The Expedition

In the summer of 2003, Dave Clark and Simon Chapman canoed the Armu river of Primorski Krai, Russia's far eastern maritime province. Our intention was to relive the experiences of the explorer Vladimir Arseniev on his expeditions through the mixed forest Taiga of the region. We also wanted to find out more about Dersu Uzala; were his skills exaggerated and did people living in the area today still use this forest lore?

Our destination, the Armu river is one of the last true wildernesses of the Siberian far east. Shrouded in temperate forest of Korean pines and Manchu oaks, it holds a high density of Amur tigers as well as bears, elk and lynx. This is not the frozen Siberia of popular belief. The same latitude as the South of France, the area is a meeting point for Siberian, Himalayan and South-east Asian flora and fauna, a jungle in the summer, snowbound in winter. Encroahed upon increasingly by man as logging roads penetrate the area, our intention was to travel through the Ussurisk Taiga while it still remained a wilderness.

From our starting point, Vladivostok, we travelled first to Terney, 300 miles up the coast, to organise the expedition and visit the headquarters f the Sikhote Alin Biosphere Reserve to find out about the status of wild tigers in the area. At Terney we hired a 4WD truck to take our portable PAK canoe, an inflatable 'catamaran' and three weeks of food supplies across the Skhote Alin mountains to a place where we could start our descent on the river. Many new logging roads had been built which made access to the Armu easier than expected. It also meant that on the early sections of the river we would meet fishermen and hunters fairly frequently.

We spent nearly three weeks on the Armu, canoeing down the river as it wound between the forested ridges of the Sikhote Alin, and exploring on foot some of the mountainous terrain. We found that the forest and riverine ecosystems contained a curious mixture of familar species (oaks, pines and birds such as crows and wagtails) whilst having an almost sub-tropical, jungle feel to them. Many of the broadleaved trees in the floodplains attained enormous dimensions and frequently trailed vines, and of course, there was the prescence of tigers, whose tracks we found on two occassions. All the same, even in early August, it was clear that Autumn was starting. The leaves of many of the broadleaved trees were already yellowing and except at the end of the trip, much of the weather was cold and very wet, with several days of virtually continous drizzle and heavy rain. It was clear from tracks and spoor that red deer, roe deer, wild boar, himalayan black bear, brown bear and tigers were present, but perhaps due to the weather or the threat of hunters, none showed themselves.

As for our search for Dersu Uzala; with the demise of indigenous trbal culture, it was clear that many of the traditional forest skills are now the preserve of the Russian fishermen and hunters who use the area. Though some of the men that we met were fishing for sport, it was clear that since the end of the Soviet era, many rural people use the forest to support themselves. For instance, Anatoli, our driver, each year spent around two months hunting deer, sable and lynx. He was also an expert fly-fishermman. Through the stories of his encounters with tigers , it became clear that he had the skills of tracking and forest survival in the forest that Dersu would have appreciated.

Over nearly three weeks on expedition, we saw the character of the Armu change, from a fast flowing torrent, strewn with rocks and full of rapids to a mature river flowing as a series of channels between depositional islands where herons stalked fish and kingfishers flitted from perch to perch along the banks. We eventually came to cleared land, the village of Dersu, now virtually deserted since the collapse of the local collective farm. Surprisingly, on the last section between there and the larger vilage of Dalniy-Kut where we finished the trip, we felt as much in the wilderness as we had near to the river's headwaters.