In March 2002, I received the following e-mail from Hazmi, who'd read the story Into the Jungle and Beyond and decided to check out the trail for themselves: Hi Joe,After reading your article, "A ride into the jungle… and beyond". The 6 of us decided to go into the Ulu Langat Forest Reserve trail. Being complete idiots, each of us relied on the other to read up your article before going in. Unfortunately we only scanned through it and were more interested in the pictures that accompanied your article.
In the end, we were in the trail for approximately 7 hours, unprepared and ill-equipped. Maybe you can edit and put the below article in your nice KL Mountain Bike Website.....:) coz' the ending is pretty amazing.
Thanks very much
Hazmi
And god helped us…
Foolish and a potentially disastrous trip were saved by weather and a mysterious villager
By Hazmi YusofRelated pages: | A ride into the jungle... and beyond | Trailguide |
Take inexperience and add ignorance and you have a recipe for disaster. There were six of us in the group: Alex, Ira, Reime, Zaid, Zafril and me. Zafril and Reime had never been on a mountain bike before. Zafril had a major ankle surgery and this was his first physical activity in six months. Four of us had actually gone out partying the night before. We had brought with us limited amount of water and no food. We all went into the trail at 9:30am and the last one to come out was at 6:22pm. As we did not read the trail report correctly, we assumed that the trail had to end at the same place we parked our car.
Problems started from the start. Reime, who borrowed the lightweight Kona bike from a friend, did not service the bike and the chain was rusty and the gears needed a good service. He could not shift the gears and the chain came off the bracket many times slowing us down. And in the confusion, I managed to lose my precious Briko shades that would protect me from all the branches and other nasty plants sticking out along the trail. The trail started with an energy sapping slow uphill climb. The morning sun on our backs did not help either. We were all excited in a group and did not want to turn back even though we ran out of water and the sun right above our heads. Ira, Zaid and Alex were all confident and optimistic that the trail will lead us back to our cars. "Raju's Tosai is waiting for us at the end of the trail," commented Ira. That was 11:30am.
The trail itself was no easy trail as one would get in places like FRIM. It was blocked by fallen trees and branches. On many occasions, we had to carry our bikes over it. Thick mud and deep holes covered by leaves and dense vegetation covered many parts of the trails. We managed to reach the highest point of the trail at about 12:00pm. There was a can of 100Plus placed onto a broken tree branch. We assumed that it was a marking for the highest and the halfway point. "Great, we are at the peak and it's all downhill from now", enthused Zaid. We then descended downhill for about 30 minutes. Some of us were showing off how fast we can go and had a few amateur-like crashes. We were all confident that we would be at Raju's by 1pm and enjoy some wicked curry tosai.
That thought quickly disappeared as we approached another hill. An even steeper one than the one we struggled up earlier. By then we were thirsty and tired. The sun was blazing down on us and we had no shade climbing up the hill. We had to stop as Zafril developed cramps on both his legs. Things were not looking so good. Out of desperation, Reime climbed down a 20-foot ravine to take some water from a little stream. And some of us actually drank the water. Typhoid and malaria is something that is not of great importance at that point in time. We were all exhausted from the hill climb. We then decided to vote whether we should turn back or go on. Majority voted to go on, the thought of a 3 hours ride back is too much to bear.
Upon reaching the top of the hill, we found a signboard. Sector 3, Compartment 31, Lalang River Forest Reserve were all Greek to us. At this point we decided that Zaid would be our hare, a reconnaissance man if you like, and break away from the group to see the trail condition ahead and would call us back on our mobile phones. We assumed that this was the best way to communicate back to the group as there was Maxis coverage. Common sense would tell us that once we start to go downhill we might not have any signal. So Zaid the Hare went on and we did not receive any calls or heard from him for about 45 minutes. We thought that he had made it out of the trail but could not call us as there was no mobile coverage.
