Leon McCarron, 37, was determined to witness life along the now fragmented, climate-hit and polluted river where civilisation began
A Northern Irish adventurer has told how his crew was shot at during his three month voyage along Iraq’s ‘wounded’ river Tigris in a small boat.But after falling in love with Iraq during a visit to the ancient land, he decided to take his latest expedition through life in the ‘cradle of civilisation’.An Iraqi friend warned the 37-year-old the trip would be “absolute suicide” and he’d be a “sitting duck” because of the grip “criminals and cut throats” have on the country.
But compared to the widely travelled Nile, the National Geographic wanderer and author felt it has been “pretty neglected”.“I had the idea for this journey in 2019. It’s been a while in coming, years to put together and three months to get down the river. “There’s a lot of goodness and culture in Iraq. The people who suffer are just good folks living a normal life.”
“The Tigris is really where the first civilisation came from - the first legal system, the first schools, the first beer was brewed, first sailing boats - so many of those are things we still enjoy today. “Management of the river has been terrible because of the instability in Iraq. It’s heavily polluted, there’s lots of untreated wastewater going into it and there’s not as much water as there used to be.Leon says his book ‘Wounded Tigris’ posed this question - ‘what would it mean to lose one of these great rivers of civilisation?’
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