Batu Katak

We spent a long time on the deck of the KM Kelmud, making the most of the calmest seas we had experienced.

I got up early each morning to watch the sunrise. Standing in the near darkness out on deck watching the slow, softly changing colours being reflected in the silky smooth seas. The first light of the sun is always ‘a moment’ for me, and I marvelled at how something I knew was going to happen, knew it with absolute certainty, was still so magical…

The dawn skies I saw from those Indonesian ferries will live with me forever… (or at least until I get dementia).

On the second morning we sailed past Singapore, with its iconic skyline of skyscrapers and the hotel with the swimming pool in the roof, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, roughly the size of the Isle of Wight…

I wondered how many people living there were actually rich, and what kind of rich it was, were the people happy, or too busy to notice, did they all work crazy long hours and live in skyscrapers? Long boat journeys sure give you time to think about things…

Passing Singapore meant that we were now only one day away from Sumatra, and one day away from having been blessed with calm seas for all our ferry crossings…should I throw something overboard as a sacrifice, or just trust to the weather forecast?

I looked in my handbag and decided most of what I could throw would be classed as ‘littering’. and as I sat back down my alarm went off, time to get Theo and Rosa for breakfast, to go and eat …rice.

The food sucked : )

The best it got was cold chips served with cold green beans and cold carrots. We got that at dinner both days, and there was always rice…it was food, and we ate it. The tempeh and tofu from our last time on this ship did not make an appearance…

After breakfast (only rice) Rosa and I walked around deck looking for a bench – once secured we took it in turns to scour the sea for signs of life, but on this crossing only two early morning dolphins and a few flying fish graced us with their presence.

We decided it was probably because there was too much going on. There were so many container ships arriving and leaving from Singapore, going on romantic sea journeys much longer than our three days…seeing skies as beautiful as the one I had witnessed at dawn for weeks on end…

(Was I really beginning to feel nostalgic about how wonderful our journeys on Pelni ferries had been, before the last one had even ended?)

As we approached Medan on that last day we started to mentally prepare ourselves for the journey to Batu Katak. The first part of the journey was a thirty minute taxi/minibus ride to Medan, where the bus left to head into the mountains.

We had read a few accounts of other travellers experiences of that particular bus station in Medan and they were all awful, in fact Medan itself sounded like pretty much the worst place any traveller had ever been…

Luckily for us it worked out cheaper to get a GRAB straight to our little village, Batu Katak. Cheaper than getting a minibus to the bus stop, a bus to Bohorok, and then a taxi to our guesthouse …and although part of me was curious – ‘how bad could it be?’ our budget didn’t allow much room for that kind of, slightly crazy, curiosity… I suspected the port might give us a flavour of what we would be missing anyway.

Our last gift from Pelni Ferries was arriving two and a half hours early which would mean there was a good chance we would arrive at Batu Katak in the daylight, but it also meant negotiating the port in the absolute heat of the day.

We got off the boat pretty quickly, waved a very grateful goodbye to the ship, and suddenly we were out on the street.

It was so intense, as we walked through the terminal I ordered the taxi but no traffic was moving out on the main road and we were instantly surrounded with offers of taxis, buses, minibuses, rickshaws, motorbike taxis, motorbike rickshaws. There were people willing to carry our stuff and show us to their cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels …and all of it was loud.

Our only defence against the onslaught was to say ‘grab’ over and over again while we shuffled through the crowd dragging the crappy suitcase and trying not to lose it with anyone.

Eventually, after what felt like an hour, and was probably fifteen minutes, our harrasssed taxi driver appeared waving his phone and muttering dark words about our safety. He hadn’t been able to get through to us so he’d parked and come to ‘rescue us from certain and imminent danger’…exactly what sort of danger got lost in translation.

A young guy, who seemed to be the unofficial director of traffic, positioned us in the shade at the entrance to a cafe where a load of men were playing cards…some of them stood up and found us each a seat, and our taxi driver went off to get his car…we were so grateful for the seat and the thoughtfulness of a bunch of blokes playing cards…maybe Sumatra was no worse than anywhere else actually, and the kindness of strangers was still with us : )

We sat there recovering, all of us looking like sweaty, over ripe tomatoes…there have been quite a few times on this trip when I have thought ‘how utterly crap must I look right now’, grateful for the lack of mirrors and that it was usually me taking the photos…

Our driver was a cheery guy who liked to sing along to power ballads while driving at spaces between vehicles only he could see.

