I had the Upper Lužnice from Nová Ves in my sights for a long time, but I got to it by chance. My Finnish friend Alp and I were originally supposed to go to Soca, but after four days of brutal adventure races we decided that going further south than the south of Bohemia equals certain death after microsleep in the car and we anchored near Trebon.

We didn't get up the next morning, Salza and Steyr fell and the Lužnice remained. Twenty kilometers from Nová Ves to Suchdol, it could be five hours at most. That would have been fine.
No, it was not fine.
At noon we threw the packrafts on the water below the weir in Nová Ves nad Lužnicí and off we went. The water gauge showed some 75 cm, which turned out to be just enough to keep us from scraping the bottom on one side and on the other side to at least occasionally run over a log.

The expedition begins beautifully with about two hundred metres of a beautifully meandering river. As it turns out later, this is the longest stretch without an obstacle such as a massive oak across the path, a massive oak overgrown with brush, a group of massive oaks overgrown with branches of all kinds, a huge group of less massive oaks completely impenetrable, a brutal thicket of thorns suitable for a machete... and so on.

It was interesting that at about the fifth obstacle some of us thought to start counting. Let's see if we can count fifty of them by Suchdol. I can tell the result maybe in advance. We didn't reach Suchdol at all. Ten kilometers ending at the bridge near Dvory nad Lužnicí we fought our way through in 5 hours. The final number of obstacles stopped at 80, and we counted only the really big ones.

The cruise on the Upper Lužnice, if we can call it a cruise at all, is really a harrowing one. The river even flows here at the aforementioned water level at times, but fortunately just slowly enough not to tend to drag our packrafts under the ubiquitous trees. Otherwise, it is a boating hanky-panky of the highest caliber.

“Let's try to get through the whole thing without getting off the boat!” Alpo announces, but even this plan proves unworkable. Even though we squeeze into the lowest crevices under fallen trees at all costs, or scrub the floors of the packrafts against nearly flooded logs, we still have to get out of the boat about twenty times. In the rest of the cases, our packrafts make the cruel sound of rubber scrubbing against wood. At first we tend to spare them, but even this idea soon takes its toll and the floor and cylinders are put through a stress test of the highest calibre. However, in the end they pass the puncture competition without losing a flower, i.e. without a puncture, despite the fact that we chose the lightest variants of the Packraft Tramp and Cargo for the trip, with sides made of TPU 210D and a 420D floor.

The journey on a fixed boat would be a cross-country journey, you could even make a crown of thorns on the shore, we laugh as we paddle through the meanders of the Lužnice River before the laughter passes. An Indian canoe is moored at one of the bends, with a real Indian, a fire and a tarp.
“I've already cut through a bit, did you see?” the Indian calls from the fire. “I couldn't have cut it without a saw!” Well, it's true we saw a few saw marks along the way, but not that the Luzhnia had been cut by then. We don't understand how he could have crossed it alone with that big heavy canoe. He said he had a few days to get to Suchdol and was in no hurry. Of course he's in no hurry.

We say goodbye shaking our heads and for the next three hours we struggle in a tangle of logs, branches, thorns and so on. At times it's world-class acrobatics, having to balance on a thin log towards a place where we can re-embark. Packraft in one hand and a paddle in the other, acting in places as a perch. In places it's a world championship in shrinking, that's when we're holed up on the bottoms of packrafts trying to tear through the boat and our bodies under a fallen tree. And in places, it's a scene from Black Corsair, where a group of machete-wielding pirates cut through the jungle towards Maracaibo.

If you are convinced from the narrative so far that this is not a river you want to go on, reconsider. The meanders of the Lužnice are beautiful. Absolutely untouched and unmodified by human hands, the river flows silently through endless meanders and only the vocalizations of dozens of bird species are witness to it. Beautiful centuries-old oak trees line the banks of the river, and those that have already finished the river lie across it and you can stretch out on them and eat bread with ham and a few eskies.

If you do end up going, you'd better sail with the lightest and smallest boat possible. Packraft has proven to be the ideal companion. It's easy to jump out of, easy to get on, and easy to throw over an obstacle with one hand if you need to.

And pack a snack. You won't find a tyre pontoon with a tap, or a campsite soaked in the smell of fried cheese, or a pub, or a kiosk, or anything. There's just a river, a forest and nettles.
Just like in the old days.