Steve Van Beek organizes small groups to kayak through some of Laos most remote regions. Here he describes the experience of journeying down four rivers that converge into the Mekong – a journey that enters some of the most remote and un-spoilt regions of Asia.

It’s natural that the harried cosmopolite seeks to put space between him/herself and the office.  But putting “time” between the two points makes the adventure even more rewarding.  That’s what a journey down Lao rivers is all about.

Rural Laos is cut off from the outside world.  Most of it is as remote as Thailand was 40 years ago before the introduction of electricity and roads:  simpler, quieter, and more connected to nature.  In an inflatable kayak down a river, the experience of simpler times is enhanced.  Silently you pass villagers at work and animals, observing them when they cannot view you so you see them in their natural state.  Awakening on the headman’s verandah and listening to a village come to life at dawn is to experience a connection with the stuff of life not available in an urban setting.

Four key rivers flow through the remote corners of Laos:  the Hinboun, the Khan, the Ha, and the Ou.  Adding the Mekong in the 4,000 Islands region at the southern tip of Laos provides all the ingredients for adventure.

The Hinboun River

The Hinboun begins in the Khammoune Range near the border with Vietnam.  These craggy limestone mountains wall off a hidden valley

that shelters the village of Ban Natan.  Entering it, you discover farmers living on their wits and local resources.  Houses are built of wood and bamboo cut from the forest by carpenters who even carve the wooden roof shakes.

Ban Natan is the starting point for an amazing journey through a huge cave.  The Hinboun River disappears into its vast, pitch-black interior, fully 20 meters tall and 30 meters wide at some points and holding beaches and side caves to explore.

Two hours later, you exit this 7.5 km. tunnel and bounce down a flume-like ledge.  The river then sidles past a tall limestone wall, passing rice paddies and water buffalo that still pull the plows.  You pass riverside vegetable gardens stairstepped up the banks, and greet shy families bathing and washing their clothes.  Climbing the bank, you encounter villagers living in woven bamboo houses, and worshipping in small Buddhist wats, each of individual design, and generally the only concrete buildings in the village.

Several days downstream lies a second cave, this one leading to a mysterious hidden valley.  Entering it requires that you wade through water, walk gingerly along a submerged bamboo pole, and climb along river-polished ledges to reach the upper end.  In the valley beyond, you discover the remains of an ancient city that was abandoned for reasons unknown.

The river then flows to the take-out at the intersection with Highway 13.  After a few hours drive to the southern tip of Laos, you arrive at one of the Mekong’s most dramatic areas:  the Khone Falls and the 4,000 Islands.  Here, on the border with Cambodia, a cataclysmic earth shift dropped the lower portion of the river 21 meters, and spread the waters to the east and west, creating the islands.  At the height of the monsoon season, the river is nearly 14 km. wide.

The edge of the fault is marked by several waterfalls.   Paddle to the upper edge and watch the mist boil over the lip and hear the thunder of its water.  The only runnable portion is the Sahong channel and even then only in the dry season when water levels have dropped sufficiently to allow passage.

Among the most beautiful falls is Liphii.  Villagers set traps in it during the monsoon, and risk their lives to extract the fish.  Inflatables are launched just below them for a paddle into what has been dubbed the “Flooded Forest”.

Its trees, the Anogeissus rivularis, are a botanical anomaly.  In the month before the Mekong is swollen by the monsoon, they shed their leaves.  As the waters rise, they are completely submerged and remain so for several months.  The absence of leaves, a survival tactic, reduces the force of the river current that would rip the trees from the riverbed.  When they emerge in November, their branches and root systems bend downriver, as though contorted by a gigantic wind.  Take a break from paddling to pull into a beach for a closer look…and a picnic lunch.

Downstream from the Flooded Forest, the Mekong broadens.  Its waters are the home of a rare pod of Irrawaddy Dolphins.  These threatened mammals are one of two such groups in the entire Mekong.  They are shy animals, no doubt because the Khmer Rouge slaughtered them to obtain oil for their lanterns.  No surprise, then, that they keep their distance from humans.  Nonetheless, you can sit in your boat to observe them feeding as the sun is sinking in the west.

In the Sahong channel are gigantic fish traps that are a wonder to behold.  The fish swim along them, thinking they are the passage to safety.  But the traps tilt upward and the fish quickly find themselves stranded; fishermen simply collect them in baskets.  Unfortunately, the Lao government is planning to dam the channel to produce electricity, robbing the fishermen of a major source of their catches, and kayakers of a route.

The centerpiece of the 4,000 Islands is the spectacular Khone Prapheng Falls whose power has to be seen to be believed.  Over the Khone Prapheng flows a major portion of the gigantic Mekong, and it is huge.  At floodtide the wild Colorado in the Grand Canyon flows around 700 cubic meters per second.  The Khone Prapheng witnesses the passage of 11,600 cubic meters per second, the highest volume of water of any falls in the world, double that of Niagara Falls.

