THE EXPEDITION
Source to sea.
Two kayaks.
One long stretch of time.
THE UNDERTAKING
Source to sea.
The idea is simple: start at the source of the Senqu in the mountains of Lesotho and follow the river all the way to the Atlantic Ocean - approximately 2,400 kilometres downstream.
We expect the journey to take somewhere between three and four months. There is no support vehicle following us and no fixed daily distance. We'll travel at the pace that the river, the conditions and the realities of the journey allow.
Following a river from source to sea sounds wonderfully straightforward. In practice, the Orange is not one continuous stretch of paddleable water. There are rapids and long flat sections, huge dams, weirs and other obstacles, places where we'll have to carry the kayaks, and stretches where simply getting food or reaching the next practical resupply point will influence how we travel.
We also don't want to turn the expedition into a race against a calendar. We are not chasing any records. We have a good idea of the distances we need to cover each day on average, but there will be days when conditions allow us to travel a long way and others when we barely move at all. Weather, water levels, portages, equipment problems and the occasional need to simply stop will all have a say.
The route itself isn't complicated, in the sense that we won't get lost: keep following the water West. But over three or four months, that leaves plenty of room for the unexpected. This is especially true for the sections where the river becomes super wide and braids into channels with countless islands between them.
The goal is simply to keep moving downstream until there is no more downstream left - and eventually put the bows of the kayaks into the Atlantic.
LIVING OUT OF THE BOATS
Everything travels with us.
For three or four months, the kayaks will be both transport and storage. Camping equipment, clothing, food, repair gear, cameras and the ordinary necessities of daily life all have to fit inside two boats.
That means choosing carefully what comes with us - enough to live reasonably well and deal with problems along the way, but not so much that we're hauling half a household down 2,400 kilometres of river.
A kayak like the ones we'll be using has a surprising amount of packing space. Close to 300L, to be exact. But the fact that the space is available, doesn't mean we should use it all. Everything adds weight, and anything we pack needs to survive being carried, unpacked and repacked for thousands of kilometres.
At the same time, this isn't a lightweight weekend trip. We'll be living out of the boats for months. A little extra comfort at the end of a long day can be worth carrying, and some redundancy becomes sensible when a broken piece of equipment could otherwise create a serious problem.
Each day will gradually develop its own routine. Pack camp, load the boats, paddle, stop for food and water, paddle some more, find somewhere to sleep, unpack what we need and set up home for the night. The following morning it all goes back into the kayaks and the process starts again.
There is something appealing about reducing life to that. For a few months, almost everything that's part of our daily lives will fit inside two kayaks, and most days will revolve around a handful of fairly basic questions: Where are we going? What are we eating? And where are we sleeping tonight?
SELF-SUPPORTED
Independent, but not isolated.
The Long Descent will be self-supported. We won't have a vehicle or crew following us down the river with food, equipment and a comfortable camp waiting at the end of each day. What we need between resupply points will travel with us in the kayaks.
But self-supported doesn't mean pretending the towns, farms and people along 2,400 kilometres of river don't exist. We'll buy food, resupply and make use of what is available along the way. The river doesn't exist in isolation, and neither will we.
How much we need to carry will change constantly. Some parts of the Orange pass through populated and agricultural areas where supplies are relatively easy to reach. Other stretches are considerably more remote, and we'll need to leave the last resupply point with enough food and other essentials to remain independent for much longer.
Food, power, first aid and repairs all require some forward planning. So does the possibility of equipment failing somewhere inconvenient. The aim isn't to prepare for every imaginable disaster - we'd need a third kayak for that - but to carry enough knowledge, equipment and redundancy to solve the problems we're reasonably likely to encounter.
And when opportunities arise along the way, we'll use them. If somebody offers us a meal or an ice cream, we're not going to refuse it to protect the purity of the expedition. If there's a shop, we'll buy food. If there's an opportunity for a shower after a week on the river, expedition principles are unlikely to stand in the way.
Self-supported, for us, simply means that the expedition moves down the river with us. There isn't another expedition travelling by road alongside it.
There is one expedition principle we do intend to stick to: we won't skip sections using non-human-powered transport. Where we can't paddle, we'll walk. We want to cover the entire distance from source to sea under our own power.
WHAT THE RIVER ASKS
No single version of the Orange.
The river we'll put the kayaks onto in the mountains of Lesotho will bear little resemblance to the one that eventually carries us through the desert towards the Atlantic. Along the way there will be whitewater, long stretches of flat water, huge dams, portages, wind, heat, cold and constantly changing landscapes.
None of those things on its own defines The Long Descent. The challenge lies in how they combine over roughly 2,400 kilometres of river.
There isn't really one Orange River. The upper Senqu is a mountain river, with water levels and whitewater playing an important role. Farther downstream the river broadens and slows, and the challenge increasingly becomes distance. Huge dams interrupt its natural course. Beyond Augrabies the landscape changes yet again as the river enters the dry western part of southern Africa.
Some days will be physically hard. Others will simply be long. Strong headwinds on open water can turn an apparently easy section into a grind. Portaging loaded kayaks around an obstacle can consume hours. Heat can dictate when we paddle, while cold and bad weather in the mountains may create a completely different set of problems.
Wildlife isn't a major concern on the water - there are no crocodiles or hippos on the Orange - but life on the riverbank still requires some awareness. Snakes, scorpions and spiders are part of the environment, while baboons can make an unattended camp interesting for all the wrong reasons. None of this is particularly unusual in southern African wilderness, but when you're living and sleeping outside for three or four months, a little awareness simply becomes part of the daily routine.
Individually, most of those things are manageable. What makes the expedition interesting is having to deal with them one after another for months.
And then there is the less dramatic challenge: getting up the next morning and doing it again. After a bad night's sleep. When there's a headwind. When something hurts. When yesterday was harder than expected and the Atlantic is still an absurdly long way away.
That, more than any single rapid or obstacle, may be what the river asks of us: patience, adaptability and the willingness to keep pointing the kayaks downstream.