National Bestseller
Lost in Mongolia – Rafting the World’s Last Unchallenged River
Category: Travel – Adventure
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Pub Date: September 2003
Also available as an eBook.
Lost in Mongolia – Rafting the World’s Last Unchallenged River
Expedition Book
Documentary Film
Yenisey: River of Extremes
59 Minutes
* Best Adventure Film – Telluride Mountain Film festival
* Best Adventure Film – Wet West Film Festival
* Best Film, Water Division – Slovakian Mountain Film Festival
*Judge’s Special Prize – Kendal Mountain Film Festival
*People’s Choice – Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival
About the Book
From the Yenisey’s headwaters in the wild heart of central Asia to its mouth on the Arctic Ocean, Colin Angus and his fellow adventurers travel 5,500 kilometres of one of the world’s most dangerous rivers through remotest Mongolia and Siberia, and live to tell about it.
Exploration is Colin Angus’ calling. It is not only the tug of excitement and challenge that keeps sending him on death-defying journeys down some of the world’s most powerful waterways, it is a desire to know a place more intimately than you could from the window of a train, to feel the soul of a place. Angus emphasizes that rivers have always been key to the development of complex societies and the rise of civilizations, offering as they do irrigation, transportation, hydroelectric power, and food. But, as Lost in Mongolia captures with breathtaking detail, while they giveth plenty, the great rivers also taketh away in an instant. In Lost in Mongolia, Colin Angus takes readers through never-before-seen territory and his wonderful sense of adventure and humour come through on every page.
About the Film
Dramatic footage captures their successful journey and provides an intimate perspective of a frozen nation emerging from the collapse of communism.
The documentary garnered numerous awards including Best Adventure Film at the Telluride Mountain Film festival and Wet West Film Festival, Best Film in the Water Division at the Slovakian Mountain Film Festival, Judge’s Special Prize at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival and People’s Choice at the Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival.
See Photos from the Yenisey Expedition
Read about the Expedition in Explore
I pull my kayak onto the muddy riverbank, spark up a small fire from dry brush and begin my nightly ritual of foraging for food. For the past few days I’ve been living off rhubarb, wild onions and anything else I can scavenge along the shore of this valley in drought-plagued Mongolia. Driven by a nagging hunger, I scramble through the bush, a caricature of a castaway, Robinson Crusoe gone to seed. A scraggly beard disguises my sunburned face as I stagger around in dirty cotton pants and a pair of pogies – fingerless paddling gloves – worn like clown’s…
Reviews
Huckleberry Finn is alive and well in the 21st century, and going by the name of Colin Angus…What follows is an adventure wild and woolly enough to inspire Mark Twain.…. A good river adventure isn’t so much about the river itself, but about its characters and the lives they lead. Angus has this aspect nailed, and indeed, he dedicates his book to the men and women of the Yenisey.…. Angus is an engaging writer, and the book is full of humour while going refreshingly light on rafting minutiae.…Despite being a quick read, Lost in Mongolia still has the power to stir the spirit of adventure residing in any reader.
It’s a priceless event made palpable with streamlined prose that deftly magnifies the wonder of his half-year quest from Beijing to the Arctic. The Canadian’s bio calls him ”a full-time adventurer.” But if Angus ever tires of navigating a rickety skiff through icy channels, nightclubbing with Siberian mafiosi, or snorting snuff beside a yak-dung-fueled fire, he’s got an awfully good career to fall back on. Grade: A
You’d think he would have learned from his Amazon misadventure, but humorously intrepid river runner Angus (Amazon Extreme, 2002) is back on the wildwater, this time following the mighty Yenisey… Godspeed, Colin Angus, and may there soon be another river to fire your hapless exuberance and your readers’ good fortune.
