This spring, from March to May 2025, Dartmouth College students Sumant Sharma and Ben Shaman will undertake a roughly 86-day, 2700-mile canoe journey across Europe from Nantes, France, to the Black Sea. This is Part One of their journey.
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The first time I stepped into a canoe was at 18-years-old. My fishing buddy, Brennan, and I made a 700-mile drive from suburban Philadelphia to the 100-mile wilderness in Maine, seeking trout in those old glacial lakes. We got in at 3:30 pm after our second day of driving and quickly piled into a canoe on the main lake by the cabin. There was a group of men on their 50th annual trip at the lodge watching and jeering as Brennan and I managed to float into every downed tree on the edge of the lake, cursing at our bodies for acting as sails.
My second-ever time in a canoe was during winter break of my freshman year of college. I had received an email earlier in the fall from some random club, urging me to apply to their “break trips.” To me, it seemed like a free vacation. That December, I found myself paddling off the coast of Florida enjoying 70-degree weather. My group and I bounced from island to island for eight days before I returned home with a healthy tan and a newfound obsession with the Ledyard Canoe Club.
That single trip completely realigned my college experience. I would show up to club meetings and take every opportunity to go on day trips. I even managed to get into whitewater kayaking. Going into Dartmouth, I had never spent a night outside. I was dead set on going to medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon. That med school dream lasted for a whole three days so maybe this train was bound to derail earlier.
From that trip on, I would always look for my next adventure, whether it was leading the Everglades trip my sophomore year, going on Ledyard’s annual spring break whitewater kayaking trip, or even a jaunt through the Grand Canyon on the permit I pulled before I even knew what a creek boat or half slice were (a story for another time).
For me, this canoe trip across Europe is an extension of that adventure-seeking attitude. After all, it started when Ben approached me a year ago and said, “You are the only person I know crazy enough to say yes.” Uhhhhhh, sure I’ll take that? In the moment, the trip was an opportunity to become one of the gurus of the outdoors.
The upperclassmen at my school who had previously been on prolonged expeditions have done incredible things from first ascents on mountains, breaking the Pan-Am cycling record, to completing a source-to-sea trip of the Murray River. They seemed to have this mystical vision of life that cut through the fog of weekly essays and exams, and I wanted in.
That was an incredibly naive way of looking at this trip. As the hours spent planning tallied into the hundreds, and some of my college friends became functioning “adults,” I came to learn that nobody really has any idea what they’re doing. Being a senior in college or even one to two years out with a job does not give you any more stability than the whirlwind of freshman year.
The illusion of supreme confidence was shattered. Not showering for 80 days won’t grant me the mystical wisdom these outdoorsmen all seem to have. Instead, quiet and consistent reflection on anything and everything I could ever imagine has dominated my time on the water. I get to experience myself in a new light.
So, it’s been only a couple of days but here are my notes:
- Don’t buy food in England—it’s better in France.
- Don’t paddle up the Loire when it’s flooded, you won’t make it very far.
- There are always people around to help.
Serendipity is one of those words I have to google every time someone says it, and I found myself using it as the word of the day recently without quite remembering what it meant.
Our original plan looked like this:
- Paddle upstream on the Loire to the Canal Lateral a la Loire
- Take said canal and then paddle 34 miles up the Saone to the canal Rhon au Rin all the way to the Rhine
- Go downstream on the Rhine and then turn upstream on the Main
- Take the Main up to the Main-Danub canal
- Follow the canal to the Danube River
- Ride the Danube out to the Black Sea
Ben and I had to bail on our plan to paddle up the Loire, as it’s a completely different river than any of the trip reports we referenced. We found ourselves stranded in Oudon, a small French town, but managed to organize a shuttle allowing us to drive past this leg of the trip and get onto the canal.
Realizing we had no cash to pay our shuttle drivers with, we went into town looking for an ATM to no avail, but we managed to get a one-way ride to the next town over, which had multiple banks. Our new friend Vanessa dropped us off right by the bank, and after some international bank issues, we got our cash and began walking to the train station. That’s when Vanessa drove by on her way back to Oudon, and when serendipity became the word of the day. So, the good news is, so far, there are always people around to help.
And now it’s been a couple more days but you are reading this continuously so let me give you a sense of the compartmentalization of events. We flew out from Philly at 10 pm, landed at London Heathrow at 8:30 am, walked around London, slept in a farmhouse, traded a Dagger Indra for our canoe, and were shuttled to Nantes upon waking up. That was March 13th-15th. Then, we attempted to paddle up the Loire (which has been done before… just in the summer), failed miserably and were stuck in Oudon until the 20th!
Now, I write from the depths of the Canal Latéral à la Loire, which has seen us fervently fight 20 mph headwinds to paddle into a thunderstorm in hopes of making camp before the skies open up. And we did. By 15 minutes.
Twice.
This is hard. It’s unlike any organic chemistry exam or high school cross country workout I’ve had the displeasure of doing. But with it comes a new feeling of accomplishment. We are doing the thing. I write that in my journal with a psychotic smile on my face every single night without fail.
This is what it means to push our limits and to really go on an adventure. The random new challenges I face every day, from discovering what stinging nettle looks and feels like to empirically determining that you cannot touch the stove one minute after it’s turned off (to both those points, I promise I am not always this stupid), all find ways to resolve themselves out here because of us!
It’s honestly difficult to pin down one thing or one aspect of this trip that has resonated with me most so far because it’s really just the doing of the thing that is so unbelievably interesting to me. I almost watch myself in third person, seeing myself navigate our eighth lock portage of the day with only a tiny bit of malaise, and feel proud of how far I’ve come.
From being a kid who couldn’t poop in a public toilet to digging catholes in the rain, this trip has cemented my progress as a person who can push themselves not only when they need to, but also when they want to. I can take this fuel and use it anywhere in my life, and I already have! My summer job consists of hanging out at Dartmouth and working on my thesis in chemistry. There has been more than one occasion floating down the river where my mind starts mentally bullet-pointing the first set of experiments and write-ups I’ll complete.
Don’t worry, I’m not so naive at 21 that this is the first life experience that has taught me that. It’s just the uniqueness of this opportunity that has helped me realize the amount of work that goes into a lifetime of passion. I would never have thought to compare a three-month canoe trip to my professors’ decades-long passion for their subjects before this, but now I’m realizing that this is what it takes. Yeesh! There are levels to this.
I also understand that it’s an incredible privilege to spend my time away from college only worrying about the paddling conditions of the next day. This is no doubt something that’s not accessible to most people, but my point isn’t to convince people to spend weeks in a canoe. Instead, it’s to go and just try to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do. Whether it’s a spring break on the Camino de Santas in Spain or your first night in a tent. Plan it out, plan a bail option and fall flat on your face… like us. It doesn’t have to be perfect or pretty. You just gotta do the thing.
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Sumant Sharma is a hot-off-the-press 21-year-old from outside of Philadelphia studying chemistry at Dartmouth. When not canoeing rivers (and canals) you’ll find him whitewater kayaking, completing homework and graduate school applications solely in the 1902 study room at Dartmouth, or cooking up feeds for the People of Color in the Outdoors Club which he used to chair. He’ll be serving as President of the decorated Ledyard Canoe Club his senior year.