3. Borneo
Chapter 2
Crisis 2001 Tour
The thinking man's alternative to a small red sportscar
3. Borneo
Chapter 2 |
Crisis 2001 Tour The thinking man's alternative to a small red sportscar |
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Jungle, leeches, orang-utans, separatist guerrillas etc. 19 March - 26 April Links: The trip: Kalimantan leg Dancing with Dayaks: dispatch 9
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Chapter 2. Into the heart of darkness - Kalimantan Jungle trek
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| Trek
Day 1. After a final push by boat for a couple of hours, our jungle
trek begins. I haven't shaved since Pontianak and am looking increasingly
manly, but the lie is given to my rugged image when I yelp and hop as I
gash my shin on a well-placed boulder on the riverbed. A good start, as I
think ahead to the boundless joys that await us in the jungle. Today we trek for only around five hours as we follow the Bongan River, a tributary of the great Kapuas, towards its source in the Muller mountains on the border between West and East Kalimantan.
Our camp for the night is basic - tarpaulins slung over a line for a roof, and plastic strips laid on the ground for a floor. No walls! Apparently this will keep us dry... |
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The intrepid trio at rest
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 Trek
Day 2. Heavy rain last night and - yes! - the "tent" did
keep us dry. Little sleep, however, due to the horrors of Jasons twisted
tonsils, their dreadful echoes resounding in the doomed heart of the
jungle's vast, empty darkness.
The heavy rain eases off as the morning progresses, but it now means that the river level is much higher than expected. This forces us to stay on one side of the river, using rarely-used rudimentary paths supplemented by Alex's manly machete-hacking. Eventually we can go no further, and the Epic River Crossing of Day Two begins. |
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Trek Day 3. Pretty much more of the same today, including one particularly long and arduous passage across the evil slimy riverbank rock slopes. The river level has subsided overnight and, as we have also now moved substantially upstream, is much narrower as well as shallower. This makes the river crossings a matter of routine rather than the loin-girding affairs of the first two days, which is just as well since we must make over twenty crossings today. Our day clothes, including boots and feet, have been constantly wet since the beginning of the trek and don't dry at night, so each morning we have the dreadful pleasure of putting on soaking wet clothes before breakfast. |
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Trek Day 4. A short day today, as to have attempted the next campsite would have meant arriving around dusk and having to rush our ritual cleansing by the river and the wonderful donning of dry clothes before dinner. So we rest during the afternoon and prepare ourselves for a long day tomorrow. |
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 Trek
Day 5. Today we pack almost 1½ days of scheduled trekking into the
nine hours between 07:30 and 16:30. The day starts with a long slog up the
western slopes of the Muller range. As we reach the top and cross from
West to East Kalimantan this marks - for me at least - a psychological
turning point so that we are now on our way out of the jungle. Jason, who
has somehow become dubbed the President of East Kalimantan, now walks with
a distinct swagger.
The final stretch today is tough, as my legs feel the effects of the morning ascent compounded with the previous four days' trekking. At each rest stop I simply fall on my back into a Zen-like trance where nothing discernable passes through my mind except the realisation that nothing discernable is passing through my mind except the realisation that nothing discernable... (see page 648). It's during these more demanding stages that the good humour and helpfulness of the porters (and of course of Alex and Joanne) really helps. Tonight we play "Uno!", with the loser of each round being daubed with warpaint with great ceremony and hilarity by the other players. Alex and Fast Eddy look particularly fearsome as post-modern Calibans, and I feel confident in their prowess to repel any stealth attacks by insurgent Dayak tribes in the remaining jungle nights. |
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Trek Day 6. Another tough day today. Even the porters are getting tired, and we are all now more focused on getting out than on appreciating the splendour of our surroundings. The rainforest is so splendidly lush, from the near-total coverage at ground level right up to the upper canopy which must stretch 70 metres or more above our heads. Eric reckons that if our path were not used, then it would disappear completely within a year, and this wouldn't surprise me such is the vigour of the rainforest. It is a remarkable environment, and even more remarkable to think that what we are now looking at, smelling, touching is pretty much the same as it was millions of years ago. Some of our resting spots have been idylls - limpid rockpools guarded by sheer lichen-covered cliffs, all to the sight and sound of the bubbling stream in the youth that will eventually mature into the great Kapuas and Mahakan rivers 800km and more from here. But this splendour hides a harsh and unforgiving nature which, like the sea, is indifferent to our petty desire to survive it - as I know intimately from my many cursings of its evil slimy rocks. As WB Yeats said of Ireland, it is a terrible beauty. |
