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Taman Negara
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Taman Negara is an old-growth forest, estimated at 130 million years
old, and might be the oldest rainforest in the world. This is truly
dense and amazing jungle.
I had to take three different busses across the peninsula to reach Kuala Tahan, the small town set across the river from Taman Negara, Malaysia's most spectacular national park. I got there and settled at the little Durian House - named after the smelly and sweet fruit that everyone loves or hates. It was a great spot for my dorm room, as it was outside of town and constantly had a symphony of forest noises, as well as a nice collection of flowers maintained by the family. Looking at the forest from across the large, muddy river provides one of the only panoramic views of the jungle. It rises from the river and into mist, never breaking its cover of thick green. It's not a monotonous green, but rather every shade of green you could imagine, coming from every shape and size of leaf you can picture. The green is alternately light, dark, shaded, bright, transparent, matte, muted and vibrant. It dips directly into the river and overflows the top of the small hills, apparently consuming everything in its path. More than any other feeling, you understand the jungle is alive, and not predominantly with animals. It's alive with plantlife of an unimaginable variety.
In order to enter the park, you take a small motor boat for 1 ringgit across to a series of steps that lead up to the main entrance. This is no ordinary park entrance, but rather Mutiara Taman Negara Resort - the nicest hotel shoved right between the river and the voracious jungle. Luckily they have kept the place quaint and tasteful, opting for huts and chalets nestled in the trees rather than a modern hotel. The park entrance is inside the complex, and the trails lead away in various directions. At first, this made me nervous. What if the jungle, as famous as it was, had just become another tourist attraction, simplified and reduced so that any layman can say they'd "been to the rainforest"? Well, it's true and it isn't. Yes, there are guided tours, the famous canopy walk, motor boats that let you off only minutes from a cave or the "traditional" Orang Asli settlement (the native people of this area). But this is all contained in a very small area, and the jungle spreads for miles.
I only came to understand by hiking on my own that the jungle can't be contained. Keeping this fine, tourist-level balance is extraordinarily hard for such a wild place. Trails are nearly impossible to maintain - the funding and personnel are obviously lacking, the forest grows too quickly, and trees fall too fast, creating huge, complicated roadblocks. While the trail system is extensive, it doesn't go to huge sections of the forest, probably because it isn't feasible to maintain a trail that remote. The efforts to maintain this balance must be applauded in the end, for the usual solution to "tame" the forest these days is to destroy it. Let's hope the balancing act between a "natural" state and tourist accessibility can continue.
I took three long, intense hikes over three days, and each one provided a different series of challenges. The first was my introduction to jungle trekking, and was a trial by fire. I decided to take a trail up to a "hilltop" of about 300 meters. The map said the trail, one way, was \n5.5 km - not short, but I've certainly hiked more than 11 km in a single day. As I got on my way, I was confident that all would go well, as the trail was rather wide and clearly marked. Then various destinations - like a bat cave, Orang Asli settlement, and hide - passed me, and the trail rapidly deteriorated. There were no tree markers, no ribbons, only a simple, muddy footpath about a foot wide. It eventually started to branch in various directions, none of which were marked on my official park map. I followed the options and finally found the stream crossing - without a bridge. It was shallow enough that I decided to take my shoes off and wade across. Thinking I was in the clear and would head uphill soon, I instead found myself in an impossibly thick mass of jungle. Various trails headed off, but all had boar prints in the mud, not footprints. Yes, I ended up following a series of natural boar trails to their various digging, resting and eating sites. Having completely lost any semblance of an official trail, I decided to turn back. I certainly wasn't upset by the outcome - rather, I had quite an awesome adventure stumbling over roots, tramping through a fallen set of leaves and getting bitten by ants, attempting to cross another stream on a log but never getting to the log, and generally tramping half-crazed through the forest. These are the times I'm glad I inhereted my father's good sense of direction.
