A mighty river with many names: adventures on the Amur

The Amur is the eighth or tenth longest river in the world, depending on whom you believe. The veteran travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron reckons 2,826 miles the best estimate. In these pages he makes an arc-shaped journey from source to mouth: Mongolia to the Pacific via Russia and China.

The author travels on horseback, buses, pontoon rafts, boats, trains and in taxis and the vehicles of strangers. Starting in late August, he breaks off in Khabarovsk, the largest city on the Amur (population 500,000), returning home to London when the river freezes. As book and journey progress, the Amur changes its name and gender. Mongolian horsemen know it as Onon, the Holy Mother, Siberians as Shilka, Russians as Little Father, and in China it becomes the Heilongjiang, or Black Dragon River.

Menace and foreboding stalk the steppe. The Amur River’s first page alone has the words, ‘forbidden’, ‘formidable’, ‘mistrust’ and ‘razor wire’.