Climbing Bukit Tabur

Like the eagle, I want to fly

Thursday, 20th March 2008, a large group of 23 people decided to "torture" themselves by taking on Bukit Tabur, it's a first time climbing Bukit Tabur for most of the people in the group and that's including myself, so I didn't expect anything out from this trip.

8.00am
The whole group arrived at the starting point and there we started our climb, we took a "Before climb" group picture first so that we can compare how miserable we look after the climb.

First leg of the journey was excellent, the walk wasn't too difficult and the weather was fantastic, no rain, and a little cloudy.
It didn't take long for us to climb high enough to see the beautiful scenery, but then we are just only at the beginning of the track and someone suggested that we turn back since we already seen "what we came to see".
Good thing is that the more adventurous people that are in the group are also quite good at persuading the others to push on and finish the track, they say not finishing the track is like sex without orgasm. (Only one way to find out)

We pushed on and continue the track, which we soon found out that it is not as easy as it is said to be, before the trip I though we are just gonna walk in the park so my choice of footwear was my yellow and black slippers, it turns out that my assumptions was all wrong, at some parts of the track we had to climb up or down vertical walls, now this is a bit of a problem not because I had to climb with slippers which I rather go barefooted, but most of the the people in the group are beginners, they don't go trekking for hours as often as the more experienced people in the group, getting them to climb down a rope is not easy especially when a slip of a hand means possible fatal injury, even if there is a guide telling them what to do he won't be able to do much but only to boost the confidence of the climber.

It takes quite some time for the whole group to climb up the walls (there were many), which isn't much of an issue since it's a holiday and time is what we have at hand, however the concern is making sure everyone is able to make it pass the walls safely, plus I don't want to be the cause of any of my friend's death. (This one is to all smokers)


Overall it's was still a great experience for me, we were quite a crazy bunch singing and shouting along the way which made this the most musical jungle trek I've ever done.

I just hope that the group could understand that the disciplines of jungle trekking is not only confined to develop mental and physical endurance, improve self confidence and building character, it is also to develop leadership, teamwork, compassion and care, and most importantly is the determination to succeed as a group.

Have a Good Good Friday and Happy Easter