Brothers On The Bashkaus

A harrowing adventure that follows a group of Westerners on a paddling trip down the Bashkaus River in Siberia. Ultimately, they find that the river creates a common bond regardless of race, religion, or nationality--a bond in which a group of strangers truly come together as brothers.

From rafts made from old germ warfare suits 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. Armed with little more than former guiding experience and a grant from W. L. Gore and Associates, four Americans stumble into a chance encounter with Latvia's Team Konkas and soon find themselves with a group of complete strangers on one of the wildest rides in the world. Along the way they deal with everything from language barriers and homemade equipment to armed horsemen and rapids lined with memorials to those who perished before them. But more importantly, they discover the bonding process of the river, a medium that dissolves cultural barriers as easily as sediment. They find that the river creates a common bond regardless of race, religion, or nationality - a bond in which a group of strangers truly come together as brothers.

Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.

The epic story of the fastest boat ride in history, on a hand-built dory named the "Emerald Mile," through the heart of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado river.

A modern-day, real life adventure, this book will take readers along for a rollicking ride through South America on a race to the bottom of the Earth. When the author first met Polish explorer, Yurek Majcherczyk on a commercial feasibility expedition down Ecuador's Quijos River in 1989, he did not know it would lead to taking part in a Polish race, stumbling upon a mummy-filled cave and even getting wrapped up in a legend linking long-lost Incan riches to a riverfront castle in Poland. As the adventurers plunge deeper and deeper into unknown territory, they discover a rival Polish team trying to usurp their goal. The author seamlessly weaves these tales with his own exploits and adventures—climaxing with a tumultuous hike out of the canyon with both teams returning to complete their race the following year.

Featuring 38 true-life stories of adventure and self-discovery, adrenaline, and honesty, a former professional NCAA downhill competitor reveals the soul skier’s raison d’être: finding exhilaration, faith, grief, love, and everything that truly matters amid the gloriously tangible, tactile, break-your-leg-if-you’re-not-careful rocks, trees, and gullies of the alpine world. These essays, collected from numerous glossy ski and lifestyle journals, including Powder, Couloir, and Telemark Skier, celebrate the land of winter and the author's roles as mountaineer, ski racer, father, and all-around life enthusiast. His stories will appeal to anyone who has ever hit the slopes and felt the adrenaline rush of perching atop a steep precipice, knowing that skiing is the physical, emotional, and spiritual place where deep truths are explored and the graceful interaction of body and terrain answers back.

Perched impossibly on a ridge overlooking a 10,000-foot drop into Tibet, Sano Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa wait. Heel to toe, connected at the waist by a pair of carabineers that’s connected to nothing else, they stare down the North Face of Mount Everest, a red and white nylon tandem paragliding wing fluttering behind them. They know that jumping off the top of the world marks only the beginning of a longer, more audacious journey. And they know that the two-mile ride down Everest will be the easiest part. If the jump doesn’t kill them. In April 2011 the two unsponsored Nepalis set out on an unprecedented expedition to climb Everest, paraglide from its peak, and paddle nearly 400 miles to the ocean. Little problems wouldn’t stop them. Like the fact that Babu had no technical climbing experience. And that Lakpa had never been kayaking—or swimming. But after summiting, surviving their flight off the world’s tallest mountain, and being arrested, robbed, and nearly drowned—repeatedly—the two friends discovered their adventure had only just begun.