Wandering Goat

Travel stuff by Miguel A. Villarreal

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Thursday, September 29, 2005

Run through the Jungle part 2

Melaka, Malaysia

OK, so after Kinabalu I flew out to Mulu Park (after clearing customs like 3 times, Malaysia has an anoying habit of making you do it when you switch between Borneo states , a large patch of protected rainforest with some spectacular limestone mountains and caves everywhere.   Again,  Park HQ was tastefully appointed but disappointingly developed after meeting my jungle guide, Peter (all Borneons seem to have dutchish names, I guess stemming from colonial days, hence a lot of Peters, Williams, and Corneliuses, of course they are Dyak and Iboh tribesman, but...) 

The first day we walked down a well lit, stroller safe planked wooden walkway.  A bit dispappointing again, but the caves at the end were rather impressive. One of them, Deer Cave, which features a cool Abe Lincoln likeness, not kidding, is pretty much  completely cavernous -- the biggest chambers in the world allegedly.  The other featured some fantasitc stalac/stalagmites to rival anyhthing I've seen anywhere.  And oh yeah, guano, lots of guano.

Again, the lack of wildlife was a bit disappointing, it's not unlike going through a rainforest exhibit at a high class zoo or museum, but the flora,  again, I can't say enough about it.  Just completely alien, exotic, fantastic, and unbelievable.  Massive broad planar dipterocarps, trees with roots that start 50 feet up, single leaf palms, giant banana plants, carnivorous pitcher plants, giant fishtail palms, Tarzan vines -- just incredible. Combined with the mossy limestone karst backdrop the landscape is truly Cretaceous in nature, you half expect a Velociraptor or more likely Chewbacca or Yoda to come crashing through the underbrush, not an inebriated Japanese with a 3/4 empty bottle of VAT 69.

Day 2 in Sarawak was where things picked up.  Peter and I hopped into a longboat and headed upriver. (Borneons, though short, travel in longboats and live in longhouses.  THe longboats are due to the shallow river (much pushing/punting/pulling is involved in any trip), while the longhouses are due to lack of family planning I guess).  The first stop was a longhouse village, complete with satellite dishes and a rather ugly Evangelical church; at this village I was mildly pressured to buy plastic handicrafts, which I did, though I steered away from the bead hangings that, in a stinging rebuke to Nietcsche (or Ray Nietschke? I forget) declare: "GOD IS ALIVE", which begs several questions. 

The next stop was two more spectacular caves, one of which, at 108k and counting, is apparently the worlds longest.  Again, great stuff, but sensory overloiad kicks in after you've seen underground rivers and sniffed underground guano mountains and have rolled past massive columns of japanese. (ironically, Peter was telling me how his father & grandfather used the caves to hide from the Japanese during the war, which he now leads them to)  After another hour or so upriver in the longboat was where stuff got interesting.

After lunch, an 8k sweaty, exhausting, muddy, hideous hike through the jungle to Camp V awaited us.  It was a huge chore and involved slogging through swollen rivers, quicksand, and even actual hacking at the undergrowth by Peter.  It was totally miserable, but leech free.  In short, I loved every second of it.    That's why you go (or at least I go) to Borneo. 

Camp V was loaded with the normal complement of Aussies, some Flemish (nothing like some Flemish to add character) and a large foulmouthed contingent of cave researcher/explorer types from the RGS. .  Not a lot of leisure activities awaited there save swimming, which in Borneo is like putting up a "FOR RENT" sign for tropical stuff to crawl up your butt so I passed. 

The next day we lit out early for what will be (and I'm serious this time) the last damned thign I climb on this trip.  It's called Gunung Api or something, or more simply the Pinnacles.  It's a colllection of jagged, vertical limestone spines at about 2k m up a tropical mountainside.    While it was the lowest thing I've climbed in a while (now that I am a certified BA Barracus as far as climbing goes) It was by no means easy.  Sweaty and tropical and slippery and nasty at the bottom with sharp skinny limestone jags at the top, augmented by various ropes, precarious ladders, and rickety metal bridges.  The whole thing was quite literally a giantass jungle gym for adults and just a shitlooad of fun to climb around if exhausting and treacherously dangerous. (though to be fair, the good thing about climbing limestone and granite, rather than high altitude Himalayan scree, is that its smooth, firm, entrenched, and doesnt' disentegrate under your hand/foot, making stuff easier).

