Jungle mayhem

So our next stop was Miri. 

Main street of Miri

Our rather skanky room in Miri (but it did have AC)

The Best Dal Ever!

Temple in Miri

We got the monorail to the train to KL International airport where we boarded our small Malaysian Airline plane to Miri. The flight was about 2 & ½ hrs which included a full meal. This turned out to be normal on such a short flight. They'll get a meal in whenever they can!  We then took a taxi into the rather sleepy town of Miri where we spent the evening walking around & eating the Best Dal Ever (It really was, and cost about $1.00.
We saw an amazing temple here too. 
Our hotel was a bit grim but had AC at least. We were looking forward to the next day when we’d finally be getting into the jungle

We boarded another small Malaysian airline plane to Mulu which took only ½ hr, & once we arrived were greeted by Bagley who was to be our guide for our climb up the Pinnacles. We sent our main backpack via cargo to Limbang while we were at the airport as we didn’t really want to be hiking around with it.

Our plane to Mulu

Borneo

Bagley took us to The River Lodge which was a small boarding house just outside Mulu Park & which was the only place we could get accommodation for that first night.



River Lodge



River Lodge eating




Our hot dorm at The River Lodge just outside Mulu Park



It was pretty uncomfortable as it was a dorm with no ac & just a few fans. The next day we moved into what turned out to be fantastic accommodation in the main Mulu Park.

We had our own spacious room with en suite bathroom in a longhouse which we shared with a few others. It was tremendous. It had full on AC, an absolute must (we by now realized) in this extremely humid climate.


Our gorgeous room in a long house in Mulu National Park

We were really blown away by Mulu National Park in general. We were expecting a pretty rag-tag setup and couldn’t get over the sumptuousness of this place. Loads of money had been poured into it obviously. It consisted of several longhouses & private lodges as well as a dormitory. There was a café which served up amazing food for very little money & a shop for all essentials. The main office was where you could book various walks & excursions, though more often than not, if you hadn’t booked ahead there were already full. Luckily we had plus we had Bagley for our main exciting trip up the Pinnacles.

So we spent a few days here exploring the caves & going on various walks through the jungle. The scariest cave was the deer cave. Here we had to put our hands constantly into bat shit & roaches as the whole cave was coated with the stuff. We hiked all day through this dark cave with intermittent dunks into water. At one point I was literally up to my neck in water wading through a river. Stupidly we hadn’t read the leaflet & didn’t realize we should have brought water shoes with us. So we got our boots totally saturated. 
We were a bit worried about it as we had the big climb the next day, so that evening we stole a bunch of news papers from the café & stuffed our boots with them. Thankfully it worked! By morning our boots were nearly dry. We would have loved to stay in this place longer but we had to move along. So next morning we caught a river boat & took in another couple of caves on our way to the real start of our adventure.


Racer Snake

  
 



Bats in a cave



We did a bid of "real caving" which was fairly strenuous



 

These are worms



  

                          

  

Journey to Camp 5

So after the caves we hopped aboard another river boat & Bagley & his friend took us downstream to the point where we would start a hike to camp 5. The river boat scene always felt like something out of Apocalypse Now. The heat, the searing sun, the looming jungle on either side and the long winding river ahead.  Numerous times Dave was told to jump out of the boat in order to push it over shallow parts. By the 8^th time his feet were in agony, but he took it well. I felt a bit guilty just sitting in the boat but I guess Bagley thought I looked to weak to push or something as he wouldn’t let me have a go. The water was pretty turbulent at times so I guess I could have got pushed over for sure. So finally we got to a small opening in the river bank where Bagley told us to get off & put our boots on. He took the engine out of the boat and covered it up so it was protected from rain.

Off we went. This was our first serious hike through the jungle. Even though we’d hiked for longer periods of time in the previous days this was difficult terrain Where you really had to look where you were putting your feet. There were tons of roots & stuff which could trip you up in a minute. Luckily it wasn’t wet so we didn’t have to deal with slipperiness yet.

We finally arrived at Camp 5 after hiking 8 KM  which took us 2 hrs. We were pouring sweat & totally drenched even though it was such a short time. A few minutes after we arrived the rain started coming down really heavily, and with it some more hikers. These people were to share a very basic room with us. There were thin mattresses on boards, no fans & mosquito nets you could rent. They weren’t so much for the mosquitoes but more for the giant moths & other strange flying insects that flew about the camp at night.  We had our nets so we stung them up & ate a rather disgusting meal of runny fried egg & rice.


View from the camp









Day Of The Pinnacles Climb

The next morning we set off at 6.30am for our much anticipated hike up the Pinnacles.

