Last Days of the Mighty Mekong
Brian Eyler
Zed: 2019
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In River Road to China, I wrote of the French colonial explorer Francis Garnier, second in command of the great Mekong River Expedition of the 1860s, confessing to having a monomanie du Mékong, an obsession with the great river. He had initially hoped that the Mekong might be a trade route into China from Vietnam. But when it became clear that this was impossible, because of the barriers that lay in the river’s course, he came to value it as a vast and fascinating physical phenomenon, a geographical feature demanding attention and interest in itself. It was, he wrote, “a singular and remarkable river”.

A fascination with the river, if not an obsession, is something that Brian Eyler and I share, for to live beside the river, as we both have done, is to be aware of its fundamental role in the livelihoods of the people dwelling along its course — a relatively small number where the Mekong flows through China by comparison with the more than 66 million in the Lower Mekong Basin as it flows through or between Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But this fascination stems from more than simply seeing the river’s character in practical or instrumental terms. It is a fascination linked to its moods, ranging from great floods to desperate droughts, and from its capacity to create conditions of supreme physical beauty — sunset over the Mekong at Luang Prabang has been rightly celebrated by explorers and backpackers alike.

• Tags: Brian Elyer, Issue 14, Mekong, Milton Osborne