Again, I can't say enough about the Jurassic Park/Tomb Raider setting of massiver trees, vines, rocks, massive cave openings, etc.  Again, not a lot of fauna, save some serious insects, Borneo Giant Jungle Ants (to farm these guys would require an estate), huge spiders, some distant angry macaques, and a Rhinosceros hornbill, which is apparently the piece de resistance among birders.  Although this is not altogether a bad thing.  While trudging through the jungle, I could not help but remember the days spent in the Reptile House of the Houston Zoo, always my favorite stop there.  I used to spend hours gazing at the various brilliant and lethal looking vipers and cobras, each of which had a placard that said, in big bold letters "VENOMOUS".  I also remmber being reassured, when looking at them most deadly varieties (save the deadly 4 texas snakes, cottonmouth, rattler, copperhead, coral), that their habitats were nowhere near my backyard, and usually were a bunch of islands sort of between Asia and Australia - i. e. here.   No big deal, I though, I'd just avoid big flat rocks, deep roots, and old logs.  Of course, the route up to the Pinnacles involves exclusively big flat rocks, deep roots, and olds logs.  So I resorted to whistling to drive the snakes away.  When Peter said "Why you singing Magal", I embarrasedly stopped and was prepared to suffer the deadly consequences.  

Thankfully, no scaled death dealers approached.  Mostly just some really cool insects, fantastic moths, butterflies, etc; what was not cool were the two six inch millipedes that crawled out of my bag at one point.  Not cool at all.  Especially awesome was the dearth of mosquitos, apparently due to the massive amounts of bats that are flying around my head at this very moment.   Anyway, I got up and down without a VENOMOUS incident, so I considered myself lucky. 

Computer issues again, will continue tomorrow

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Run through the Jungle

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
 
(picking a title for this entry was so hard, so many good jungle themes, Welcome to the Jungle, It's a Jungle out There, In the Jungle the Mighty Jungle, the Jungle Book, and that's not even getting into the Forest stuff etc etc.  I think I showed admirable restraint)
 
I haven't been updating recently because I've been on a somewhat overpriced trek through the Borneo rainforest.  When I signed up for this tour I was in darkest India and that Malaysian Borneo would be similarly hassleish and inaccessable.  That waasn't the case as I was able to watch Monday Night Football (well, Tuesday Morning Football here) shortly after arrival from my waterfront room at the Hyatt.  While this bit of luxury was not unwelcome, I didn't expect the development to go up to the edge and into the rainforest, which it does and is both good and bad.
 
Kinabalu climb
 
The first adventure was a climb of Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia's highest point (as well as the highest in SE Asia though maybe Burma might have one slightly taller, not sure) at around 4200m/14k feet or so. As I said earlier, it's not a huge peak either absolutely or relative to July/August's advenrures out in Ladakh, however it's just high enough to give mild altitude troubles but not high enough to bother acclimitizing to.  Normally on the way up to the mountains on this trip, my journey has started crammed into a rickety jeep or bus traveling up a dirt road screaming around blind curves and prayint that the 18 Tata trucks you just passed by don't have a 19th companion on the other side.  Here however, it was smooth asphalt on an A/C Bas Mini, so that was a sign of things to come.
 
On arrival at the tastefully appointed park HQ, I received my mandatory climibing guide, a toothless Dusung named Justin.  I'm not sure why a climbing guide is mandatory other than as a state sponsored scam; the trail up the mountain is pretty well marked with stairs and railings at lower levels and ropes at the higher spots.  The only reason why you would need a guide would be if you were a complete idiot who totally sucks at climbing mountains, which we have established I am not.  Though to be fair, there were a lot of Australians on the mountain...
 
So accordingly I was a bit disappointed both by how crowded and developed the mountainside was (though I was grateful for the toilet at the last checkpoint before the summit).   To be fair, I should say the Malaysians have done a much better job as far as making it accessible without being too tacky, with the general atmosphere being not dissimilar to a US national or state park.  If this were China, there would be a souvenir stand selling stuffed orangutans every 10 feet and a cable car going up to the Karaoke bar at the summit.  Here the stuffed orangs are confined to the park HQ. 
 
Now at this point you're probably saying: "hold on, jackass, you were just praising the various starbucks of KL last week and now you're going all rousseau noble savage on us, what the f?" Fair point, but when I sign up for a seven day borneo adventure, I want to be hacking through the underbrush with a pith helmet, not slogging past a traffic jam of middle aged Kiwis pretending like they're traversing the South Col.  And the accomodation (shack) I had to sleep in sucked - if I'm going to have my illusions shattered, I'd prefer it to be in opulence considering the Ringits I malayed out for this trip.
 