We nicknamed him ‘Ern’ after the driver of the ‘Knight Bus’ in Harry Potter – lorrys, motorbikes, cars, cows, trees and people just melted away under his cheerful high speed assault, all whilst belting out ‘careless whisper’ and ‘my heart will go on’.

Needless to say we got to Batu Katak pretty quickly…

The decision to go straight to the jungle had been easy – the idea of having a day there to rest, relax and prepare ourselves before the trek began was wonderful, and it would also mean we wouldn’t have to spend a night in the clearly lawless Medan, probably risking our lives going to buy crackers and ‘pocari sweat’ (the drink that gives you all the minerals back you’ve just lost walking to the supermarket to buy it).

In the last five miles of our journey the ever present palm oil trees gave way to glimpses of steep mountains covered in lush green forests, our first sight of jungle. A home to so many of the animals we all love, and as far as we were concerned one of the most precious places on Earth.

We were on the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park, just over 3,000 square miles of rainforest, the equivalent of three Luxembourgs or slightly more than twice the size of Cornwall!

The only place on Earth where tigers, rhinos, elephants and orangutan’s live together in the wild… and we were hoping to see one of the 5.000 orangutan who live here.

I imagined spending three days walking through an area nearly twice the size of Somerest, a Somerset with mountains instead of levels, and absolutely covered in huge trees…one in 5,000 eh? …all in all ‘not very likely!’

Time to make our peace with the decision we’d finally made in Jakarta.

There were of course lots of places we could try and see orangutans in Sumatra and the main one was a place called Bukit Lawang, a town where they had an orangutan sanctuary. Many had been returned to the jungle but they often remained semi-wild and so our chances of seeing one there were really good, but we loved the description of Batu Katak, as a ‘dreamy little village’.

We liked the idea of supporting a small community and saw our four days there as a good chunk of money spent in the right place…and if we saw nothing would we still be pleased with the decision?

The answer for all of us was ‘yes’ being here, walking on paths trodden on by sun bears and tigers, looking up at trees home to gibbons, hornbills and orangutans…that was enough. (…although for me a hornbill and a gibbon or two would be lovely, if you are listening universe?!)

We were also in a region which has the most birds anywhere in the world, around 380 species in all, with 350 of them living in the national park (although our chances of seeing any birds in trees taller than cathedrals was slim I reckoned).

We were being met in Batu Katak by Joe, the leader of our three day trek. He had arranged our accomodation and was in charge of everything.

He spoke English with a great accent and sunshine radiated off his smile, he was friendly and warm, clearly a bit playful and boyish, and he was also calm and measured. He had taken time to explain everything to me when I’d first contacted him, answering all my questions patiently and quickly.

He had arranged young lads to help us get our luggage to the ‘Jungle River’ hotel, which was a ten minute walk along the river, over some pretty exciting bridges… We walked past little caves filled with pretty orange butterflies and Rosa saw a monkey (a long tailed macaque!) in the trees above us.

The hotel itself was set above the banks of the river and everything was made of wood. All of it lovingly tended and blended with the forest it nestled in.

There was an open air cafe, flower-lined pathways leading to two bedrooms, side by side, both with little verandahs and chairs overlooking the beautiful stream that fed the big wide sweeping river, and an old black cat waiting to be stroked…

It was stunning.

We had just about finished smiling at each other at how beautiful it was when Herman, the hotel owner, pointed to the trees behind the house and shouted ‘monkeys’.

We shoved our rucksacks (and the hated suitcase) on to the verandahs of our rooms and rushed up the track where he was pointing…there in the trees were a small group of what we later discovered were white handed gibbons – they looked like Mrs Coulters daemon to me (for those of you who have no idea what I’m taking about, they were golden!)

Such an incredible introduction to the jungle. They swung through the trees even more monkey like than I’d imagined (…did I need an imagination upgrade?)

