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recent
It was a nightmare journey - perhaps the most unpleasant journey I have ever done. I had not realized that in the Malayan jungle a mile on the map may mean four or five miles on the ground and that without a track it may take several hours to cover a single mile. Nor did I realize that though a footpath may be marked on the map, it would be completely grown over in a year unless it is kept open by regular use and cutting - and our maps, excellent though they were, were more than ten years out of date.
In the absence of any path the valley of the river provided the worst possible going. The watercourse itself was too deep and rough to follow, and the sides were so steep and so covered with bamboo, thorns, atap (this word is also used for the type of palm used for thatching), and thickets of every kind that our progress was lamentably slow. As soon as the ground was wet we found it almost impossible to keep a footing on the steep traverses, and our hands were torn with clutching at twigs to prevent falling.
The first night found us still beside the Sungei Sempan. We camped on a sandbank several feet above the waterline, as it was the only more or less level place we could find. When we undressed to bathe in the river, we found many bloated leeches stuck to various parts of our bodies. I had been bitten round the waist and neck, since the foul creatures, being unable to get at my legs, had worked their way up my clothes until they could find an opening. I had pulled off scores during the day and did not know any had crawled through until I felt the blood running down my chest. Harvey was very badly bitten about the ankles and hands. He had been using a stick and the leeches had crawled up it to reach their favorite of all places - the weblike flesh between the bases of the fingers. Sartin had also been bitten all over the legs, as they had crawled through the eye-holes of his boots and through the folds of his puttees.
The rain continued, and with some difficulty we managed to make a fire. Harvey had said that bamboo, however wet, will always burn. This is true only when you have once kindled a fire, and I had yet to learn that one must always take a piece of rubber or resin to start the fire. Since our packs were so heavy, we ate up as much of the tinned rations as we could. We then cut a pile of branches to sleep on and made a lean-to-shelter out of our three groundsheets. The rain was coming down harder than ever and we went to bed soaking wet and very miserable. During the night it rained very heavily indeed and the river rose so rapidly that, finding ourselves on an island, we had top strike camp and cross a roaring torrent to the bank, where we sat shivering disconsolately until daylight.
Next day was purgatory. We wasted half a box of matches before we could persuade the sodden bamboo to light; the it started to rain again and we had to give up the attempt to dry our clothes.
To some, the jungle seems predominately hostile, being full of man-eating tigers, deadly fevers, venomous snakes and scorpions, natives with poisoned darts, and a host of half-imagined nameless terrors. The other school of thought, that the jungle teems with wild animals, fowls, and fish which are simply there for the taking, and that the luscious tropical fruits - paw-paw, yams, breadfruit and all that -drop from the trees, is equally misleading.
The truth is that the jungle is neutral. It provides any amount of fresh water, and unlimited cover for friend as well as foe - an armed neutrality, if you like, but neutral nevertheless. It is the attitude of mind that determines whether you go under or survive. 'there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' The jungle itself is neutral.
I wish.... I wish I had written that, and I wish the jungle treck was so dramatic. In fact, everything above is slightly adapted from The Jungle is Neutral, a great book I picked up in the Singapore airport to read on the way home. The book itself was a timely find in that it tells the story of a British soldier living in the jungles of Malaysia, fighting the Japanese invaders. I highly recomend it. (and if you are in Tokyo, I can sell it to you used)
My jungle treck was not near as dramatic, although it was great. I highly recommend that too. There was no rain, which also meant that the leeches weren't as bad (I only had trouble after we had set up camp and I changed into my flip-flops).
I will write more about my jungle adventures very soon, but for now I am tired from copying all them words you sees above, and I am sure you is tired from reading them.
Unfortunatly, I didn't get any good photos from the jungle. It's not easy to hack your way through underbrush with a camera around your neck so I didn't take it out often. (It is also quite dark in the jungle.)
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