Sorry for the Group Email

Taman Negara is the world’s oldest jungle. It’s been dated at 130 million years old, but more than that, it’s the world’s oldest continuous jungle. Most tropical jungles were interrupted by the minor matter of the last ice age, but Taman Negara, courtesy of its proximity to the equator, missed it entirely, making it genuinely prehistoric. Now it’s a Malaysian national park, protected, in theory, from the development and destruction affecting so many of Malaysia’s other woodland. It covers more than 4,000 square kilometres, and came within a whisker of destruction in the late 70s, when the government nearly executed a plan to dam the Sungei Tembeling river.

Now, of course, you can wander through it, although arranging a trek in the jungle proved tricky. While Thailand, only a few hours’ north, has an undeniable surplus of tourists, Malaysia seemed less popular. Most treks in Taman Negara require a minimum of four people, and there was no stampede of people to come and join us. In the end, we paid for three people on our tour: us, and a non-existent third person. For south-east Asia, jungle trekking is expensive: for two days’ hiking (albeit including food), we paid close to US$200.

Our money bought us the services of E’e (no, I don’t think the spelling’s close either, but the pronunciation is). E’e was a cheerful Malay fellow with a backpack the size of an eight-year old child. I instantly determined that no matter how hard the trek was, it would leave me feeling deeply inadequate. E’e was carrying not only his own gear, but a pair of spare gas cylinders, food for the three of us for 24 hours, and, I suspect, a first aid kit for when we got ourselves into trouble.

Our own gear wasn’t to be sniffed at. Our big backpacks went into storage, but we were carrying, on the advice of the Lonely Planet, a spare set of clothes that we would die to keep dry, insect repellent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, a penknife, a torch and a kilograms-worth of camera equipment. Neither bag was particularly heavier than the other, and I imagine each one would have tipped the scales at around the 8kg mark.

The day started gently. We hopped in a longboat to the park headquarters for our accreditation (not just anyone can hike in the oldest jungle in the world), and then for ten minutes up the river to the jungle canopy. The top fifth of a jungle is where it all happens, botanically-speaking. By the time leaves and flowers reach the floor of a jungle they’re already dead: the best place to see them is from the top. To that end, there’s a 45-foot high walkway strung between the trees. There’s probably some pretty interesting vegetation up there, but it was hard to tell with my knuckles turning white and my eyes squeezed shut. 45 feet is very high indeed, and what with the walkway being made out of rope with a ladder tied in at the bottom for a minimum amount of stability, it moves around a lot. So mostly I kept my eyes turned towards the floor.

“Right,” I would think, “if I fall now, I’ll twist my body to the left to avoid those branches, and aim for that soft pile of leaves.”

It wouldn’t have mattered, of course, but it was nice to have a plan.

By the time we got to the bottom of the canopy again, we were exhausted, and frankly ready to go home. Instead, we climbed in the boat and set sail up the river.

The river was very nearly deserted. We saw a few other tourist boats, but we were largely on our own. We shot up against the rapids, and at one point saw a monitor lizard, slowly creeping away into the shadow of the forest.

At one point E’e pointed out a small collection of houses on the left bank of the river. “That’s where we arrive tomorrow,” he shouted over the buzz of the outboard engine.

With every quarter of an hour that passed from that moment, our hearts sank. We carried on up the river for a little more than an hour, until we hopped off at another small settlement. Taman Negara gets quite busy during the high season, E’e explained, but as it was, everything was deserted; it was quite likely that we wouldn’t see another person for the next day.

This is quite an eerie thought. Taman Negara is big. It covers, more than 4,000 square kilometres, and is incredibly densely packed with trees. If you got lost there – and people do – the chances, it seemed, would half with every hour that passed. E’e told us the story of a Malay girl who went trekking, got separated from her group, and spent 19 foodless days in the jungle until another tour group chanced upon and rescued her.

We set off into the jungle. We saw bird spiders and heard more monitor lizards crashing away from us into the undergrowth. We saw fresh elephant tracks leading away from us and trees that could have their branches hacked off to reveal surprisingly large reserves of water within.

