You Better not Run Through the Jungle

 

Back in Secondary School we would learn about rainforests and how they are vital for the planet as the source of Oxygen, our lungs so to say. We read about the largest ones to be around the Amazonas and in Malaysia. I have been to the jungle in Malaysia before, but this time it was a different part, a different landscape. 

Taman Negara is a vast national park in Malaysia on the Malay peninsula. It encompasses a sprawling tropical rainforest that's said to be 130 million years old. The tourist brochure recommends a different route in, while we started off from a small town "nearby", called Jerantut. Amazing place that, one of these surprising little places that wow you with great food and interesting sights. 

What an amazing ride. 200 Km through the rainforest. At 7am, we had fog like this. The entire stretch is just mall roads, one curve after the other. There are a lot of bumps and in places, parts of the road had been washed away. It was SUPER silent as the forest and fog muffles everything. One leg we drove for 1 hour and there was not another vehicle! The setting and atmosphere reminded of the 1977 movie Sorcerer. 

Most of the other vehicles on the road (of which there were VERY few) are timber jinkers. Getting into these camps is something else as there are no roads. The drivers of these trucks will carry the timber all over Malaysia, sometimes only coming home to see their family once in 2 weeks. We went past houses, schools and clinics in the middle of nowhere. Not a supermarket in sight. Or a petrol station. It seems that one would have to fill the tank every time one goes to town. 

An abandoned burger stall served as a marker to slow down to stop at the Bukit Awan, the Cloud Hill. At around 8:30, there was nothing but fog. Sadly, people that use this rest stop just litter and there was a lot of rubbish strewn around in this otherwise nicely placed and constructed viewpoint. The view was magnificent once the fog lifted in the late morning. We stopped many times to snap pictures, plug some flowers. Even with no traffic, the roads are quiet demanding as they are narrow. Overtaking trucks is an adventure and buffalo grazing might just lumber onto the roads. 

Lots of the old Mercedes "911", the Short Nose, are still in operation around here, hauling timber. These trucks seem to be indestructible. And those that have exhausted their last Diesel still make for fantastic motifs for photos. Like these two. One can only wonder what these trucks have endured and how much cargo they have hauled in decades of service.