They were on their way home according to Herman, they came past every day…and did we want to go and swim in the waterfall?

Herman had greeted us as we crossed the stream, with wide open arms and a huge grin. He was quick to notice what we needed, and clearly loved where he lived …and to us where he lived looked like paradise : )

Yes we did want to go and swim in the waterfall thank you very much, we hadn’t washed for three days and we were smelly…

Herman’s wife Katrina cooked an utterly delicious meal that night. Rice, loads of vegetables in a coconut sauce and battered tofu and tempeh…all of it served hot!

Herman came and talked to us about trekking and the jungle after we’d eaten and as we shared some of our uncertainties we discovered he had a catchphrase which he used liberally over the next few days ‘never try, never know!’ It was always delivered with a deep throated chuckle and we loved it : )

We went to bed early, listening to the rain as it began to pour, wondering how high that swollen river could actually rise…and when Joe had said ‘we will return back by jungle river taxi’ did he actually mean for us to ride along that in a boat?!

The next morning the skies were clear when I got up and headed out…I wanted to feel what it was like to head out into a jungle where so many wild creatures lived…

The answer was, a bit scared actually.

The truth was I didn’t know much about where I was…

Australia had taught me that there are creatures and plants that need a healthy respect – I had no idea what joys this jungle held – spiders, snakes, stinging plants…leeches!?

For sure this forest would have its share of ‘deadly’ so after about ten minute I turned back – straight into the path of the golden gibbon troupe going for breakfast in a different part of the forest. I saw a baby one swinging his way back to mama monkey before they all disappeared…quietly in awe I slipped back into our room but Theo was still asleep, I really wanted to wake him…but rest was what was healing his knee.

An hour later it was time for breakfast (pancakes) and Joe came over to talk to us about the trek, and specifically our footwear.

Joe told us our sandals were too slippery. Herman had some rubber shoes with studs that were the right size for me and Theo to borrow, but there were none the right size for Rosa. We decided we’d go for a walk to try them out and we could get a pair in the village later for Rosa if we liked them.

He told us we were leaving at 9.00 the next morning and that we had two choices about where we stayed – he strongly recommended the second option which was to spend two nights on the edge of the national park – it was well set up and if Theo struggled with the first day trekking at least he was somewhere beautiful to spend the next day rather than having no choice but to hike.

It made sense to all of us – we had literally no idea what to expect in terms of intensity – none of us had trekked for three days in a rainforest before.

He told us that there would be three guides with us, that all our meals would be taken care of for us while we were trekking, and on the second and third day we would head deeper into the National Park

Top of Rosa’s list was searching for flowers that smelled like rotting flesh, (she might be twenty years old but she was still a teenager in many ways : ) …they also had the title of ‘largest flowers in the world’, and Joe told us one of them, ‘the rafflesia’, had recently been in bloom so there was a chance we would see one of those (and at least they didn’t move around!)

We needed to bring water bottles with us and we would fill them up with boiled water each day…did we have any questions – ‘yes, is it safe to go for a walk from here today to try the shoes?’

‘Yes, but maybe don’t go too far and stick to the clear paths’, any other questions?! Nope  (…although ‘will we see an orangutan’ was bubbling away, but we didn’t ask that).

It was only as we were putting our new football boot/come rubber waterproof shoes on that I remembered I’d wanted to know what he meant by ‘jungle taxi’ …and were there leeches? I guess we’d find out one way or another…

The shoes were pretty weird at first, they were thin and we could feel every stone and root underfoot, but they really did grip and getting them wet didn’t matter which sounded like it was going to be useful!

There was space among the trees here and a gentle sunlight filtering through the top most branches of the trees…we were surrounded by the sounds of the birds and insects going about their lives, this part of the forest was peaceful.

We had been walking for about forty-five minutes when a scream split the air…where was it coming from?

…Rosa, she was having her first (and by no means last) leech encounter – and she, like most people, really didn’t want her blood sucked by small brown and black slugs. She had two of them on her, swiftly dispatched, but it left her feeling shocked and a bit grossed out.

It did answer the question about whether there were leeches or not though.

