Taman Nevar-again-a

by clairederek

Imagine, trekking through the deepest jungle of Malaysia. The sounds of the jungle surround you as you go farther in, butterflies of every color flit around you. You are on your way to an animal observation hide, the most famous one in this wilderness, in fact. You will spend a night there in a shelter overlooking a salt lick where animals such as tapirs come to supplement their diet throughout the night and early morning. You are ripe with anticipation, ready for some sure animal sightings. You feel like a true adventurer, a backpacker, and off-the-beaten-tracker….

Imagine that.

Now imagine your ankles are covered in leeches. You are soaking wet and you don't know if it is sweat or moisture from the air. You have been walking for five hours when surely you walk more than three kilometers an hour and the hike was only supposed to be twelve kilometers, but you still aren't there yet. A third of the path is a semi vertical climb up a hill assisted by a rope, another third is a semi vertical climb down a hill assisted by a rope, the other third is fallen tree trunk hopping and stream crossing.

You hear the crack of thunder in the distance and feel a shift in the wind. Rain approaches. Seven hours of walking and you finally see it, climbing up the stairs and entering the shelter a moment before the rain starts to fall.

That was us in Taman Negara.

We arrived after an exhausting day to the Kumbang hide, said to be twelve k's away from the park headquarters (that's about seven miles), at about 5:30pm. A swarm of bees followed us inside the windowpane-less room, seeking moisture from our soaking clothing. The rudimentary toilet was teeming with some sort of black, wingless insect. There was an enormous, teenager's hand sized spider in the door frame. The bunks were mattress-less. It was raining.

We spent a few hours looking out, shining the flashlight every few minutes. And then we fell asleep exhausted, waking up early to see if we could catch a glimpse of some shy jungle creature. Feeling a bit let down, we left the hide early, to take the shorter, flatter route back to catch a bus at 10am to catch another bus to catch a train to catch a bus to spend the night in the airport.

Instead the route back took twice as long as we anticipated. Even though we booked it the first two and a half hours (could have sworn we were doing five kilometer an hour pace!). The return hike back, though not as hilly, seemed just as difficult. After such a rainy night, the “river crossing” we were warned of meant we walked waist deep through a strong current and murky waters, shoes on, holding hands. And then, if we weren't climbing through wet and fallen trees, we were pouring salt on leeches and running from their creepy bodies as they probed the air looking for something (our ankles) to leech onto (pun intended). Derek had blood on his socks. Claire's ankle was experiencing severe pain. We were feeling a bit hysterical. We were running low on water and food. The signs lied to us and told us we had gone a shorter distance than we really had and that we had a greater distance ahead of us than we thought we should. When we finally reached town and stripped off our wet clothes in favor of drier ones, we were threatened by hornets and Claire got stung and then stepped in an ant hill and got bit. We washed and hung our clothes on a line that we happened to come across.

And then we left, treating ourselves to a banana roti and some sickeningly bright orange drinks before catching the bus.