The Gateway To The Jungle

(Above: Winters and Len, Winters takes time out from his mysterious world to take Len to the Jungle)

The humidity was always uncomfortable in the middle of the day, especially if you had a rucksack with you, sticking to your back and forcing you to only use one of the straps in an attempt to “let your back breathe”. We found the bus stop in the middle of the thriving city, a small 16 seater, but in this part of the world every journey must’ve doubled this so called seating capacity figure…..not to mention everyone’s belongings, from general luggage bags, to boxes of chickens. Sticking out with our 6 feet frames and white complexions we were instantly surrounded by locals wanting to sell us anything they could that would apparently make our journey more comfortable. The fruit sellers amazed me with their assortment – fruits that I had never even seen a picture of, its only a fruit - but at that point you instantly realise you’re not as clever as you hoped you were, and there’s so much to see and learn in this world!

It was a 4 hour rough ride to our destination, the road was littered with pot holes and obstacles that the driver seem to be confident of avoiding at a high pace, the best you could do was to chat and trade cigarettes with your neighbour, and take in a view of the miles upon miles of plantations and the ever looming jungle covered hills and volcanoes that were slowly approaching. Our destination was “the gateway to the jungle” – “Bukit Lawang”, a tiny village located on a fast flowing part of the river on the edge of the jungle. This magical tiny place simply consisted of small huts that were mainly used as guesthouses for the small number of tourists that came by. The main attraction for visitors here are the orangutans, they’re protected here, a government run station is located here that offers protection from poachers in a wild environment. You can see these amazing animals most days, swinging through the trees with such ease, their amazing strength is something to respect, especially when you get close to them, which can often happen if you wade across the river.

Other than the orangutangs there are monkeys, snakes, all things jungle - and of course the Sumatran Tiger, you’ll almost definitely never see a tiger, even if you lived there forever, but every local of course their own story of an encounter, I enjoyed listening to every story, no matter how far fetched I thought it to be. Other than the wildlife here, the visitor also has the opportunity to climb into a giant rubber ring, and be sent down the fiercely flowing river, past rocks and small wooden bridges, with hopefully a fully intact body at the bottom, this is definitely not a place to break a bone.

One of the bars located halfway up the path along the river actually had an old pool table in, we played with the bar owner and other locals one evening, answering their questions about our marital status (a question that is constantly asked to all foreigners in this part of the world), and what its like in the big cities of the west, and of course listening to stories of tiger encounters. It was a great night, I couldn’t show my appreciation enough, these people not only spoilt us with food and drink, but spoke and entertained us in the nicest possible way – the way that came across to me like they were doing this because they enjoyed it, and simply wanted to speak and play pool with us.

It was almost a year after my visit to Bukit Lawang that I heard the horrific news. It was Winters who told me, he mentioned something about “illegal logging activity” and a “burst dam”. The whole village had been washed away in a catastrophic tidal wave. Every building destroyed, hundreds killed, all gone in an instant. The dam that had been created a few miles up stream by these law breaking loggers had not been strong enough to hold back the huge levels of water that should’ve simply run straight out of the jungle through Bukit Lawang. I often think back and look at the photos of my time there, thinking about what happened to my pool playing buddies, and everyone else I briefly came across whose face I can picture. I like to think they all got away unscathed, but of course the truth is that I will never know.