We didn’t go too much further after we discovered the leeches, Rosa wasn’t quite so keen on the rainforest anymore – I gave her my shoes which offered some protection, but she needed to process the fact that there were three days ahead of us walking through leech infested jungle.

We saw a little baby snake on the way back, which didn’t go much of the way to helping her feel any better, although I was in raptures…

Back at camp we searched our bodies for leeches and Theo won the prize for having the most, with one of the ingenious little buggers having made a home in his belly button (…it really was disgusting that one, had to use salt to get it out!)

It was clear we were going to need leech defences. Trousers we could tuck into socks and we would definitely need to ask Herman to get Rosa a pair of shoes…we were very glad to have learned that BEFORE we’d set off trekking.

Theo and I went for a walk into the village that afternoon but his knee started to ache after about fifteen minutes so we headed back, it had been steadily getting better and with rest and medication he was determined to manage the trekking, but he knew the signs and now he needed to rest it.

On the way back to camp we met Happy – his actual name in Indonesian means ‘happy’ and so when someone  on a trek with him had figured that out the name had stuck. He was going to be one of our guides tomorrow and he looked just as lovely as Joe.

We had been back at camp about ten minutes when Happy came back, he was slightly breathless with excitement – Joe had seen an orangutan on the edge of the village and we needed to go quickly!

Theo had just lain down with a pillow under his knee…what to do? It was easily a twenty minute walk to where we needed to get to, probably further…

I thought he should come, but the truth is it’s not easy to know what’s going on in someone else’s body. If the orangutan had gone by the time we got there and the walk damaged his knee before the trek …how would we feel?

…but, if this was his one shot at seeing an orangutan in the wild – the reason we’d come all this way?

Tough call.

Theo decided to stay behind, he had already made his peace with not seeing anything at all …just being in the forest knowing they were here was enough for him (he’s way more advanced than me 🙂

Rosa and I headed out to meet Joe in the village. Happy, and another of tomorrow’s guides, Harri, were out looking for our first ever …maybe, hopefully, orangutan.

It was hard leaving Theo behind, we really wanted this to be something the three of us shared – Rosa and I were excited but it was tinged with sadness… how would we feel if we saw one and Theo didn’t?

Joe led us out of the village and into the small grove of palm oil trees that were one of the crops the village relied on for their income… pointing out the stinging plants as we picked our way through the roots and ditches.

Behind the village was an area of Karst forest that the village had been protecting for the last ten years. Happy joined us and in hushed whispers told us they had slowly seen the animals returning and their numbers growing…was there an orangutan up in the trees ahead?

Suddenly Harri was waving at us to come. Joe and Happy rushed us forwards. We could see movement way up in the treetops, something big was moving about.

We all held our breath, then Joe was pointing again …and Happy.

It took Rosa and I a while to see her…but when she moved that long, hairy, orange arm – well, there aren’t many things with long hairy orange arms that live in the jungle (…and if there are I DON’T want to know about it).

She swung gracefully down, hanging by one arm as she plucked the fruit from the lower limbs of the tree, ‘at home’ I thought…her home.

She was so big, and …so orange, she was literally the perfect orangutan in every way…and then she was gone.

We stood there marvelling at her ‘orangutanness’ …we thought that was probably it for us but our guides knew more and we started to track her along the escarpment.

The next time they spotted her we could clearly see two movements in the trees and the certainty the guides had had that our orangutan was female became clear; there was a baby up there as well!

Rosa and I had a tearful hug, gutted that Theo wasn’t here with us…this was something we wanted to share as a family.

Maybe, just maybe, only Rosa and I were ‘meant to see these ones’ because they were a mum and her daughter. ‘You’re clutching at straws there girl’ I thought, but if that was how the universe worked then it meant Theo would see a male orangutan in the jungle – I knew it was thin but it was all I could come up with…

We watched mama and baby for over half an hour, munching away on fruits and swinging effortlessly through the trees – we could see the baby watching us at one point and we all waved : )

Baby didn’t wave back, what would we have done if she had…? Freaked out I reckon…

At some point mum decided it was time to go, they headed up and away, to make a nest according to Happy. They make a new one every day because there’s a threat from snakes moving in otherwise.

