Iran 2001 - Bakhtiari River

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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 January 2000 00:00

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How to describe this river? I know if I sat down to write a blow-by-blow account listing each days events in turn I would now not be able to recall the events in order. I know if I tried to remember the gorges and the order they came in it would be impossible. I know that I could not have done this even on the day we got off the river. We had too much to remember. Debs had taken a journal with her to record the trip but her pen ran out on day two or three. A flippant reason would be that, because we thought it would take four to five days and so took six days food and we finally got to the take-out on day eight, it was the hunger that made us have trouble remembering things. But this is not true; when we got off we still had half a bag of pasta left - but not much else. I know that I remarked to Debs Not another f*******g gorge but whether this was on day six or seven I cannot remember; I know this was the most full-on, committed, nerve-stretching, brilliant, serious, stunning, scary, relaxed river trip I have done.

I can remember where it all started, where we put on, but where to start this story? I suppose the best bet is to start where we finished our travels in Iran last year. When we paddled down the Sezar river from Dorud to Telle Zange we passed Do-Ob (two waters) where the Sezar and larger Bakhtiari converge to form the Dez river. Mind you, then we were not sure of the names of these rivers as our maps either marked the river as the Dez or did not name it. That year the three of us who paddled the river were surprised at the size of the Bakhtiari River coming in, but then we had not really studied the map. Last year Bob Marchant Guy Baker and I ran the Sezar because of the simplicity of the railway shuttle but had to leave this major tributary, as yet unknown in name and put-in, for another time.

...... By now Bob was getting good at matching shapes on the road signs to the shapes on the Iranian road atlas and after a night camped out looking across the stunning Zargros mountains We arrived at a put-in for the Bakhtiari river. We drove along the dirt road trying to look into the river. We gained glimpses into the river. We walked out to the end of a ridge and looked way down into the river, I could just see down to water level at one point looking straight down a vertical rock face to the flat river some hundreds of metres below. We saw into the first gorge - though not down to the water level everywhere. The river looked fine where we could see it; there was space around the banks to portage the rapids we could see if needed, but from this height we could only guess the scale of the rapids. The water level however did not look too high and the view downstream: tantalising, beautiful and beckoning. Mission on.