We were all resting as Zafril's cramps got pretty bad. We were lying on our backs and were about to fall asleep when he heard Zaid's distant desperate wailing. The gutsy Zaid came across a fork and had gone into both trails and found dead-ends. The left trail was a complete dead end while the other trail led to a waterfall and what looked to be like very old, unused trail. Zaid decided to wait at the beginning of the fork for the rest of us to get there. He began to feel anxious as time passed by. He started calling our names out loud. "I was close to tears and 5 minutes away from a nervous breakdown waiting for you guys" he lamented later. Zaid then led us to the waterfall. Everyone then jumped into the cold water. We were ecstatic. We were in there for a good 20 minutes. We thought that we were 15 minutes from the exit.
We decided to take the right trail, as that was what Joe Adnan wrote in the trail report. Of course, nobody really read Joe Adnan's report. As in his report, he turned back 5km into the trail. Only his partner bewitched by an "orang bunian"/spirits, encountered a fork and opted for the right one which led her out of the trail. Confused with Joe Adnan's trail report, we opted for the old overgrown trail. It hardly looked like a trail. We pushed our bikes for about 10meters. What we encountered was an old hut and an old "kain pelekat" hanging on a tree. There was a strong urine stench surrounding the hut. Ira then made a comment that made me want to turn back and cycle as fast as I can. "I don't think a small animal can make a strong smell like this one". There I was, I can barely manage my thirst, hunger and exhaustion. Now to have a "big animal" in the equation is an additional load I do not want to deal with. We then retreated back to the waterfall to plot our next cause of action. Most of us wanted to turn back and follow the same trail back. Ira was convinced that a few hundred meters after the urine stench footpath is the end of the trail and into civilisation. His "gut feel" obviously work in the pubs and clubs but does not work in the tropical jungle.
It took us 4 ˝ hours with water and energy to spare to get where we were and now we had to turn back with no water and hardly any energy left. The thought of all the exciting downhill descent that we had to climb again was very painful. At 2:45pm we turned back. We estimated that we would come out between 6 to 6:30pm. I appointed myself as The Hare for the trip back. My aim was to come out 15 to 20 minutes before the rest of them, and drive to a nearby Ostrich farm and buy lots of cold drinks and food. We have god to thank as the weather played its part in getting us back safely. The weather was perfect. The scorching afternoon sun was absent. If it were present, it would have drained what little energy we had left in us. Instead, the weather was gloomy. There was thunderstorm and it looked like it would rain at any time. It if rained, we would have been in trouble too. Rain would have covered the holes and uneven surface on the trail, will make it extremely slippery and heavy. Luckily for us, it only drizzled on some section of the trail.
I was way ahead of the rest of them and I targeted to be out there by 5pm. Halfway climbing one of the many hills, I could hardly stand upright. So I pushed the bicycle down to the side and lay on the ground. Exhaustion got the better of me and was asleep for fifteen minutes. I got up and continued uphill for another 500 meters and I felt like my legs were turning into jelly. I thought that I have nothing left in me. I needed more sleep. The thought of falling asleep and waking up in the middle of the night was a scary thought but I just no strength to push on. Again I pushed the bike to one side and lay on the ground-ignoring ants as big as Greek olives around me.
And this time I slept for twenty minutes. I could not get myself to get up and continue. My body refused to move. It was a tug of war between the mind and the body. I kept imagining my wife and mother teaming up and nag me to deaf if I did not come home by nightfall. . That worked. At 4pm, I managed to get over the last hill climb. It was downhill from then on. It gave me an added impetus. The downhill ride took me nearly an hour. I had difficulty concentrating and fell off the bike several times. Instead of feeling the adrenaline pumping when negotiating a downhill hairpin corner, I was fighting hard to stay awake. I could hear noises coming from the bushes. It was scary. I don't want to get bitten by wild monkeys or worse, wild boars. That helped kept what little concentration I had. Shortly after, I saw an opening that looked like the end of the trail. I was so relieved to see an Open Frontera parked next to the fishing ponds.