Life in the jungle!

We headed back to share our news and our blurry far away video clips with Theo, allowing ourselves to feel the full joy of the fact that they were here…living in this forest.

…and the best thing of all?

The exclamations of wonder and the looks of joy on the faces of Joe, Harri and Happy. They loved seeing her as much as we had, and they were the ones living here – doing their best to protect the home of these beautiful creatures.

Theo was delighted we had seen them, and a little sad. He was clear he’d made the right decision for his chances of going on the trek, but would have loved so much to see them…

Herman was delighted for us and ‘Never try, Never know’ with its accompanying chuckle could be heard as Rosa and I went and bathed in the jungle mountain waterfall again that evening. Washing our hair with the ‘faith in nature’ shampoo one of our friends had given us before we left. We had another fantastic dinner and went to bed early. Tomorrow was a big day.

Joe arrived early and decided we should go back to the village to see if the orangutans were going to come back this morning – the bridge we were heading across, to start our trek, was in the village so it was only a little detour.

We searched for ten minutes but there was no sign…time to head into the jungle.

We walked over the bridge and the big, muddy, fast flowing river into a mixed rubber and palm plantation. The walking was gentle and after a couple of hours, there had been no leeches and not really much up and down either, ‘easing us in gently’ I thought darkly to myself…

We could see the jungle proper getting closer and when we reached one of the big, muddy, fast-flowing tributaries that fed the main river there were two lads waiting there for us, with a giant inflatable rubber ring …the adventure was about to begin : )

Joe and one of the lads started to put all the rucksacks in plastic bags …and then what?

Harri and Happy waded across (up to their necks) with all the stuff, that’s what…and we were meant to sit like the slightly pathetic pampered westerners that we are…in the rubber ring!

Hmmm, I really wanted to wade across with the others but even though I threatened to ‘scream and scream until I was sick’, they absolutely weren’t having it.

Theo and Rosa went together and then Joe and Harry had all kinds of fun trying to get the ring back up river for me. That river was moving fast…it was actually pretty fun in the ring and as soon as we got out our wading and trekking began. We splashed through the edge of the river and scrambled up a vertical bank.

As soon as we entered the jungle Joe, Happy and Harri went into formation, the leader hacking at the jungle to make a path, one of them in the middle and one at the back. Joe helped Rosa with her leeches, Harri was right by Theo when he crossed rivers in case his dodgy knee gave out, and Happy was there with a hand whenever the going got particularly tough for me. It was respectful, watchful, and brilliantly done. Not too obvious or in your face but we were being kept safe every step of the way.

There were no more footpaths here, and we spent half our time walking along streams – the cool of the mountain water moved up and somewhere around my middle, where the sweat from my face rolled down, they met …and made stream!

It wasn’t crazy hot in the jungle but the walking was a lot of effort – roots, stones, mud and sudden drops in the stream bed to navigate.

The truth was it was pretty physically demanding and I had elected to carry the heaviest rucksack to support Theo’s knee, and because Rosa was still feeling pretty rough with her cough. I was still in recovery myself but I had my ‘determined’ head on and even though Happy offered three times to carry my rucksack, I was being stubborn about it.

It was obvious who the properly fit people were, and it wasn’t me, Theo or Rosa, but it was our stuff and I didn’t want to have them carry it. A mixture of pride and bloody mindedness I guess…

I didn’t once get a sense from them  that they thought I was being an idiot for carrying it though, just the regular offer of kindness…I learned a lot about respectful support that day.

…but however tough it was physically  WE WERE IN THE JUNGLE, we could feel the breathe of it in the leaves way above our heads, in the tangle of roots beneath our feet…in the clean air and the dappled light on the water in the streams – however hot, sticky, achey and sucked on by leeches I was – it was all worth it.

This was my temple …my place of worship, my heart was happy here, in the place where nature was in charge and humans just got to visit for a while…

We heard insects and birds that morning and the occasional howl of a gibbon. We’d stop every now and again to make big kiss smacking noises against our hands – the noise of the female orangutan : )

…and we didn’t rush – what was there to do, where was there to be?! This was it, being in the jungle.