Amir, our Iranian friend we had met last year, owned a garden just out of Isfahan and had offered it to us as a campsite anytime we wanted. We parked my Transit there to be guarded by the Afghan refugee family who lived there and looked after his horses and property and spent a day sorting out and packing our kayaks. The following morning Amir dropped us off at the square in Isfahan with our river-ready loaded H2Zones. From here we took a taxi to the put-in. The taxi ride to the put-in was around 300 kms.., took 6 hours (as we did some last minute shopping en-route) and cost 30,000 rials including lunch (just under $40) and left us two hours gentle paddling before we stopped to camp. The following morning we set off for real. I had that feeling of excitement again, knowing we were going to enter the gorge into which we had looked on our preliminary scout, a feeling that this was a real adventure, a real feeling of exploration. So often when you run rivers, the river is known even if it has not been paddled. On many first descents the access to the river is by walking or driving up the valley as far as you can and then launching your kayak and paddling down what you have seen. From where we were we knew nothing of the river till its confluence at Do-Ob, which we had estimated to be around 160 -180 kms.. downstream. After fifteen minutes paddling we got out to scout. This was the top end of the opening gorge, the bit we had been unable to see three weeks before. The river went into a boulder-choke rapid formed by a large rock fall from the left-hand cliff face. The water emerged from beneath these rocks about half a kilometre downstream and some 40 metres lower. Portage time. At this stage our boats were well loaded with not only six days supplies but also with all the fresh food we had cleared out of the Transit and the picnic lunch from the day before which we had not eaten because we had gone for a chello kebab with the taxi driver. This extra food was simply stuffed in the stern of our boats. Bob even had a watermelon between his legs! The big debate was whether to ditch or portage the watermelon. We portaged it and ate nearly all of it between the three of us at the end of the three hour portage - luxury. Another short paddle and a short portage and we were rewarded with a day and a half of stunning class III to III+ read-and-run rapids on a crystal-clear river surrounded by stunning scenery. The valley widened out and a village appeared high up on the left bank. Then a couple of kilometres downstream we were greeted by a couple of shepherds tending their unseen goats and sheep. They invited us in for tea and a game of charades. As usual with these games the trouble is, there is no one to say that a guessed answer is correct. There was no doubt, however, that there was a rapid downstream, and probably big, judging by the frantic arm motions. Bidding them goodbye, and no doubt leaving them more confused than they had been when they had beckoned us ashore, we paddled on. They were right; the rapid was big. We portaged. Now I am sure that some hotshot paddlers could run the whole thing. Bob and I ran the bottom third, but with loaded boats and with no way out except by kayak, it was not a hard decision to play safe. I think it was that night we camped on a small island overlooked by troll shaped rocks and a tortoise on the beach. We were really enjoying ourselves. More paddling with the occasional scout but mostly great fun rapids and beautiful campsites with plenty of firewood and fine food (while we still had fresh vegetables). On the fifth day when the river was about to enter a gorge we decided, as it was late afternoon, to camp rather than continue. We could enter the gorge - there was around three hours of daylight left - and hope either to find a campsite in gorge or to paddle to the end of the gorge before dark. But how long this would take to paddle or what rapids there were to negotiate we had no idea. We stopped, made camp, collected firewood, made a fire pit, laid out all our kit to dry and were just relaxing in the cooling evening when four guys wandered into our camp. They were around 18 - 25 years old and were friendly enough to start with, but as usual we had no common language. We felt fairly sure, however, that we had established that the dam construction site (and our take-out) was only 10 kms. downstream. We had been passing signs of dam-building, survey crosses marked on the rock, concrete level points and a mysterious red cross and 67 kms. painted on the cliff just above our camp area. We felt that the take-out must be fairly soon: we had been paddling for four days and should have been covering at least 40 kms. a day and so we must have paddled around 160 kms.. So the 10 kms.. to the dam site figured out about right. But working out distances was about as far as our conversation could go; we had learnt the numbers and Baraj, Chand Kilometres? (Dam, how many kilometres) and the answer of da (ten) was easy. However things started to get strange: some of it was just adolescent showing off - mock fights with sticks in an almost dance-like traditional performance that I had seen as part of a wedding video I had watched somewhere in Iran some time before; some of it was macho showing off, blasting a target rock to bits with their 12 bore shot gun; and some of it was too much testosterone and too much boredom. When they started insisting that we came and stayed in their village all this bored adolescent testosterone machismo came together. We declined their offers of hospitality three times as is the norm; we explained that we were happy where we were, we indicated that we had too much gear to carry up the bank to their houses, we acted out that we were tired and were going to go to sleep as soon as we had eaten. Then it got heavy. The wildest of the group grabbed a pair of paddles and disappeared up the bank along with the others beckoning us to follow. We stayed put, causing more shouting which we still did not understand. Rocks started flying - out of frustration maybe. We indicated that we wanted the paddle back. Then rocks started being thrown more directly at us and we dashed for cover. Negotiations then started. They wanted money, my sunglasses (despite being strong prescription lenses!), Debs watch, other things, anything, I am not really sure what and I think that they did not really know either. This was a spur of the moment extortion that the one wild one had sprung on the others. Every so often negotiations would break off and they would resort to hurling rocks at us again. We dashed in and out of cover gathering up our belongings out of harms way from the barrage of rocks. Then negotiations would restart. Miming slitting throats and throwing bodies into the river was easy to understand and then got even heavier until they discovered that Bob and Debs were married. Our group being two men and a western woman had them thinking down the wrong track. Then they nicked another paddle and, as Bob put it to me, Dave, with all due respect, I think we should get the hell out of here - Ill hand-paddle. I agreed; Bob had been about half a millisecond ahead of me. Debs, you load up the boats and well try another round of negotiations to buy time. Debs loaded the boats and put the three-way Robson splits together. Bob and I had some more negotiations, then the negotiations broke off again and they retreated up the bank to hurl rocks at us and point the 12 bore at us. The fact that they had not fired the 12 bore by this stage gave me the feeling that they were out of shells - but I did not want to test this theory. As they retreated up the bank we headed for the kayaks and our getaway. They suddenly realised that they were going to end up with two pairs of Robson paddles which, though worth $250+ in the shops, were useless to them. This was brinkmanship but not a deliberate tactic by us. Suddenly our last offer of Debs watch and necklace was acceptable. The least aggressive one of them reappeared with the paddles and the exchange was done. We paddled off down the gorge at a smart pace. By now it was dark; the first drop we came to we portaged; it was too dark to scout. We found a beach on the other side of the river to the thieves house, cooked dinner and tried to sleep. Every time a firefly lit up I thought it was the end of a cigarette on the opposite bank and every time a rock or pebble was dislodged by an animal we were jolted awake.