So I reached the grotesque lodge at 11k feet up after 3 hours instead of the expected 5 by not stopping other than a quick food break, even though I was out of shape and operating on a twisted ankle from too much partying in KL.  I did so in order to punish my mandatory climibing guide for his presence (he was thoroughly unpunished) and to show the slow people how slow they were.  Of course, this just meant more time at the crappy lodge, so nobody wins there.
 
I should say that the mountain and the forest are pretty cool.  Not much fauna, but lots of crazy exotic flora and smooth granite.  THe whole place, from the fantastic gnarled trees growing at impossible angles to the well worn rocks is polished and smooth from eons of tropical rainfall. 
 
On day 2 I got up at the absurdly early hour and was moderately taxed on the way up. Slightly difficult due to slippery wet granite, but moreso due to the traffic jam of aussies & japanese on the way up and down.  Apparently the sunrise over the South China Sea is something, but as it was cloudy I'll never know.  Even the obligatory summit photo was a bit anticlimactic; like anything, if you do it too many times it gets boring.
 
[edit, I meant to continue this with the account of 4 days in sarawak but the internet screwed up on me and I lost a whole bunch of work, so will continue later]

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Borneo Again

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
 
So the last few days I didn't have much to say, going from the barely controlled chaos of Bombay and India to the ultra clean, ultra modern Kuala Lumpur was a bit of culture shock, although the replacement of rickshaw wallahs with mercedes & monorails was a welcome change.   KL manages to be more Western than most places anywhere in the west with an inordinate concentration of Starbucks, Borders, etc as well as a shocking amount of largely Guinness fueled nightlife for a muslim country making it a popular party destination (the first night I hung out with an expat chiropractor from Vancouver and a former coal miner from Wellington NZ ).  Making life easy once again is that English, due to colonial heritage as well as the variety of ethnic groups (malays, straits chinese, indians, tribal people) is the lingua franca.  And even Malay is easy enough to read a lot of the time as it's written in Roman alpha (though it possesses a komical amount of "k"s which I guess is from the dutch influence "teksi, Komuter Tren" and such).  The people are friendly enough too;  Malaysia  has an inferiority complex (malaysian flags are everywhere) and is kind of desperate to get noticed,  (which is why they built the Petronas towers and the KL Tower) and boasts all sorts of obscure superlatives ("world's largest covered outdoor bird park!" "Asia's Largest Chinese Harvest Festival Zhang He Mooncake float!" ) - apparently there is even a government backed initiative to get Malaysians into the Guiness Book of World Records.
 
I arrived in Borneo after a flight across the sea today (the BMW dealership next door establishes that this is not your father's wildman's Borneo) and tomorrow set off early to start climbing up Mt. Kinabalu which should only take a day and a half. (at just over 4101m, an anthill compared to July's effort, which is good because I haven't exercised in eons save to dodge roving drum salesmen in India. (one of many banes of my existence there - in every tourist area, north south, whatever, somebody tries to sell you a goddamned drum. Who the hell is buying these drums? They don't pack easily, and they're really not that cool in any event).

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Bom-bye!

Bombay, India

So today is the last of 52 days in India, finishing where many people start.  Bombay is pretty much as expected, with some very nice parts and then some things that aren't, as well as insane traffic. As far as sights go it doesn't really have many aside from Elephanta Island, as it was of little historic significance until a few hundred  years ago.  It's more of a place to be than to see things, and it is really the place to be these days as it's the Ganapati festival in which groups of people from all over the city, rich and poor, lead loud, drum beating/chanting/fireworks exploding processions with bright neon pink and red effigies of Ganesh, and then toss them into the Arabian sea.
 
At this point you're saying "why doesn't he call it Mumbai like he's supposed to?"  Simple, really - way back when the name change first happened I caught on fast, and then haughtily informed everybody (mom) that it was now Mumbai.  So I figured it was a standard post-colonial name change (from the portuguese Bom Bahia/good bay) that I could go with.   But it's actually something more sinister than that.  The name change (in honor of Mumba devi, a Hindu goddess who's got a temple here) was precipitated almost  singlehandedly by the Hindu/Marati nationalist group Shiv Sena, a small minority of Bombayites led by the detestable Bal Thackeray with a disproportionate influence, as well as a record of religious massacres and general thuggery.  The name wasn't the restoration of any pre-colonial name (there was just a few villages here before), rather it was intentionally chosen in order to emphasize the Hindu connections of the city (despite that Bombay is home to millions of Muslims, Christians, Jains, and despite that most of the city institutions were built by the small but tremendously important Parsi (Zoroastrian) community.  So from now on its Bombay (which is what most Bombayites say anyway) or nothing for me.
 