We were the last lot to leave. There were 3 small groups ahead of us but soon we caught up to them & past   them. It wasn’t that we were being dickheads, it was just that you can’t really just keep standing behind people waiting for them to climb. Bagley encouraged us to take the lead. A couple gave up only 200 meters in. The woman was feeling nauseous & couldn’t take the steepness & difficulty of the climb. It was a good thing as it got harder & harder. I mean it became absolutely ridiculous. We were literally hanging onto sheer cliff faces. Bagley was shouting directions of where to put our feet & hands when it looked like we didn’t know where to go. I’d seen pictures of the climb before we’d left but I really thought that it would probably only be like this for a little part of the climb. I was totally wrong. It was the most strenuous thing Dave & I have ever done. It was unrelenting. It was just up & up & up at such a steep angle that if there hadn’t been jungle beneath we’d probably have fallen purely from fright. But we surged on upward none the less. We had 6 litres of water with us which we chugged down when we could. Towards the top some steel ladders adhered to the rock face. Bagley & some fellow guides had actually carried these ladders up & attached them a few years back. The ladders were sometimes straight up. At any point, if you fell, that’d pretty much be it. Bagley had been telling us various horror stories on the way up of the many accidents that had occurred on this climb. We could totally see why as it was so dangerous. We managed to get the top in 3 hrs & 4 mins which was pretty good. However, the way down turned out to be even harder.

I honestly cannot describe the overwhelming effort that had to be put into this task of getting down. It wasn't that we were in such pain, more that it seemed never ending and harder than going up. We were dehydrated & pouring sweat with every stumbling step. The ropes & rocks scored our hands & we gasped some chat here & there when we could. Once we finally entered the first piece of nearly level ground the feeling of happiness was immense. We were practically crying with relief. We had made it. We were the second ones down. One guy had made it before us, a Scotsman who had to hoof it down fast as he'd run out of water. But the other groups descended in dribs & drabs during the next hour. We felt a huge sense of achievement, as to be honest, we were pretty worried about how hard this thing was going to be. We'd heard so many painful tails of this climb that we were dubious as to whether we'd even make it. 

After this ascent we’d planned to hike The Head Hunter Trail which is 12 km through dense jungle. Our guide was not Bagley this time but his friend, who was also going to take us in a river boat afterwards to his home where we’d pick up our bag which had been flown from Mulu & then we’d get a ride to the Brunei border from another guy.

We started off at 7.40am & made it to the river in good time. As usual we were pouring sweat, but worse, as this time Dave was carrying our main backpack with the bulk of our gear. I just carried a lightish pack with water & food. The boatman sped ahead through the jungle & a few times we had to call out to find which way to go. Several times a fallen tree had blocked the path & since these trees were usually enormous, the way round them took you off the trail. It was a recipe for getting Lost In The Jungle!  I knew, a wrong turn & that was that. Just Dave’s compass to guide us. And my backpack of food to sustain us. My mind of course leapt to all of these possibilities.
However, we finally made it to the rivers edge where the boatman was waiting. We scrambled in & off we went again down river. 

This time we had a 2 ½ hr ride ahead.
We were just in shorts, t shirts & hats. We lathered up as best we could with sun block, as we knew we’d be scorched otherwise. Finally after a skilful ride we alighted on a river bank & scrambled out, quite relieved to be out of the narrow boat at last.  

As it happened to be June 1^st, a day of religious festival in Borneo, the boatman took us to his longhouse where little by little we became drunk on rice wine. It was an incredible thing. In this one long longhouse lived a lot of his family. The lived side by side in kind of apartments made of wood . Outside these “apartments” was a long stretch of matted “hallway” where people lay or sat eating & talking & drinking. We were asked to sit down with each of the family’s down this “hallway” We’d sit drinking their wine outside their “apartment”. Each wine was different as the woman of the house had made it with her own recipe. Of course, some were better than others. But as I couldn’t really drink a lot Dave was obliged to take what I was leaving as it would possibly offend them if we didn’t drink up. As a result a couple of hrs in Dave was wasted. This didn’t bode to well as we had still to get to the border, get through the border, get into Brunei city & find a hotel to stay in. 

Stupidly my legs got really burned during this long river ride

We both had a bit too much rice wine with our boatman's relatives

on th'way to Camp 5

nets needed at the camp due to the proliferation of large flying insects

Camp kitchen

Start of the climb up the Pinnacles

We were blind to most of the wildlife as we were so distracted by just trying to keep going

Made it! There is a big drop off behind us---not really visible in this pic

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Giant millipede which curls itself into a ball when you touch it

A common site---The roots of many of the trees in the Borneo jungle tend to grow above ground

This is the sweetest little insect. Unfortunately I cut his nose off

We swam in the waterfall behind me-never done that before





This is a giant tree. A human comes up to the leaves on the left