This Precious Life

The next morning, we got up at 8am. We brushed our teeth, ate a cold breakfast of unappetizing Mexican beans on Lebanese bread, doused ourselves completely with mosquito repellent spray and headed off. We were completely ill-equipped for the trek. We wore slippers and carried around our lunch and snacks in a recyclable bag, the kind that was given away for free by supermarkets.

There were many rivers to cross to get to our final destination. Sometimes, we were lucky enough to be able to cross on suspension bridges but this was rare. Very rare.

Most of the time, the guide will help us cross where the water is shallow. We never had to swim across where it is deep. However, even though the water level is only thigh-high at most, the river current is so strong that it is almost impossible to walk. When you need to lift a foot to make a step, your lifted foot will be dragged by the current and you will topple before finding your footing again unless you have good friends to help hold you up.

Thank God for friends!

Since we were ill-equipped, we had to walk across in bare feet as the river current is so strong, it pulls our slippers off our feet. We tried gripping them tightly between our toes but we were not strong enough. The river bed is a bed of uneven rocks, without our slippers, we had to step precariously on painful edges and tips. It wasn’t too different from going for a traditional Chinese foot reflexology treatment.

Now, try holding onto a free recyclable bag instead of a backpack while doing that, our lunch got dipped in the water a few times. :)

During the trek, we came across rows of fresh tiger tracks. The mud tracks were still soft which meant that the tiger had stamped its paw prints only a while ago. I wonder if we had missed it by seconds, minutes or hours.

About two hours later, we reached the Upeh Guling Waterfalls and sparkling blue Tasik Air Biru. Paradise!