We stopped for lunch by a pool big enough to swim a few strokes in. I waded in fully clothed and waited for my temperature to even out while the three men prepared lunch for us; pineapple, watermelon, satsumas duko (we love duko) and a small lychee type fruit. After we were full of the delicious fruits they pulled out three ‘nasi gorengs’, wrapped in beautiful brown paper. Fried rice with delicious vegetables.

We talked about treks they had been on in the past – Joe had spent nine days trekking once and Happy had been on a twelve dayer. They had seen bears, tigers, elephants and lots of orangutans – was it time or how deep you went into the jungle that gave you the best chance to see the jungles inhabitants ?

They thought time was the main factor. Time and having good eyes, listening for alarm calls and being patient.

…not much chance for us today then! …our group was not stealthily prowling through the jungle ‘making not a sound’…we were more the ‘singing silly songs, falling over roots, swearing and sweating’ jungle trekkers.

Joe taught us their jungle trek song, sang loudly over and over again to, very surreally, the tune of Jingle Bells : )

‘Jungle trek, Jungle trek, in Batu Katak,

See the monkeys, see the birds, see orangutans’ “

…in a jungle twice the size of Cornwall, any self respecting orangutan would be on the other side of Falmouth when it heard us crossing the Tamar!

As we got close to the camp we started to see more butterflies. Mostly small orange ones at first but the deeper we got the more colourful they became, large blue ones shaped like swallows – bright yellow ones with black dots, black velvet butterflies with a purple sheen, teeny little blues and simple whites. There were even paper butterflies, which I’d never heard of before, they were the size of a small bird and their wings had the quality of tissue paper.

We walked for about five and a half hours in all that day and arrived at a well established camp just on the edge of the national forest. Just as we turned the corner of the last river Rosa and Joe saw a small group of hornbills take off high up in the trees.

They are such huge and beautiful birds – I always feel sad when I see them in cages – they were born to soar over mountains and jungle, and  here they could!

We arrived to a mid afternoon snack of deep fried banana and met Lilia, a nineteen year old German girl who was out here on her own, volunteering. She was living at the camp with her mentor (who was also our cook). Her job was to record the wildlife she saw…she had seen some monkeys and a giant gecko and that was about it (…that sounded pretty great to me – fingers crossed : )

Lilia showed us where we could bathe and which stones we could turn into face paint – she pointed out the toilet but said everyone went in the jungle…

’Went in the jungle?’ The idea of leeches climbing onto my bum was not a cheerful one. Some thought would need to go into this…

I did come up with an ingenious solution, but some things are best kept private!

We had planned to go ‘spotting’ that night but I had the mother of all headaches from carrying the heavy rucksack (‘you just won’t learn will you Shannon!’) and retired hurt to our wooden shack with its waterproof mattress and a blanket under a mosquito net, luxury…

There was no growling or crazy howling noises in the night – not that I heard, and I was actually a little cold – it was such a lovely feeling when you haven’t had it for a while!

On our first morning in camp we all lined up for the ‘tobacco treatment’ – Happy and Harri were soaking everyone’s feet in tobacco solution – a tried and trusted leech deterrent!

After a breakfast of fried vegetable roots dipped in syrup we explored the jungle around us… We headed up the mountain, and I mean up – using roots and saplings as ropes and climbing equipment. The ‘straight up’ lasted almost half an hour and the eight of us (Lilia and Dharma had been invited to come with us on all our expeditions…it was more fun than sitting in the camp and they were both part of our gang now.)

Our first stop was a net installed in the trees – where the brave could sleep at night and wake up ‘in the jungle’ – it was gorgeous lying looking up at the treetops wondering what it would be like to see the bear that had wondered along the path beneath us only months before.

Then, more up. Up to the spot where the camera trap had caught footage of both a bear and a tiger in the past…

We were walking in the footsteps of one of the last 150 Sumatran tigers left in the wild…they were here, somewhere : )

…as the jungle released us from her leafy depths and gave us a chance to see the valley open up before us, we bathed in the beauty of the giant trees and after a while noticed the heavily disguised chameleon, really quite close to us, waiting for lunch to wander by.

