Ash Dykes Kayaks the Sangha River, Congo Basin: The Documentary

Mission 1 of Project 6

Project 6 is Ash Dykes' plan for six expeditions in six extreme environments over twelve months. The first is the Congo Basin: more than 700 km down the Sangha River in an inflatable kayak, from Nola in the Central African Republic to Mossaka in the Republic of the Congo, where the Sangha flows into the Congo River. He is travelling with a local guide and a videographer from the UK, aiming for 30 to 40 km a day over three to four weeks and camping on the riverbank.

Reaching the water was a struggle. A bag holding the kayak pumps went missing after the team flew into Cameroon and took two days to recover. Then the Central African Republic turned them away at the border, because their electronic visas covered only flights into the capital. After a five-hour detour and a motorboat ride upriver at night through a lightning storm, Ash posted "Day one" on 8 October 2026.

Who he is and how he prepared

Ash, 35, grew up in Old Colwyn in north Wales and worked as a lifeguard and a scuba instructor before the expeditions took over. He walked across Mongolia solo and unsupported in 2014, walked the length of Madagascar in 155 days and nearly died of falciparum malaria there, and walked the entire Yangtze in 352 days. In 2024 he set two Guinness World Records in Suriname.

For the Sangha he carries antibiotics, antimalarials, 80 ration packs, solar panels, a satellite tracker and a Starlink dish that only works once camp is up. He expects to burn about 7,000 calories a day while eating about 2,000, and a rescue company is on call. The inflatable boat is deliberate: it can be deflated and carried around a group of hippos.

The river and the forest

The Congo Basin is the second-largest tropical rainforest on Earth after the Amazon. It spans six countries, and around 80 million people live in and around it. Beneath the swamps near the end of his route lies a peatland bigger than England, holding around 30 billion tonnes of carbon. The Sangha runs about 790 km from Nola, so his route covers almost all of it, including the Sangha Trinational, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where forest elephants gather at mineral-rich clearings called bais. The BaAka people live in these forests. October is the peak of the rainy season.

What could kill him

Ash rates the invisible risks above the animals. Malaria killed around 610,000 people in 2024, 95 percent of them in Africa, according to the WHO's latest malaria report; bilharzia and sleeping sickness are present too. Hippos are thought to kill about 500 people a year in Africa and Nile crocodiles up to 200, though both tolls are estimates rather than firm counts. In 2010 a South African kayak guide, Hendri Coetzee, was killed by a crocodile on a river in the Congo. The US lists the Central African Republic as "Do not travel", and for long stretches he will be days from a doctor.

Where things stood

The film was published on 10 October 2026, while Ash was on day 2 of the river. At the time of the film, his tracker had logged about 35 km in the first five hours and he was still paddling. If everything went to plan, he expected to reach Mossaka in late October or early November.