifted narrator, with seeming total recall and a lucid candor and self-awareness, as well as a talent for painting topographical views of gorges and rapids that have an almost surreal power. Brothers on the Bashkaus is, in a fashion, an elegy for a lost moment of cultural and environmental first contact. It is a torrent of a book... Take the plunge! -Richard Bangs, founding partner of Mountain Travel/Sobek, author of 11 books, including Mystery of the Nile, Adventures without End, The Lost River, River Gods, and Riding the Dragon's Back Adventure paddling is fun enough, but it becomes epic, zany, and outrageous when it's set in the manic madness of modern Russia. Imagine Hunter S. Thompson-without the drugs-running Class VI. Can't conjure up the image? Sit down on a comfortable chair, get some raw pork fat for munchies, and read Eugene Buchanan's Brothers on the Bashkaus for a wild, hungry ride in improbable boats with a bunch of crazies. The book exposes the unadulterated spirit of whitewater adventure-stripped clean of all the fancy stuff, like paddles and lifejackets. -Jon Turk, author of In the Wake of the Jomon and Cold Oceans Buchanan's blood is two parts river. This is a memorable tale of adventure, friendship, and a confluence, or collision, of cultures. Buchanan and his cohorts get tossed almost by happenstance onto the wildest of rivers in a land where the gear is homemade, local horsemen go crazy on strong tea, memorials to dead paddlers perch on the banks, and, as at an execution, nothing can happen until a last cigarette is smoked. -Peter Heller, author of Hell or High Water, The Dog Stars, The Painter and The Whale Warriors Your fate is tied to strangers in a strange land in-strangest of all-a craft hewn from the forest primeval... a monster Siberian whitewater river before you. A reader could want for no better guide than Eugene Buchanan, an expert storyteller who knows firsthand that if you are good, lucky, and don't mind daily fat cubes, the best expeditions sometimes emerge out of the worst predicaments. Superb. -Todd Balf, author of The Last River and Comet: The Untold Story of Major Taylor and How He Beat the Color Line (Crown Publishing, 2007) Eugene Buchanan's paddling expertise and sharp reportorial eye will sweep you breathlessly down one of the world's wildest, toughest, and most remote rivers, in company with the knights-errant of Siberian whitewater. A fascinating cultural and adventure read. -Peter Stark, author of The Last Breath and At the Mercy of the River

Author Information

A former reporter for the Denver Business Journal and 14-year editor-in-chief of Paddler magazine, Eugene Buchanan has written about the outdoors for more than 25 years, from covering the X Games for ESPN.com to working for NBC at the Beijing Olympics. With freelance articles published in the New York Times, Men's Journal, Sports Afield, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Forbes Life and other publications, his passion for traveling and writing has taken him to more than 30 countries on six continents. A Fellow member of the Explorer's Club and contributor to Men's Journal's The Great Life anthology, he spearheaded the Outdoor Industry Association's Outdoor Idols campaign, honoring teens' accomplishments in the outdoors. Brothers on the Bashkaus was first released by Fulcrum Publishing in 2007. His second book, Outdoor Parents, Outdoor Kids, was released by Heliconia Press in 2010, winning the gold medal from the Living Now Book Awards. He lives with his wife, Denise, and daughters, Brooke, 16, and Casey, 13, in Steamboat Springs, Colo., just a block away from the Yampa River.

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