Paris (AFP)
Her big kayak on her shoulder, Nouria Newman travels the world to "go where no one is going".
She travels via rapids and improbable rivers to live beautiful stories made of encounters that she shares but without excess.
"When people ask me what I'm doing, sometimes I say I'm sledging!" Jokes this little brunette with light eyes during an interview with AFP.
"In countries where people are a little suspicious because you're a foreigner, since you're weird, we're no longer a tourist, we're the girl with the weird thing. It's a great passport for travel!"
Nouria Newman is an extreme kayaker, of the caliber of those who paddle to explore and enjoy adrenaline rushes in the most vertiginous descents.
A few seconds of intense pleasure for weeks of preparation.
"On an expedition, the days are eight to twelve hours. We are very rarely in the kayak all the time, as we do not know the rapids, we have to go out, go and see on foot, locate, put safety in place. It happened to me to put twelve hours on a first descent to make 700 meters ", underlines the double world champion of kayak (extreme in 2013 and slalom in 2014), initiated in the kayak when she was 5 years old following his English father.
- Against a current -
The Savoy, who refused to speak English as a child so as not to be "the daughter of the Englishman in Savoy", very quickly knew how to express herself brilliantly on her strange boat.
And what thrilled her the most were the long expeditions in uncharted territory, which she almost never does alone but with other kayakers.
"We are lucky to be able to travel in a unique way, we have great stories to tell and that is the most interesting", explains the Sciences Po graduate, constantly on the wire however.
"When you meet someone, you don't want to put a camera under their nose directly, you want to enjoy the moment, to talk with this person without necessarily sharing. Do not spoil this moment", confides the sportswoman, whose last film shot in Iceland has just come out.
This 20-minute documentary was produced "with the means at hand", to "take the opposite view" of videos delivering "images with a lot of technicians and gear", warns the adventurer.
Because this is also her signature: Nouria Newman takes life against the tide.
- Shocked in Tibet -
“More and more people have a list of rivers that they want to do and it's racing. You always have to do more and it bothers me, I can't leave with people who are too focused on the image, the action photo to be taken in such and such a place. Because there is no longer any time or place to create a link ", laments this 29-year-old woman, shocked during an expedition to Tibet.
"I have never felt so bad in a country. You are constantly watched, you can not do anything. The people you travel with in these countries post on their social networks: + Great trip, we made super kayak +. But where did we go super kayaking? Yes, we see beautiful things but they are not so beautiful ", she breathes.
"We are also witnesses of social, environmental disasters. It is the Chinese who are building a dam in an area too close to a volcano in Ecuador with a government that has been corrupted and a debt to be repaid for more than fifty years with horrible interest rates. So sometimes it's ugly. "
Carrying and sleeping in your kayak at the foot of a glacier or at the bottom of a gorge, sharing with local people, living out a little of your passion without it becoming her job forever: this is Nouria's life. Newman.
© 2021 AFP