Instead of taking a rest, I placed the bicycle onto the CRV and drank a bottle of mineral water to relieve my thirst and drove straight out to look for drinks and food for the rest of the group. That was the only think that I could think about. I came back within 10 minutes with the supplies only to realise that I only bought 3 bottles of water. I placed the drinks on the other car and drove out to buy more drinks. When I came back I saw Zaid coming out of the trail. 15 minutes later at 5:30, Ira came out. He was in a bad shape. He injured his finger badly from a fall and got stung by a bee. At 5:50, Zafril came out. And 5 minutes later, Reime. Zafril left Alex on the trail. Alex could not carry on and told Zafril to go on without him and come back with help. "Alex is 40 minutes behind me when he decided that he had nothing left in him" explained Zafril. It was apparent that somebody got to go in and help Alex. The time was 6:20 pm.
We were running out of daylight. Soon it would be dark. If we were to call the police, god knows how long before they start their search & rescue mission.
I decided to go back into the trail to look for Alex as soon as Zaid comes back with more drinks. The plan was that I would run back into the jungle using Ira's Nike Presto. My butt was way too sore to cycle back in. I would give myself twenty minutes to look for Alex before we would run out of daylight and I would have to turn back. I was scared but there is no way I would leave my friend, Alex behind. I know how he feels to be in there. It's a claustrophobic feeling. You feel that the jungle will close in on you and swallow you. Nobody gets left behind! Sounds like a Vietnam war movie but that's exactly how I felt. We were all anxiously waiting for Zaid to come back with the extra supplies. Time was running out. At 6:22pm, Alex coolly rode out into the open field. Zafril and I quickly ran out to him as he dismounted from the bicycle. He looked fine for someone who had no energy to walk about 40 minutes earlier. He slowly drank the F&N orange I gave him and then hugged Zafril. The two of them were the last on the trail before Zafril left him and had gone through a lot together.
I then asked Alex how he managed to ride out in such a short time since he was 40 minutes behind Zafril and had nothing left in him. "After Zafril left me, I took a 15-minute nap. I woke up and walked a few paces and met up with a guy on a Kap Chai motorcycle. He gave me some drinks and a bar of chocolate. I needed the sugar for energy. I then when on my bike and here I am", explained Alex. I felt that the timing did not tally. If Alex was 40 minutes behind Zafril, and took a 15-minute nap, that would make the gap between them 55 minutes. Zafril came out at 5:50pm and Alex at 6:22pm. That means that Alex must have rode twice the speed of Zafril to come out at the time that he did. If Zafril were to ride downhill at a conservative speed of 30 km/h, would it be possible for Alex to be going downhill on an extremely uneven and bumpy surface at 60 km/h?
Conclusion
This trail has only one way in and there is no other trail joining it. With the uneven surface, one needs a motorcross bike to ride the trail. The person also has to carry his motorbike over the many fallen trees and branches, which is physically impossible (perhaps not for The Rock but it to an average Malaysian villager). Then there is the question of why someone would ride a motorbike in there. There is absolutely nothing in there, as we found out the hard way. And what are the chances of a local carrying chocolate wrapped in gold foil? What are the chances of meeting a chocolate-eating villager? It is like meeting a Texas Ranger carrying "kuih lapis". Also, because of the timing between the riders, at least one of us should have spotted the mysterious guy on the Kap Chai going into or out of the trail. It just does not add up. Many older folks believe that there are spirits living in the jungle. One has to think that was God's will that Alex got out of there the way he did.I now have great intimacy with my little GT Zaskar Race. Before the trip, I was contemplating to replace it with a full suspension Giant but now I would feel like I am betraying a faithful friend. I am amazed how with the amount of trashing the hardtail went through, it still held together. I have rewarded it with a new bottle cage and bar-ends. Perhaps I should threat the little fella by giving it a new set of rims/tyres.
In a situation of great distress, one could experience friends turning against each other, finger pointing and getting on each other's back. Instead the six of us experienced the camaraderie, the human spirit. We did not lose any of the sense of humour, making each other laugh and encouraging one another. We joked and called ourselves Band of Brothers. Saying that, we were extremely foolish to be in that situation to begin with.
