Book Review
River of white nights
A Siberian River Odyssey
Author:- Jeffrey Tayler
Publisher:- Robson Books, London
This is the story of an intrepid journey in an arrow shaped, seventeen by five foot inflatable raft of canvas and rubber with five hundred pounds of load and a four-horse power motor across river LENA in Siberia. Starting from ‘Ust-Kut’ near Lake Baikal in Russia, the author along with his Muscovite guide Vadim Alekseyev, traveled up to ‘Tiksi’ situated in the mouth of this river on Laptev Sea well north of Arctic Circle in the Republic of Sakha. He could complete this journey only because of the remarkable qualities of Nadim, whom the author describes as a 37 year old man , Beefy –shouldered, with a pig iron grip and piercing blue –eyed gaze of a fanatic and a formal dentist. Later on, the author finds out that Nadim is a veteran of Afghanistan war and had narrowly escaped death there.
The foremost explorers of this land were Cossacks, original equestrian warriors of Russia’s lawless southern steppes. A spirited people of Slavic and Scythian blood, they had set up most of the towns and villages in this land. They traded reindeer and bear skins with original nomadic tribes of the region such as Yakuts and Evanks. Jeffrey Tayler's journey up the Lena - a river closed to the world during the Soviet era - takes him through some of Siberia's wildest and most hauntingly beautiful regions and bringst him into contact with many groups of isolated villagers from places like Nyuya, Yakutsk, Sangar,Zhigansk,Dzhardzhan and Siktyakh. . These people survive in this region - now a wild frontier that lives off the diamond trade - cut off from the world by lack of roads, neglected by the Russian government and prey to alcoholism. Their untold stories form the focus of the book, set against the backdrop of Tayler's descriptions of incredibly harsh weather conditions and his adventures in negotiating permission to travel in the region with Russian authorities and then navigating the Lena to its mouth.
It is a fascinating journey down a wilderness river, through one of most unknown regions on earth. This runs alongside a great insight into Russian history spanning from Ivan the terrible to Putin today. It makes you realize, how little we know about life in the former Soviet Union today.
An American by birth, Jeffrey Taylor and his Russian wife have settled down in Moscow. This perhaps induced him to undertake such a hazardous journey. A fascinating book to read.
26th March 2008
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