We hiked in one-hour bursts, with fifteen-minute breaks in between. Within half an hour my shirt was soaked through with sweat: the temperature was in the mid-80s and the humidity had climbed to the same. My camera, which was behaving increasingly temperamentally, blinked on and off depending on whether the power switch was rudely flicked on or gently handled into the “On” position.

The trail we were following was not the kind of trail you find in the New Forest. Instead of being made by the frequent passage of humans, with their obligingly small feet, it had been made by elephants. The paths were surprisingly narrow, and at times we would reach a fallen tree trunk with a diameter the same as the wheel from a monster truck. We would heave ourselves over or under it: where we did the latter I would invariably smash my head against it as I came up on the other side.

The worst thing, though, were the leeches. Leeches are a kind of cosmic joke at the expense of jungle walkers, and we did battle with them for seven ignominious hours. Leeches are ordinarily about the size of short worms, and they sit around on the damp jungle floor. For them, the pinnacle of their existence is when a fresh, juicy mammal wanders past. When that happens, they stand bolt upright, straining against an invisible breeze in the hope that a leg will brush past them. They moved surprisingly fast, bounding across the jungle floor whenever we saw down. Once attached, removal is unpleasant. Pulling just results in them clinging on more tightly to the skin, twisting results in gory wounds that bleed at length. The best method, we discovered, was a strong flick, which sent them pinging into the shrubbery. We found leeches on our ankles and calves; on the soft undersides of our forearms, and on our necks and backs. The wounds they left behind them bled abundantly. But more than the blood or the tiny spikes of pain they left behind them, leeches are a gothic-style abomination. We couldn’t feel them, even when they were on us, and we would noisily discover wounds that we hadn’t previously noticed. Leeches move deviously and deceitfully towards their mark; they are stealthy and secretive, even when attached, limpet-style, to your legs.

Once, I walked along the banks of the Thames. I started from our flat and walked past the Houses of Parliament and Battersea, eventually ending up in the leafy peace of Richmond.

The total distance, as the bird flies, was about 12 miles. But the Thames doesn’t run agreeably from west to east: it struggles and flicks its tail like a worm pinned in the middle, and by the time I arrived in Richmond I had covered perhaps 20 miles.

That first day in Taman Negara, we covered 8km. We were exhausted. We were also wet and bloodied. I had lumps on my head from the tree trunks and a particularly gruesome leech bite just above my sock line which refused to stop bleeding.

We reached a cave which when not occupied by hikers, E’e told us, was used for shelter by elephants. Elephants, like virtually every other large mammal you might meet in a jungle, are to be avoided. They’re fairly friendly creatures, in as much as they don’t want you for dinner, but an elephant trampling would be unpleasant whether the pachyderm in question meant you harm or not.

Before long we had a roaring campfire, and E’e was making rice and curry for us on a gas cooker. We wondered whether he’d ever seen big wildlife in the jungle.

“No,” he said. “Some people come and want to see animal, but Taman Negara is not a zoo.”

What about tigers?

Suddenly his face fell and he was serious.

“No. And I never want to.”

As we finished eating, silence fell on our cave. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get a good night’s sleep on the floor of a jungle cave, listening to the cacophonic noises of the outside world – predators, prey and a million creepy-crawlies – but it isn’t easy.

Before I went to sleep I went outside – ablutions happen, after all – and only made it as far as perhaps 30 feet from the fire. In the light of my torch, the recesses of our cave took on immense and terrifyingly dark proportions. My mind’s eye saw eyes watching me from every angle, and imagined vast predators waiting for me to pass. Eager to look anywhere else, I turned my eyes upwards. Clinging to the roof of the cave, which was as high as a cathedral, were dozens of large, black, elliptically-shaped rodents. Every now and then there would be a movement, and a high-pitched squeak as a bat dropped from over my head and left the cave to find food. It was genuinely terrifying. Ashamed, I refused to go out unless someone held my hand. Luckily, Mendy said yes. I’m not sure what E’e would have made of it.

