I was in Penang, feeling very worldly & wonderful on my first solo trip in Asia.
Then l saw a sign pointing towards the ferry to Sumatra. It sounded so enticing & exotic. The 'fly by the seat of my pants' itinerary was working well . I knew nothing about Sumatra except that the endangered orang-utans lived there & l wanted to see them before they no longer existed in the wild.
After a pleasant passage across the Malaccan Straits, l immediately headed for Bukit Lawang, a village perched just outside of Gunang Lesseur National Park, where the 'man of the forest', the orang-utans, lived in their natural habitat.
l decided a one day trek was enough for me but was cunningly conned into a two day trek which the guides promised me was a 'walk in the park.' And l was guaranteed to see the orang-utans.
The 'walk in the park' ended at the base of the first mountain and l needed to drag myself up by tree-roots, crawl on all fours up steep inclines & slide down by the 'seat of my pants' on the other side. The jungles of Sumatra can be extremely mountainous & difficult to trek. Our group was struggling with the stifling heat & humidity. If l'd had the energy, l would have kicked myself in my complacent butt for not doing some research.
Eventually after slogging breathlessly through dense & what felt like, unchartered terrain, we were well rewarded with the over-whelming joy of sightings of several orang-utans. Orang-utans are not family grouped animals and are generally lead solitary lives with a baby & sometimes a toddler.
Suddenly all the pain was forgotten & time stood still as we watched these close cousins of ours climbing through the trees of their natural home environment. So human like in their facial expressions, playing with their babies, grooming them tenderly and quietly & curiously watching us below. All was forgiven and we wanted to scream with delight, but instead our group just looked at each other with beaming smiles bordering on bursting.
After two days, l limped out of the jungle exhausted, my heart filled and my soul singing.
The next day l headed up river for a swim to alleviate the pain in my aching limbs. As l waded into the cool water, a young boy offered to bring me a beer. While l sat enjoying the weightlessness of the water, the boy returned with a cold Bintang & pointed across the river into the trees where l could see the hairy red arms of an orang-utan. Then there were two, mothers & babies. Before l had finished my beer, a group of funky monkeys had climbed down to the rocks opposite & were feasting on some pineapples left from a picnic. They're quite a large monkey with a sort of mohawk style hair growth. And then some spider monkeys, small very light, long limbed monkeys, were swinging through the branches hanging over the river.
Here we were at sunset, four species of primates, in the jungles of Sumatra, quietly enjoying the peace, no threat to each other, just quiet respect & acceptance.. I inwardly laughed to myself that l could have saved myself a sizeable sum of money and two days of tiresome trekking if l'd just come down to the river & waited for the orang-utans to come to me. I sat in silent solitude, the water washing away my pain, the sounds of the jungle echoing eternally around me. It may have been the alcohol, but l was in a state of bliss.
