Mekong Delta

Not a mountain, I know. But the folder for this one is called ‘Mekong river tour — I like trekking too’, and that’s the honest version: give me a path, any path, and I’m happy.

The Mekong runs more than four thousand kilometres from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea. In southern Vietnam it stops being one river and splits into a delta the Vietnamese call Cửu Long, the Nine Dragons. Brown water, tunnels of water palm, boats with tyres for fenders and a red flag snapping overhead.

I put on a conical hat, took an oar and headed down a narrow canal, then sat down to something slow-cooked in a clay pot that I still think about. Rivers teach the same thing ridgelines do: you don’t fight the terrain, you find its rhythm.