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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.

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