On the way back down we went to find Rosa’s giant flowers but the last one was brown and gooey and the new one still a giant bud…no rotting corpse smells for us…such a loss : )

Back at camp we de-leeched (they get in some surprising places those little blood suckers) and after a leisurely lunch we headed up stream, deeper into the forest.

We had some more heavenly butterfly sightings and one very exciting charge up the river when Happy thought he heard an orangutan…we all scoured the mountain slopes, but if she had been there, she had moved off…

We headed back to camp after a few hours of clambering and sweating, and we saw a baby python crossing the path…snakes are way less scary when they are one metre long …rather than the six metres that they may one day be!

I wanted to sit and look at the beauty of the jungle a little more when we got back to camp and there was quite a wide earth covered path next to the stream …it would be good to sit and just ‘be’ for a bit.

I was just spraying a new coat of songbird natural mosquito repellent all over me when Joe called me.

There was a group of large grey and white monkeys at the edge of our clearing, hard to spot among the foliage, but so exciting anyway.

We went back to get the others but the monkeys had gone. A brief visit…

I went back to my original plan and Theo said he would come and join me when he was ready. I rounded the corner onto the path and two of the monkeys we had just seen swung across the jungle ahead of me… They had fabulous punk hairstyles and super cute faces. I ran back into camp to get Rosa and Theo and we sat spellbound watched them delicately picking fruit, having a bloody good scratch, and playing in the trees before they went deeper into the jungle to join the rest of their gang.

We were so delighted to have seen real big monkeys playing in the jungle – they were Thomas Leaf or Langur monkeys apparently…a type of monkey I had never even known existed, and was literally only found in this one place in the whole world…

After we all sat down together for a feast of gado-gado, roasted aubergine and fried rice, it was time to gather every torch, apply more bug spray, and head out …into the dark. The whole gang was going ‘spotting’.

We hadn’t even left camp when our first creature was caught in the glare of our headlights, a huge gecko – a good foot long with great big bug eyes 🙂

A good start!

We headed down to the stream, where all the noise was coming from, and it was teaming with life, frogs and bugs of all kinds. Beautiful green frogs with giant eyes, red ones with mega long legs and the cutest small brown ones sitting quietly on a rock. We saw spiders eyes winking at us from the river bank… and right near the end, the jewel in my evening, a green and red water snake gracefully arranged on a branch over the river.

Six of us had gone past and missed her, so perfectly adapted to her surroundings was she…

It was a great adventure sploshing through the water – little cries and exclamations going up as the latest frog was found – the idea of wading up to our knees in water clearly inhabited by snakes and spiders not bothering any of us a but…and we went to bed tired but happy.

I was up first on our last morning, and headed out…the butterflies had not woken up yet but the gibbons had, making a right old racket, but too far away for me to see.

Back to my path I decided – it was peaceful there and I needed the loo, maybe the monkeys would come down and join me during my morning ablutions.

I had barely started along the path when I heard a growl. Deep and low.

I froze.

Had I heard that? How close was it…?and most importantly of all, what was it!

I waited for one, two, three minutes but my body was demanding my attention, so I began walking very slowly and softly along the path, and there it was again. No mistaking it this time – that was the growl of a cat.

My rational mind told me that with 150 tigers in an area twice the size of Cornwall, next to a camp full of humans this was not a tiger, but what was it?! …were there other cats in the jungle?! Did some other weird creature make a deep throated growling sound…?

I heard the growl one more time as I stood there thinking it all through – a little further away this time… whatever it was might not be about to snack on my while I did my morning poo!

Back at camp I did my best growl impersonation and Lilia immediately said it was a ‘golden cat’. They had heard something similar in the jungle when she’d gone trekking, and that’s what her guide had told her.

I did my noise for Dharma and he said ‘golden cat’ too but Joe thought it might be – a hedgehog!!

A hedgehog, those terrifying growling predators of the jungle : )

At some point when I get decent WiFi I shall try and find some recordings of both and see what I think (and the Sumatran tiger too, just in cases).

