Lately there has been a boom of news and TV programs about people getting lost in the jungle, dying, or just barely surviving. That made me think back to one of the most perilous experiences I've had myself. I am blessed with a decent sense of direction, but getting lost in the jungle can happen more easily than you think.
November 2000. We had planned to cross Sumatra from south to north. I had travelled a lot in Asia, but I had never been in such a vast and sparsely populated area. Besides long-distance night buses (which I avoided) there was hardly any public transport. And if there was, it was slow and unreliable. In one town we waited three mornings in a row along the side of the road before a van actually left. And three times we got off a bus at dusk, well before our destination, in order to find a hotel by daylight.
Sparsely populated it was.
So we progressed with difficulty and slower than planned and
were spending more time on the go, than enjoying the beautiful places. But in the town of Sungai Panui (Sungai
Penuh) in the Kerinci valley we allowed ourselves a break for a couple of days.  |
| View from the valley to the hills |
Around the Kerinci valley was the Kerinci National Park, an
area of hundreds of kilometers. A walk in
the jungle would be great, but we did not do irresponsible things, so first we
went to inquire at the NP headquarters. Where could you take a nice walk, and what about transportation to the starting point and a
guide? A group of rangers explained the
different possibilities. The area where
we had driven through on the bus from Tapan, appealed to us. One of the rangers said he had a car to drive
there and was willing to be our guide.
For him it probably was a little extra on the side.
He went home to get a car, his brother's blue mini pickup truck,
that had no first gear and hardly any brakes. We parked 15km away, at a small eatery along the way. At 10 o'clock we went out, first ten minutes on the road, and then onto a path. The path soon became worse, and the forest thicker. There were so many branches, ferns and thorny bushes on the path that I had to walk with my head bent down, sometimes it was almost crawling. It seemed a kind of tunnel between / among dense fern bushes. Being the tallest of the three I suffered most, and it took away the pleasure in the walk and the surroundings.
After an hour we had a discussion: to return or to find
better trails? I didn't want to be a
spoilsport and stop too soon, so we tried to make clear to our guide that he should
find us better paths; he seemed to
understand.
But after another 30 minutes, he seemed less and less sure
of himself, retracing his steps regularly. We made it clear that now we really wanted to get back to the main
road. Yes, follow me, this way, he
gestured. We asked explicitly
whether he knew where the road was, he said we must trust in Allah. That is when I lost faith
in him. Where we walked couldn't be called a path. All
the time we had to push our way through the creepers, brambles and
undergrowth. When I saw on my compass that
we constantly changed directions and were just zigzagging, I began to
worry. I knew he did not know the way
back, but I had not paid attention myself how we had walked. Normally I would always know the same way
back, but not now. After all, we had an
official ranger of the park management organization with us. Can you do better?
Not knowing what else to do, we followed our guide again. He
pointed to a hill top, and said over there he would certainly be able to see the
road. Meanwhile, this was absolutely not a path, it was a battle with the vegetation that was
giving us bleeding scratches and torn clothes.
It was really scary when we ended up on top of a layer of ferns covering
the underbrush, meters above the ground. Every now and then a branch would break or you'd stumble, and drop down a
meter. The idea to break or even just sprain
your ankle was terrifying.
Our guide admitted that he was familiar with another part of
the forest, but in fact had never been in this area. If only we had known sooner! He talked about sleeping in the woods, hoping
that they would come looking for us tomorrow.
But who would actually miss us and who knew in what area we had gone for
this walk? And how much of an operation
would a possible search be? By now I was
really worried how this would end.
After a tough journey of about three quarters of an hour
that covered about 100 meters, we were on the hilltop where the guide had put
his hopes on. In vain. We saw the rain arrive over the next ridge.  |
| Kerinci National Park |
Now it was clear that our guide had no clue, it was time to
take matters into our own hands. And our
guide was grateful for that. In the sand
we drew the mountainside west of the valley. If we would walk steadily to the east, we had to encounter something somewhere. Weak point of the plan was that it could be
10 or 20 km, and we might cover just 250m per hour through the bush. That could take 4 to 8 days. Four days we should be able to keep going
without food, shouldn't we? I chose the direction, south east, because I thought the road had to be south of us. In any case, it seemed a straight line had to
be better than running around in
circles. However hard it was it by now,
we took turns cheering each other up.
After a while, again we were standing in front of fern
forest that we would have to cross high in the canopy. A horrible prospect. We heard water and planned to follow it downstream
- that had to lead somewhere, didn't it?. The
descent was very dangerous, the lower we got the muddier and more
slippery it got. So either you slid down or you were sucked into the
mud. After about 20 minutes we arrived
at the river, a narrow, fast-flowing stream, and I was happy to wash the blood
off my face. But the vegetation was so
dense that it would be impossible to follow. Moreover, it ran to the north,
intuitively the wrong direction.
There was no other choice than to climb back up the slope. Clinging
from one trunk to the other. After
roughly an hour we were back at the place where we had come up with the river
plan. So we had to switch back to the
original plan: the straightest possible line to the south east. Our guide had long ago switched to "follow" mode. Personally, I felt already better to at least
have a plan, and not aimlessly drift after him. When we rested on a soft heap of fern leaves, and forgot that it was going
to rain soon, it felt we could hold on for a while.
In the meantime I was pretty exhausted. We were, after all, fighting through scrub
and up and down steep slopes. Lianas grabbed
you all the time: sometimes around your feet so you stumbled, sometimes around your
body so you had to pull them apart to detach yourself.
The guide searched for broken twigs, so sometimes we walked
on a relatively passable animal track (but always lost it again) while I was overseeing
the predominant direction to remain south, as far as the terrain allowed. Actually we had developed a good division of
labor.
At one point I saw a beautiful single mushroom in the grass,
which I was certain to have seen before.
If that was true there would soon be a thorny tree trunk on the right, on
a place where we were still on some sort of path, many hours ago. Indeed came the spiked stem, and although the
guide had already passed it, I called him back and insisted to turn left, to go
south. Suddenly it looked as if we were
going to come home today! What a
relief! Almost immediately the
long-awaited rainstorm erupted. Had that
come before I thought that we would get out, I don't think I had managed to
keep up my spirits.
 |
| Thorny tree trunk |
Back to the diner, I took off my clothes and hung my shirt to dry by the fire while we drank a cup of hot coffee.
Our guide took us back to town. We insisted to go by the now almost deserted
office. Although we knew not to expect
western standards, we were outraged by the irresponsible and dangerous
situation in which the guide had put us, so we wanted to complain to the NP
office. If only to prevent future
recurrence. To what extent we succeeded
in was doubtful, but the message that we were very unhappy came about.
Like vagabonds we walked through town back to the
hotel. Dirty, wet, wounded and in torn
clothes. The hotel staff came running
with thermos of hot water to our room! The scratches on face, arms and legs remained painful for days.
Really, you do not need to do very strange or very stupid
things to get lost in the jungle. The vastness
and desolation is easy to underestimate.
* November 2000 - August 2001 - April/June 2016 *
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