After what may have been hours, we dozed off, only to be jerked awake again by a peculiar snuffling noise. With shaking hands I pulled my torch from my shoe and turned it on. A civet cat was eating our rice.

A civet cat isn’t exactly king of the jungle. If you saw it on a wildlife show, it would be a five minute segment, in between captivating shots of lions dozing in the shade and leopards eviscerating a gazelle. A civet cat, by contrast, is about the size of a Labrador and has a peculiarly long snout, which gives it a rather dozy, dog-like appearance. But if you saw one in the half-light, less than 10 feet away from you, and you didn’t know what a civet cat was, you’d be as scared as we were. When things are dark and your jungle guide is sleeping soundly, a civet cat is as terrifying as a tiger. What would happen when it finished the rice, we wondered? Would it take a fancy to us and chase us all over our cave? Perhaps it would wait until we were asleep and fillet us then. Maybe it would involuntarily bring other, larger animals to our cave.

We sat up, wrapped in our sleeping bags and shining our torch straight at the cat, praying that it would leave. It indifferently finished the rice and slunk off into the darkness.

Later I awoke to complete darkness. The candle lit by E’e and our roaring campfire were both extinguished. The gloom was total. The only sense available to us was sound, and in the jungle there’s enough of that for a nervous imagination to run riot, seeing and imagining all kinds of disturbing and violent deaths. Thereafter we awoke automatically every hour to rekindle the fire and light another candle. At one point I awoke and had the distinct impression of tiny shapes running about the food bag in the dark. Rats, six inches long and fat in the middle, were running about the sleeping bags.

It wasn’t the best preparation for another 8km hike, but that’s what was in store for us the next day.

Our clothes mostly dry (but my boots, which have taken to leaking, wet), but our bags just as heavy as they had been the day before and our spirits somewhat trodden, we set off down the trail. Day two was similar to day one, with the added burden of knowing that our feet were bleeding into our socks. The leeches resumed their vicious war of attrition, and we spent four exhausting hours chasing across the jungle, wholeheartedly pushing ourselves to our physical limit so as not to miss our boat. Another night in the jungle might have been more than we could have borne.

In the jungle you cannot see anything. We kept up a ferocious pace, and so didn’t look around us much, and even if we had we wouldn’t have been able to see anything. The vegetation pushes in from all sides, and even so, the odds of seeing significant wildlife are stacked against you. Going to the jungle and expecting to see big cats is like going to LA and expecting to meet Dustin Hoffman. If you want to see film stars you go to the cinema. If you want to see substantially-sized wildlife and not be in mortal danger, you go to the zoo.

At five in the evening, an hour late and to the sound of a nervously-gunned boat engine, we emerged from the jungle. The bright daylight shone down on us and the river splashed happily past us. We flicked off the last of our leeches and climbed happily into our boat. The effort expended on a mere 16km had been herculean: at times it had felt considerably more like army training than something you’d spend $200 on. But the achievement was huge. 16km over two days doesn’t sound like much, but until you’ve done it under a backpack, in relentless temperatures and humidity, and with the added torture of a mentally exhausting evening, it’s difficult to appreciate just how glad we were to be in the boat. A trek like ours is recommended just for the feeling at the end – a state of quite delirious fatigue. Just to be sitting down was one thing, to be heading to a café and a bus to Kuala Lumpur was quite another.

LINKS: Now you’ve read that, how about one of these?

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Out of an actual jungle and into an urban one. Click here to see how we got on in one of the world’s most polluted cities. Also: staying in Young Women’s Christian Association Hotels for beginners.

Singapore. So it’s Asia megacities you’re after, is it? Click here to find out whether we got arrested in the world’s most rule-bound city.

Mount Bromo, Indonesia. Hikers rejoice: not all of Asian hiking resembles death marches. Mount Bromo offers a far gentler pace and infinitely better views. Find out how to get there here, then find out where to stay and when to walk here.

Taman Negara reference site, for those planning on going.

Dave is still nursing a leech bite just above his ankle. There are a few pictures in the Flickr set, if injuries are your thing.