The monkeys didn’t come back that morning but the local hornbills were making a lot of noise in the trees behind the mountain – we took it in turns to look through the binoculars and when I first clamped them to my eyes, there it was…a giant prehistoric bird flying across the forest covered mountains ahead of us. It had landed by the time anyone got to take a turn looking but the shape and size of that enormous dinosaur in flight is ‘locked in’ for me now.

I was excited and then my dream came back to me…Theo.

It had been a classic, makes no sense kind of dream…a whole bunch of things went wrong and it was my fault (somehow!) and in that moment I could tell the dream was about how sad I was feeling that Theo had nit seen an orangutan – we were leaving the jungle today and he still hadn’t seen one.

There was nothing I could do to change that – anymore then I’d been able to influence the style and colour of the room being painted at work in my dream…

Sometimes you just have to let go.

We tobaccoed up, said goodbye to Lilia, thanked Dharma for his incredible cooking and headed out into the forest.

It was the deepest we’d been into the jungle and we were quieter and more introspective on the return journey…Rosa was still properly vigilant with the leeches but quieter when she found one…

I thought about the bravery it took to spend three days in the jungle where there are leeches on nearly every path we walked along – good going Rosa, and it had been her voice that was the most excited the night before as we discovered all the frogs – she has some resilience our girl and right now she was happy because we were travelling through the water away from the leech infested banks : )

We walked in the magnificence of the towering trees, occasionally surrounded by butterflies, listening for any alarm calls or loud smacky kissey sounds.

After three hours we stopped for lunch, back at the same place we had been to on the way here…once again I waded in fully clothed and the gang prepared a feast for us.

I sat quietly after lunch, saying goodbye to the forest and feeling such a sense of gratitude that there was still somewhere in the world with treasures this wild and precious in it.

Rosa, Theo and I leaned back against a moss covered rock and I took a selfie of us and then Happy was on his feet…pointing down the river. Bending this way and that peering through the trees.

‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’

Neither Theo or I had shoes on but we didn’t care – there was a brief curfuffle where we made sure Theo was at the front to see whatever this was, and we were off…

It was pretty amazing just how quietly and quickly we could move when the chance of seeing ‘something’ was on the line…

Happy and Joe were pointing up into the trees when we got to a clearing on the stream…we could all see the movement in the trees and there it was, clear as the day is orange.

A baby orangutan walking along a branch heading up to its mum.

We didn’t see mum but the elation we felt at Theo having seen an orangutan was overwhelming and I think we all cried a little… that baby was so cute, smaller than the one Rosa and I had seen, and if we’d been even a few seconds slower racing through the jungle we would have missed it!!

We were all so happy, we didn’t know how much happier we could be until that moment…

Nature is the best…(and the most gross Rosa pointed out as she removed two leeches from her socks : )

So bright was our mood that we embraced the crazy looking ‘jungle taxi’ to get us home on that fast moving wide river.

No boat for us…we were all going back on four rubber rings tied together with string…two lads were on hand with the rings and Joe spent ages lashing them together. Harri cut a couple of poles, not sure what they were for, and Happy put all our rucksacks back into plastic bags and tied them up (I had carried the heaviest one again – go me : )

This ‘taxi’ was meant to hold eight people and four bags of stuff…?

They loaded all the bags on to the smaller rings at the front and back – Theo and Rosa were in the second ring with me behind them so that I could film this crazy bloody bonkers expedition travelling down the river.

Joe got on the front, Happy on the back and Harri and the two lads launched us out into the fast flowing water…

It was so much fun!

The sticks kept us away from the banks and Harri and the lads jumped off every time we grounded out.

We went over some brilliant rapids with the rings thrown up and down like a theme park ride, all to great whoops of joy from all of us…

After a rousing rendition of ‘Jungle trek’ we were home, back to our hotel where Herman waited for us…we said a heartfelt thanks to our three brilliant guides who promised to come for dinner with us later.

Wet and happy we headed back up the path to wash our clothes and tell Herman all about our adventures…

‘Never try, never know!’ 

Sumatra Wild: Joe’s number – +62 812-6340-3452

https://www.instagram.com/sumatra_wild/

https://exploringsumatra.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-batu-katak-north-sumatra/