I'd been working on some big long reflective general essay on the last 7 weeks on India but it has no substance, so I don't know if I'll put it up.  Briefly, I can say I will miss a lot about India, and there is also a lot I am glad to be done with. 

Sunday, September 11, 2005

End of the Line

Varkala, Kerala, India

So I'm here at the bottom left corner of the subcontinent on the cliffs overlooking the Arabian Sea by way of Cochin, Alleppy and Kollom.  The rest of Cochin was rainy and uneventful, though I did get to take in shows of Kerala's two major art forms  Kathakali and Kalarappia (sp?).  Kathakali is sort of like Keralan opera, with elaborate make up and costumes.  As the actors don't speak or sing and communicate with eye movements and mudras (hand positions), it's theoretically understandable by westerners, however the mudra for "Welcome, exalted and honored guest" is pretty much indistinguishable from the one that says "bitch you better bring me a chicken sandwich!".  Fortunately, Kathakali plots are the same as that of nearly all Indian mythology (hero/heroine slays demon/demoness) so it's not that hard to follow. Kalarappia is south Indian martial arts, which was fairly straightforward and faintly embarrassing as I was the only person in the audience for the show.  While it wasn't that impressive, I wouldn't want to knife or stick fight any of those guys, even though the chubby stick fighter guy bore a resemblance to the Star Wars Kid.

On the way out of Kochin (via Kerala's awful bus service, by far the worst in India that I've seen.  Getting on a bus in  Kerala is accomplished by running alongside the bus as it pulls into the station and then shoving your way through the door as people enter and exit) I stopped in Alleppy, aka the Venice of East and major entry/exit point for Kerala's famous backwaters.  Venice of the West has little to fear from Alleppy, sad to say.  From Alleppy I took the all-day backwater ferry to Kollom, which some of the tour books crap on as lousy but which I didn't find so bad, although there were only two other tourists on the boat (a parisian lawyer with a ridiculous pepe le pew accent, and a Londoner of Indian descent, also with an absurd etonian accent - I could listen to him say mosquito or mojito all day long).  Not a lot to see on the boat aside from various fishing vessels going about their business and palm trees, as well as some fantastic bird life, with literally thousands of fishing eagles, but very relaxing even if you don't have a lot to relax from.

So now I'm in Varkala, as I said before, on the shore of the Arabian sea.  It's a beach town although the beach and the water isn't so pleasant.  It's visibly violent and angry and features a nasty undertow and riptide that has sent some to a watery grave, so swimming past knee deep water is not advisable and really not much fun.  The food is really good, though, the best damned calamari I've ever had, especially the calamari curry, which really works.

Speaking of unfun, I can't think of a place that makes drinking as unfun as  India.  Fisrt, the selection of liquor is either (lukewarm) Kingfisher ("The King of Good Times", "A Taste Most Thrilling!" (of which it is neither)) or Indian Made Foreign Liquor due to absurd import taxes.  Second, your liklihood of getting some of these beverages (which are relatiely expensive in Indian terms)  varies considerably.  More often than not, restaraunts are unlicensed and won't sell it to you (perhaps because "ALCOHOL RUINS COUNTRY, FAMILY, AND LIFE!" as the Tamil Nadu bottles helpfuly warn us), and even if they will, they won't do so on dry days, (Thursdays, and various other days at unpredictable intervals).  The worst of all possible options is an Indian bar, which is actually a stuffy dimly lit room full of chainsmoking guys in Lungies drinking cheap whiskey - enough to turn one off drinking forever.  Here in Varkala it flows a bit more freely being a resort town, though still unlicensed so it's available either in a teapot, or under the table.  And when I say "under the table", I mean it is literally served in a bottle that you have to keep under the table so the cops don't see it.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Gorilla Monsoon

Fort Cochin (Kochi) Kerala, India
 
So Kerala is nice but hell if it isn't wet.  I mean it's the monsoon-end season but hell. Kochi/Cochin is one of the more interesting spots in all of India, it's on the bay at the northern head of the famous Kerala backwaters, where I'm headed in a few days, and has been a European (Dutch, British, Portuguese) settlement for hundreds of years (pre-Raj) as well as a center of Christianity (Sts. Thomas A. (allegedly) and Francis X (definitely) landed here a long, long time ago.  Adding to the western feel  is the formerly large, now almost vanished, Jewish community (mostly in a mattancherry neighborhood, tastefully named "jew town") that dates back to either Nebuchdenezzar or the diaspora or medieval times, depending on who you believe.  It's probably best known in the contemporary times as the setting for about half of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, which, if you have not read yet, you should - I'm ashamed for taking 30 years to discover Salman Rushdie, it's not like he was never in the news... 
 