In 1866, the French envisioned what they called a “River Road to China” to carry goods between their Cambodian and Vietnamese colonies and ports in southern China.  Imagine their shock when they reached the Khone Falls.  But they were not entirely daunted.  They built a wharf at the lower end with a funicular to raise cargoes to the upper level.  The cargoes, and often the boats themselves, were then hoisted onto a railcar and shunted along an eight-kilometer track that ran up the island, through the jungle, across a bridge, and to the terminus at the northern end of an adjacent island.  There, the cargoes were transferred to a new boat and moved upriver.

Although the system was an engineering marvel, it was unwieldy, taking 37 days and seven boat changes to complete the distance between Saigon and Luang Prabang.  The railway was ultimately abandoned in the 1940s as economically unfeasible.  You can walk, then cycle, the old roadbed before floating down the Mekong itself on innertubes back to the lodge.

.

.

The Khan River

Central Laos holds a more intimate river, the Khan.  It begins high above the old royal capital of Luang Prabang and flows through a quiet agricultural valley inhabited by Lao Loum and Khmu tribesmen.  The Khan nurtures a unique river weed that villagers harvest, generally in February.  It is a joyous, communal celebration in which, it seems, the entire population descends into the river to extract the hair-like vegetable.  It is dried and turned into a tasty snack.

A journey down the Khan ends at Luang Prabang where the Khan contributes its waters to the Mekong.

The Ha and Ou Rivers

Two rivers, the Ha and the Ou, take you into the true heart of Laos.  Here, you are cut off from the outside world, thereby providing you a chance to experience rural life as it has been lived virtually unchanged for eons.  The Ha passes pristine forests and the occasional village as it wends through the mountains.

Half a dozen tribes inhabit the area including the Khmu, Lao Loum, Lao Thung, and Thai Lu.  My favorite is the Lanten of which there are only 25 villages in all of Laos.  They are a gentle people who write in a Chinese script and whose women pluck their eyebrows and shave their hair back from their foreheads, the better to accentuate their gentle eyes.

By contrast to the woven bamboo houses of the Lanten, Khmu village homes are planks knocked together from rough boards.  Villagers harvest a dry-land rice that grows on the steep hillsides.  Unlike farmers elsewhere who cut the rice stalks with a sickle, these farmers strap a basket around their waists and strip the grains from the stalks.  It seems a laborious way to harvest but one quickly realizes that they can harvest standing up, saving themselves painful backs brought on by bending over all day.

At the very top of Laos, in the wee wedge between Vietnam and China, is the source of the Ou River.  Most visitors to Luang Prabang know the Pak Ou Caves.  “Pak” means mouth and indicates the point at which the Ou River joins the Mekong.  The caves are famed for the thousands of Buddha images that boatmen have left there to ensure their safety.  On this trip, you begin at the other end of the Ou, at its northern source.

From the put-in, the river passes through a NBCA, National Biodiversity Conservation Area, the Lao designation for a protected forest, where walls of vegetation rise 60 meters on either side.  The trees are filled with birds and the occasional family of macaques.  Settlements are prohibited which means that you have it virtually to yourself, a rarity in Asia.

Farther downstream, beyond the park confines, are Lao pioneers eking out a living on recently-cleared land.  Subsistence farmers, they plant crops and catch fish.  Their dugouts are without engines that would enable them to move downstream.  Even if they could, they would be blocked by challenging rapids that put excitement into a kayaking journey.

The first connection with a road is seven days downriver at Hatsaa.   An hour up a rough steep road from Hatsaa, takes you into Pongsaly which is reminiscent of a Nepalese hill town.  Its houses line a long ridge that is often shrouded in mist.  It has the air of ancient China from which many of its inhabitants likely made their way over the mountains from Yunnan late in the 19th century.  That may explain why it was the first Lao province to declare for Communism in the 1950s.  The principal crop is tea which it ships north to China and south to Luang Prabang.

Despite their beauty these five rivers are endangered and a journey down them may soon be the last one possible.  Thailand and China need electricity to fuel their rapid growth and Laos has the rivers to produce it.  Under intense discussion is a series of seven dams on the Mekong itself and 38 on the tributaries.  Five of these are already under construction.

But, see for yourself what may soon be lost.  Paddling down Lao rivers, you quickly meld with your surroundings.  It is the ease with which you travel back in time and the relaxed attitudes of the Laos themselves that give Laos its allure and creates memories that linger long after you have returned home to a dramatically more frenetic lifestyle.

For information, schedules, and more photos of the trips Steve organizes, see www.stevevanbeek.com