Day 44: Rumble in the jungle

Hmmm, you'd think I would learn. Two disastrous trips to the jungle and I'm still stupid enough to go jungle trekking today. You may question my sanity after finishing this entry...

We knew that there are walking trails here in the hills, and they start in Tanah Rata so we could easily access them. Before starting out, we read the following instructions on our dodgy walking map purchased from the hotel.

No.1: take plenty of water and food
No.2: tell your hotel where you are going
No.3: make sure you can complete a route before it goes dark
No.4: weather can be unpredictable so be prepared for sudden rain
No.5: wear suitable clothing
No.6: use good judgement and common sense.

I can confirm that we failed on all bar one of these! We tried to find an ordnance survey standard map, but funnily enough they don't do them here. Not every country shares the British enthusiasm for mapping things in the minutest of details, evidently. At this point, my spidey-senses started to tingle in an unpleasant manner. However, clearly our desire to live life on the edge on this trip has been awakened by previous events, as the lack of map did not deter us. "The trails are all clearly signposted" said our hotel concierge, so who were we to argue? We awoke bright and chipper, looked out at the sunny cool day ahead and decided to go for it.

So our hapless travellers set off on trail "no.4: Pasit waterfall", a trail for beginners, only 1km long and likely to take no longer than half an hour there and back. We manouevred past the fallen tree and along the path where the bricks had been long since "reallocated" probably to people's front paths, and found our waterfall in no time at all. It was not a pretty sight, as there is rubbish all over, but somehow I managed to get one nice shot of it.

Having found the waterfall so easily, we wandered on, looking for the next sight on the trail, the Pasit watchtower. It turns out that after a very steep uphil climb for ten minutes, you reach the top of the hill to find that when the sign says that the watchtower is "under renovation" this means it has collapsed and there is no sign that anyone is rebuilding it. We climbed over the debris, and having seen that the trail continued, we consulted the map and decided to continue. After all, it was going so well and it was only 11:30am.

On we wandered, but to our consternation, after another 20 mins or so, we found a signpost for route no. 6. As the Lonely Planet warns not to go near this one as it is often neglected, we were a bit concerned, especially as the only route 6 on the LP map was on the other side of the valley and not supposed to be anywhere near us. However, since it meant going back up a big hill, we thought we'd carry on for a bit, figuring we were in the right place according to dodgy tourist map.

An hour later, we were not so convinced. Hot and sticky, in the middle of a jungle, with a dodgy trail ahead and a long way from our start point, we started to wonder if we were actually still on our trail. To our credit, we stayed calm and after some consideration, we decided that ahead was just as good an idea as going backwards. This turned out to be a good choice, despite the increasingly erratic trail, and the amount of scrabbling up and down hills that was necessary. We eventually found our way back to Tanah Rata after three hours, and never have I been more grateful for civilisation!

The rest of the day was spent calming down again and rehydrating from our adventures. No more jungles for me for a long time!!!