Rafting down Desna river. 45 miles of boating in the wilderness.

in #nature8 years ago (edited)


I'm an office worker with two children. As you can guess, my weekdays are almost the same.
Therefore, from time to time I organize a wild vacation. We cooperate with friends in going on a journey through the wilderness without any tourists.

This time we decided to go on a rafting down Desna river. The route was about 45 miles by water.
Preparation took about a week: we collected necessary provision and equipment, rented 2 boats and hit the road.
We had to wake up early in order to get to a boat station. Sleepy Kiev followed us with coolness and empty streets. We reached the destination quickly, put the knapsacks into the boat and started our journey.

One boat had a motor with a cover in case of rain, the other was a rubber one for transporting provision and equipment. We fastened it to the main boat using tie-rods, thus saving a lot of space.

Traveling by water is always an unusual adventure, but this time it was just awesome. We slowly went along the surface of water, beholding the savage scenery. On the first day we only managed to cover 10 km, moored to a comfortable place and roosted.
Our typical camp looked like this:

We slept in tents and cooked over a fire, fished from the shore or straight from a boat on the way.
We laid on fishing and knife throwing championships, collected firewood and berries and organized swimming championships in cold water. A few times we even took the bottom and had to push the boat with oars and sticks.

After 5 days we traveled the planned 45 miles, were impressed a lot and got a huge experience in wildlife traveling.
The key conclusion – provision is never too much)

It was an unforgettable adventure, after that we decided to travel through all the unknown worlds of our picturesque country.