- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Pan (6 July 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330485881
- ISBN-13: 978-0330485883
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.9 x 19.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
538,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53 in Books > Travel & Holiday > Countries & Regions > Asia > Tibet
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The Last River is a thrilling adventure in one of our planet's wildest and most alluring places.
Book Description
Running through the southwest corner of Tibet, the Tsangpo River is the last and most dangerous uncharted whitewater passage. It is also a place of extraordinary beauty, coursing through snow capped mountain ranges and ripping through verdant jungle. It is no wonder that local legend has this place as the sacred site of Shangri-La. And according to kayaking legend, the Tsanpo Gorge is the Holy Grail of rafting. In October 1998, a team sponsored by National Geographic set out to conquer it. En Route, they found that NG had also sponsored another team whose descent was timed just after their own. The chance of success was slim, but the race was officially on... This is a breathtaking story of trial and tragedy, which simultaneously gives inspiring insight into the self-illumination and growth experienced by people who match their skill, strength, stamina and inner resources against the most formidable of obstacles. 'With his riveting account of the trip, Balf has supplied a smart introduction to the daredevil lifestyle of river runners' Fortune
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Don't bother.
The worst of american magazine journalism in a book. Written with an overly reverential style and no idea of the mechanics or motivation of such an expedition. If you want to read about major (and tragic?) expeditions then go for Touching the Void, Into Thin Air or Summit Fever.
An opportunity wasted as kayaking has a lot to offer this kind of writing, just not in this book.
The worst of american magazine journalism in a book. Written with an overly reverential style and no idea of the mechanics or motivation of such an expedition. If you want to read about major (and tragic?) expeditions then go for Touching the Void, Into Thin Air or Summit Fever.
An opportunity wasted as kayaking has a lot to offer this kind of writing, just not in this book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
41 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The River Wild
17 Sep 2000
Format:Hardcover
Anyone who enjoys stories about the Himalayas, Tibet, or people pushing themselves to peak performance, needs to read this. It's not quite the five-star material of Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", but it's very close. Mr. Balf uses the accounts passed to him by the members of the doomed October 1998 Tsangpo expedition so well that you forget he wasn't there. The History is well used and interesting. The descriptions of the mammoth arena in which the story takes place are highly vibrant. And, the relationships of the men on the team are portrayed with realism, as well as a careful depth that could rival the Gorge itself. These are not people out for glory alone. These are people with a passion. Read this book, and see how they fare against one of the last untamed patches of earth we have left.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Waste of Money, too
16 Nov 2000
Format:Hardcover
I couldn't agree more with Michael Craig Johnson's review. Structurally, this book is a mess, as well as being a completely uninspiring story of guys with bad judgement. I have never seen a real-life adventure story without any, repeat any, maps of the area or pictures of the participants. Balf could surely have found one picture, or showed us one of the maps mentioned on page 13, and never referenced again. It takes the group 105 pages of disjointed biographical info to get to Lhasa. There we meet more people we have no reason to care about. The group gets on the river on page 143. After some history and more bios, the group is off the river by page 227. After less than two weeks, the action is over. Even the river scenes fail to give any sense of place to help the reader along.
Mr. Balf obviously said what had to be said about the expedition in his magazine article. It was no service to the buyers to produce a whale of a book from the original minnow. As Mr. Johnson says, don't buy this book. I wouldn't even borrow it, or lend it to a friend. Instead, check out Alfred Lansing's classic, "Endurance". With maps nd pictures.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
The last River - A Journey most won't want to take
21 Aug 2001
Format:Paperback
"Extreme", "lantern jawed", "boulders the size of buildings". Mix these three cliches, stir in an almost incomprehensible mix of first names and some [partial] biographies and you have the essence of Todd Balf's The Last River - The Tragic Race of Shangri-La. Ostensibly the tale of a river exploration by kayak gone awry it's focus is continuously blurred by disorganized snippets of arcana and personal information about the participants and (too many) peripheral players in this tale of a grand scheme gone bad. The real tragedy of this story seems to be the fact that Balf is the self- appointed chronicler of it. Balf continuously mires the reader in minutiae that is scattered seemingly hodge-podge throughout the story. The timeline of the book wavers between serpentine and non-existent and further clouds an already confusing tale. The story itself, the story of a group of experienced paddlers seeking the ultimate challenge on one of the mightiest rivers in the far east, has unlimited potential to be engaging. Instead, Balf scrawls such a circuitous, hackneyed missive, that the weakly developed principal characters rush down a river of unpredictable, choppy and confusing prose long before they reach the river that shares those qualities. In the Author's Note Balf writes of his struggle to give shape to an original article about the topic of his book. The reader is predisposed to think that Balf underwent the same struggle with the book..and lost. Balf seems overwhelmed by the topic at hand: too much information, too much forced drama and too many characters have resulted in an unruly pastiche of a story. In the end it is the story that suffers: the clarity of the participant's vision has been lost, the essence of the experience that beckoned them left unexplored. For [the money] CAN there are more entrancing journeys for the reader to take.
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