Join Eugene Buchanan, former publisher and editor-in-chief of Paddler magazine, as he wins the first-ever river-oriented Shipton-Tilman Grant from W.L. Gore & Assoc.'s only to end up on a hair-raising 28-day decent of the Bashkaus, one of the hardest rivers in all Siberia. Sidetracked by Latvia's Team Konkas, they paddle rafts made from germ warfare suits, don lifejackets made from soccer balls adn wine bladders, trade vodka to gun-toting horseman for freshly butchered sheep, and language and cultural barriers aside to bond as brothers in one of paddling literature's wildest rides. Value-added Bonus! The author will sign/dedicate all copies ordered from this site.

Book Reviews: 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