Kochi was the main spice trading port for a long time, and still is south India's largest shipping center, as its close to the Spice Mountains/Western Ghats from whence I just came.  Regarding the Spice Mountains, I think when I left you last I was about to engage in a night safari.  That term was a bit of a euphemism, it was actually just a few hours of walking with the Periyar Park Rangers on their nightly patrol of the park in search of poachers and smugglers.  Apparently elephant poaching & sandalwood smuggling is a big concern, though it has declined a bit since the death of the infamous Veerapan  the Bandit King of Tamil Nadu & the Western Ghats. (India is many things but seldom without local color, I mean who the hell knew that Bandit Kings still existed?)
 
Anyway, one of my two ranger escorts carried a rifle, which I imagine was for smugglers and not tigers.  If it was for the latter, it goes without saying I did not like his chances of hitting a charging tiger in the rain, at night -- I mean I probably had a better chance with my swiss army knife (who at this point I have creatively named "Knifey" due to lack of having any other friends here in a Taxi Driveresque move).
 
 The night patrol by itself was about as much fun as walking around a jungle in a monsoon at midnight as you would imagine --  were you imagining leeches? Because if not, the picture would be incomplete.  Yeah, there were a lot of leeches.  Prior to a few days ago, I was grotesquely indifferent yet somewhat intrigued with leeches in principle, having no experience with them.  I can honestly say that the thrill is gone.  Leeches are really, really, really gross and annoying.
 
The ride back down to Kochi the next day was a fiasco too.  As I had crossed the border, I was on a Kerala bus and not the usual Tamil Nadu State DVD Coach - which invariably features blaring movies of Tamil flicks, usually featuring a chubby, lungie wearing (lungie is like a kilt/skirt for men) sideburned  mustachioed guy performing badly choreographed dance-fighting moves to Tamil music in between love songs. (As I mentioned earlier, this one guy, one of MGR's successors,  is now one of the state governors whose visage is plastered everywhere. )  The bus station in Kottayam, as I tried to head south, was a nightmare.   The tourist police/station masters tried to help me and had me on about seven or eight different buses simultaneously but none of them went to my initial intended destination (Kollom) so I ended up taking the law into my own hands and heading for Kochi.  A lot of times asking for help an India is a bitch because nobody's really in charge, it's often easier just to go to the bus drivers/etc and call out the name of your destination/problem loudly in English until somebody helps you.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Lost in Spice

Thekaddy, Kerala, India
 
Well I complain about the seeming state of near anarchy that pervades in India but compared to events on the other side of the world really it's a miracle that things run as well as they do here - nothing ever makes sense and nobody seems to be in charge ever and you may get swindled and overcharged and scammed and extorted, but in the end, things seem to work here, which is remarkable given a country of 1 billion people speaking 100+ different languages, many of whom have been ethnic/religious enemies for thousands of years and slaughter each other once a decade or so, with various splinter groups engaged in armed rebellion in spots and with an actual ongoing war with Pakistan in Kashmir  within its borders.  And yet still India, whatever that means, manages to continue existing.
 
So I'm not going to bitch about Thekaddy, and actually I wouldn't anyway because it's pretty nice.  It's right over the border of Kerala in the Western Ghats, which are the low (1-2k m) mountains that go down the spine of South India.  This particular spot is known as the Spice Mountains, specifically the Cardamom Hills - so it's the best smelling place in India, unless you're allergic to cardamom, in which case it kind of sucks.  Nearby is the Periyar wildlife reserve which apparently has some hard-to-see tigers and leopards as well as a boatload of elephants, I'm going on a night safari tonight to see what's what - but this area looks way to populated (overdevelopment is India's curse but there's too many other problems to worry about it).  If you ever come to India, btw, the Taj chain of hotels offers great value in the offseason, I've got a fantastic little jungle cabin for a song .
 
Tomorrow it's off to the west coast, hard to believe but only 2 more weeks in India and then the fantastic voyage is halfway done.