6.00 a.m. we were awake and back on the water, putting some more distance behind us before breakfast. By 11.00 a.m. we came across an amazing gorge: polished black granite totally smooth and straight, the left bank rising directly out of the river at about 15 degrees off the vertical and the right bank probably exactly the same but as it was post vertical we could not see under the overhang. Unfortunately the gorge had a drop in the middle which looked big from our limited vantage point at the start of the gorge. We could not really scout the drop from anywhere else, so we had another major portage. This took five hours through the hottest part of the day. First we had to carry our boats up over a shoulder into a dry side creek and then haul the boats up forty to fifty metres - five throw bag lengths - and then carry them across a steep slope that was very scary. We managed to set a static safety line across about a third of this traverse but the rest we had to carry the boats very slowly with the rear man dictating the pace as he could not see where he was putting his feet. Once we had crossed this traverse three times and our heart rate was restored to as near normal as possible we still had to lower the boats and climb down to the river. When eventually we arrived down at river level, we were utterly exhausted and completely dehydrated. Our water had run out long before we set off lowering the boats. Ten minutes later we stopped - a spring! We stopped and drank and drank and drank and then we filled our water bottles and paddled on looking for the first campsite. We stopped, cooked and went to sleep. We had started at 6.00 a.m. and finished at 5.00 p.m. 11 hours including a five hour portage! What had happened to the 10 kilometres to the dam site?!

We got to hate left hand bends. The geology was such that left hand bends always had something more serious on them. We arrived at another gorge, a really impressive gorge like all the other gorges, vertical sides rising straight up from the water and no way to get out of the river to scout once you entered it. We could see at the far end of the gorge the splash of white water kicking up but we had no way of seeing how big a drop was causing this splash of water. It was the middle of the day - portages always seemed to arrive in the middle of the day. Bob volunteered to climb up the left bank and check out the drop and see if the gorge went on round the bend. Meanwhile Debs and I cooked lunch. It was hot, really hot, so hot that you had to dunk your paddles in the river before grabbing them, so hot you turned your boat over to stop the seat and thigh grips burning when you got back into it. We huddled under a slight undercut to shelter in what shade we could find. We were tired and worn down by the heat and stress of the expedition. We dreaded the idea of another major portage but were resigned to one. We expected Bob to reappear after scouting out the easiest route for the portage. Bob reappeared about an hour later with the music hall good news; we did not have to portage it. The drop we had seen was almost flat, it was just the surge and ebb of the boils kicking water against the rock causing the splashes of spray and the corner hid no further nastiness. Later we referred to this canyon as phantom portage. Another time we paddled into another vertical-sided canyon blind; we just had to risk it as we sort of just arrived in the gorge before we had realised where we were. It was worrying as we peered around bend after bend and breathed a sigh of relief when we found ourselves at the end of this gorge. It was flat the whole length, around all the bends, but it was grade IV+ stress. We only did this once, but once was enough.

There was another portage of note. This one took a couple of hours. Once again if it was your local river people would be running it and occasionally getting trashed big time in it. It was one of those get-it-right-and-what-is-the-problem rapids but miss the line and it would be a time-to-check-out-how-big-your-lungs-are rapid. I think this was before we were robbed. The two and a half days we paddled (what 10 kms.?) after the robbery were the most stunning scenery I have paddled through; gorge followed gorge and bend merged into bend and one rock formation superseded another, and we were too shattered to really appreciate it. Towards the end, though we did not know it was the near the end, an old path running alongside the river appeared. Abandoned houses spread along the path marked where we assumed the nomads would have stopped on their annual migration to the mountains for the summer grazing. In our rush down the river we had passed a nomad family camped on the side of the river who invited us in and we should have stopped and had a look into the disappearing lifestyle. We wanted out, we had had enough, and this was on the most amazing river I have ever paddled. Those gorges are magnificent, stunning, they are well - gorgeous. One of these gorges would have you boring your friends in the pub about it, but days worth of gorges is just too much to take in - and the photos do not do them justice!

We were tired and strained. We just wanted to get out. We wanted to get back to knowing where we were. These two and a half days were stressed, it was not that we were scared and out of our depth; we were in control, we were paddling carefully, scouting the gorges. We had been shaken by the robbery and tired by the portages but it was the not knowing what was ahead that was the most taxing. We felt we had had enough adventures. Debs had dream of sitting on the beach at Birols campsite in Yusufeli drinking a cold martini and after she shared it with us the image kept reappearing in my brain but with an Efes beer, cold enough to cause condensation to drip down the glass. Throughout all this I could not have been with a better two companions: Bob and Debs. Despite the strain we never had an argument or a feeling of friction. When we arrived at a camp we would unpack, collect firewood and cook the evening meal. There was never the feeling of whose turn it was to cook or wash-up.

We finally rounded a corner and there was the dam site - I have never been so pleased to see a dam site on a river.

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