Road Trip !

Hi All,

Right - I know you're probably all bored of all this adventure lark by now but I just got a whole load more to tell you ! Just got back from our "loop" trip, where we basically mission round Sabah dropping off supplies to the various project groups.

We set off at seven o'clock on Friday morning heading to Imbak Canyon as our first destination. For those of you that saw it the BBC's "expedition borneo" was filmed here. The drive takes about four hours over the mountian roads then another three down logging tracks. Whether or not you can get into the canyon or not depends on the height of the Imbak River, the Landrover will get through it up to a decent height but it had been really dry and not rained for two weeks so we got through it pretty easily. The track then takes you to a rangers camp where the area is managed from. Our guys stay at the "BBC" camp which is another hour and half fairly intense

hike in and involves another river crossing on foot.

After a brief chat with the head ranger - who assured us "dry season, no rain for weeks , river is good" - we hiked in. The guys were fine although there were a few signs of encrouching jungle madness, ( the jungle does strange things to you after a while !). Plan was to all hike out at first light and grab the extra stuff from the landy. One ten hour downpour later and the trickle that was the river had metamorphosed into a raging torrent. The rivers are crazy here and go up and down like a yoyo, I reckon this one had gone up by about two and half to three meters. We were well and truly trapped anyway.

After a rough nights sleep on their kitchen table (the rain stopped about four - it wasn't a quiet night !) we then basically chilled out at camp waiting for the river to drop. One guy found a scorpion the size of his hand in his boot which amused everyone for a while as the rangers nonchalantly played with it for the camera's. A good lesson in why you should always check your boots before putting them on. The river was dropping as the day went on and we reckoned we'd try to cross at four - unfortunately the rain started again at two and the rangers there were basically, "if you don't go now you're not getting out again" so we had a mad rush to pack our kit and get back across the river. All good fun - the crossing was a bit sketchy but we had some assitance from the rangers and got across ok. The main imbak river was still far too high to take the Landrover through so we had to overnight at the ranger camp and reassess in the morning.

Come morning (and more rain ) the river was still uncrossable so 24 hours behind schedule we had to change routes and take the back roads out to a place called Tawau. No-one from Raleigh had done this road since 2004, it wasn't supposed to be the best and chances of getting lost in the middle of miles of jungle and palm plantation were looking pretty high so thankfully the rangers ( helpful guys) said they'd guide us out to a point we could then use our GPS to navigate out from.

Driving out of imbak at seven in the morning was simply an amazing experience. The driving was intense & the rain meant some of the road was a mudbath (lots of fun - I had a dirty big grin on my face driving through it), and the scenery was spectacular. We were driving through some of the world's oldest rainforest and had wild boar& monkeys running out in front of us.

After dropping a parcel for one of our groups at a forestry commission jetty in Tawau we then headed on trying to get to a town called Lahad Datu to pick up a pass to get into Danum Valley to see another group. Unfortuantely more intense rain and getting lost and managing to drive in a circle for an hour around Tawau meant we had to reassess again and made an executive decision to stay at a nice hotel in Laha Datu (nice hotel but the town was a hole, full of pirates apparantly) - after almost eleven straight hours in the Landrover we didn't fancy another two hours dirt track in the dark.

We left a six the next morning and again had an amazing drive going into the Danum Valley conservation area. We came around one corner and came across a small herd of elephants crossing the track about 50m ahead of us. We slid to stop - seeing jungle elephants like this is really rare in Malaysia and it was a pretty amazing experience - the bull elephant actually stopped on the side of the track and stared us down, even in a two-ton Landrover you don't really want to be charged by a fully grown elephant. Thankfully he lost interest after a couple of minutes and disappeared off into the jungle, we still went past pretty dam quick as weren't really sure if they'd gone or not.

I'm spending next month in Danum so will tell you more about it after - it's an amazing place and the guys there have seen orang-utans really close to camp. After a few hours there we drove onto a place called Bhatu Puteh where our group is helping to build an eco-tourism lodge on a lake. These guys have a camp right on the side of an amazing river and in the morning they all get on a boat for a ten minute commute up to the worksite. We did the tour at six the next morning and the river banks were teaming with wildlfe - we saw Macaque and Probiscus monkeys, Boars and all kinds of birdlife.

Later in the day we drove out to Seson Doton where I got to see Charl, her team and their site where they're putting in a water feed system. It's a beautiful place in the mountains. The guys are staying in a local community and doing some teaching, local dancing and baking as well as the actual water feed work. Charl'll probably do a full entry on this place later so won't steal her thunder but I was really glad I got to see it.

From there we drove back to fieldbase. Sorry if this has been a bit of an essay to get through - it was an amazing experience that was difficult to put into words, a proper adventure involving some full-on driving, incredible scenery and wierd and wonderful local people we met along the way including rangers, logging truck drivers, stall keepers & one particularly wierd yocal family in the sticks who refused to even acknowledge my existence when I tried to ask them for directions . We also came across some excellent signposts including the aptly named "MING FOOD CORNER" & the now legendary "FOOK HING LONG TRADING" - sheer class.

The route plan changed about three times due to the conditions but that's kind of cool things about this expedition stuff - the plan seems to change on a daily basis so there's no point in getting too stuck on planning, you've just got to roll with it.

Will be a while before we post again so hope everyone is well and enjoying themselves. Fresher definitely worth shelving the abacus for a while to come and do this sort of thing i reckon - you only live once and all of that ! The longer this goes on the less keen I am to return to the world of "real" work anytime soon - will have to see how long the wallet holds out I guess

Anyway I'm off for another day in the office so cheers again for the comments posted & take care all.

Simon