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  Trek
Day 7. Fittingly, our last morning of trekking is under a heavy and
persistent rain. For some reason, this gets me madly singing early Van
Morrison - "The Way that Young Lovers Do" and "What Jackie
Wilson Said" in a mauling of that rasping saxophone voice. Perhaps
the rain reminds me of Belfast. But at least I spare the jungle my
taste-rending rendition of Danny Boy, which it has done nothing to
deserve. |
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All this is fading. Alex says that despite the rigours we'll all be back, and in my welcome - but bland - luxury of mattress and roof I can somehow believe this. It would be a shame to let all that richness simply dilute into the purple haze of distant memory. |
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I had thought
that the only true terror that the jungle would hold for me would be that
of Jason's snoring, but this soon proves optimistic. Whilst often we can
wade knee- or thigh-deep through the river, or cut across the jungle paths
to meet it again after its meanderings, sometimes we are forced to clamber
across the steep and slippery black rocks that form the riverbank. Often
these are a few metres high and at a 70 degree angle or more, and at first
glance look sheer. As you look more closely, however, you can see the
undulations that give enough grip to manufacture a path across. Our guide
Alex and our eight porters make this look easy, but I'm terrified of
slipping and falling to a murky doom in the river, or at least of breaking
a leg. A serious accident now - or worse, in a couple of days when we're
at our most remote - would have potentially serious consequences as there
would be no way out other than being carried out across this very
difficult terrain. These thoughts of an agonisingly slow death mean that I
take these rocky sections very slowly indeed, and develop a festering
hatred for the evil slimy things, a hatred nurtured at each tortuous step,
any of which could be the step of doom.
Two outrunners swim across the tempestuous flow with a line and fix one
end to a riverbank tree root. Darmudiono then swims back to our side with
the line between his teeth. Meantime, Alex directs the construction of two
makeshift vessels made of the plastic sheets we slept on, into which our
luggage is loaded. One by one, these vessels are tied to the line and
hauled across the river, amazingly with no losses contrary to my gloomy
and unhelpful predictions. Finally, two porters on each side brace
themselves against rocks to create a lifeline which we inept Western
tourists use to haul ourselves across. For much of the passage we are out
of our depth in a raging torrent. This makes Udi Lokang's earlier languid
crossing by doggy-paddle all the more humiliating, as he availed himself
of the opportunity to puff constantly on his ever-dry Marlboro.
The porters are paid around $6 a day plus ciggies and rations, and are
increasingly proving to be amazingly hardworking, helpful and suffering
from what I can only assume to be some form of jungle madness. As they
leap from rock to rock in their underpants, or tactfully help us across
the trickier patches, they maintain a constant banter - usually in
Indonesian, but sometimes in (very!) rudimentary English or various animal
noises, predominantly monkey and jungle chicken. They are mostly in their
teens or twenties, and see life as a great big adventure, grasping what it
presents and making of it what they can. This commitment to getting stuck
in, together with the good humour and skill with which they do it, is
refreshing and quite inspiring.
I make the acquaintance of my first leeches today. Their anticoagulant
helps produce plenty of blood, creating a rather elegant tie-dyed effect
as it seeps tenderly into the yielding folds of my saffron shirt.
Lunch today consists of fresh fish, caught by the guys using nets and
masks. Hilarity as Darmudiono presents them with theatrical slendour for
our approval before Alex turns them into a delicious soup to complement
our staple diet of rice and noodles.
As I sit here in Tiong Ohang, our Wild West village a couple of hours
downstream from the jungle, already the memories of our experience are
fading. The lush, vast, uncompromising splendour of the rainforest, the
constant wetness from head to foot, the ritual leech cullings, the
chlling cries of "Sampai Mati!", the heaviness of limb over rock and tree-trunk, the peace
of the river bathings and the outrageous luxury of dry night clothes, the
horror of Jason's tonsils, the total exhaustion and Zen-like trances
during the rest stops, the epic river crossing of Day 2.