I think now is a good time to pause and dedicate a paragraph to my new animal friend, the leech. I had read about them and knew they were intense during rainy season. "Well, I'm in the clear," I thought, thinking I had skipped the rain that comes every September to February. Maybe I had, but if this was low season for the leeches, I don't even want to think about what's it's like during rainy season. Leeches love the wet, so I expected to find them hanging around water and when I crossed streams and rivers. Nope - the water, while muddy at times, was almost entirely leech-free. These are not the big, green things found drifting in stagnant ponds. These are fast-moving, hungry little buggers who live on the forest floor. If you look hard enough while you walk, you'll see them clinging to roots or leaves, straining their thin brown bodies upwards in the hopes of attaching to something. When you pause to rest, that's when the real fun begins. Even if leeches don't have eyes, they're as smart as any creature from a horror movie. Like a blind vampire, they're attracted to your blood, and somehow know exactly where you are. As your feet come to rest, the leeches swiftly cover the ground towards your shoe, inching along in a classic "inchworm" fashion. The minute they touch any part of you - your shoe, sock or pants - they can't be pulled off, as their "jaws" are too strong. They move in for the sweet spots, and apparently loved my ankles. They could easily pierce my meager socks and stick their teeth right into my flesh. The stake to the heart, as we all know, is salt - I was smart enough to buy a big bag of it at the general store before I started hiking. Once you smother the salt on them, they start the Wicked Witch of the West melting process and slowly release themselves from your flesh. Once this has occurred, you can flick them off without a problem, as they writhe and struggle under the sodium chloride of death. Once or twice I actually felt bad for the buggers, but then you look back at your leg, which is oozing a steady stream of blood. It was a constant battle with the leeches over 3 days, and I ended up with at least thirty flesh wounds. I must have caught another thirty more before they attached themselves to me. It was an aggravating and funny experience, and certainly defined my trekking in the jungle.
To be honest, I underestimated the sheer power of the rainforest.My second day of intense hiking was the speed trial. I had reserved a night for RM 5 at a "hide," which is a basic hut in the middle of the jungle from which you can hopefully see wild animals. I woke up in good time, but got pleasantly slowed down by meeting Stine and Gunnar, and we had breakfast and some very intellectual conversations together on the American health care system. By the time I bought another bottle of bug spray (forgot mine) and made sure I had enough food, it was 1 p.m. - I had 12 kilometers in front of me before sundown! Needless to say, I really hauled my tail across the jungle, trying to stop for nothing, but still getting lost and hampered by huge trees knocked down by the rainstorm only the night before. The biggest challenge came when I got to the river with no bridge. It was about 50 feet across, and as deep as my thigh. The whole thing was so muddy that I decided to leave my shoes on and just tromp on through. No hassles or mistakes - just another part of the adventure! The hide only provides wooden beds and barely-running water, so I rented a sleeping bag, roll mat, and luckily borrowed Gunnar's mosquito net (mine was somewhere at the KL airport, in my bag). All went well, but no large animal sightings. I did, however, meet Martina and Luca, a wonderful young Italian couple who stayed there as well as part of a guided group of six. I had an incredible time talking to them in Italian - I miss speaking the language so much!
The third and final long hike was my steeple chase. It had mudflats, numerous streams, obstacles (namely huge trees) and - most of all - never-ending hills. This was the trail that hugged the riverside, so each small stream had carved a significant gully or valley on its way. The banks closest to the streams were the most precarious, some being at 70-degree angles (it's a good estimate, Dad!) - so steep you had to use the rope provided and haul yourself up the slick mud slope. I slipped and half-fell into one of the streams, and dunked my left leg up to my waist. That's ok - within an hour it had regulated again into the same amount of wetness covering my entire body! I did take my time, and the hike took the majority of the day. There were some incredibly beautiful moments, as I realized just how magical and sacred this place is. I got back to Kuala Tahan and took a much-needed shower at the Durian.
The following morning, I took the river boat back to the jetty near Jerantut, which was about a two-hour ride. It was wonderfully scenic, as the green carpet stretched in all directions. Mist hung to the mountaintops and in the valleys, and added to the mystery of the wild jungle. I had thought of my father, Peter, numerous times over the days, and thought about him again while boating. He took many boat journeys up rivers like this one in Irian Jaya. I was so glad I got a little taste of what those adventures must have been like for him - both thrilling and petrifying, boating and hiking through the impenetrable mass of green. While my adventure was much more tame, I had moments of that thrill, where you are just far enough off the trail that you realize how alone and isolated you are from society. My journey through Taman Negara pushed my limits and my comfort levels, and made me appreciate nature even more.
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