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"I'm as funny as the number of times I can make you smile when you're feeling explosive... and you're as witty as the number of minutes it takes me to understand some of your messages"

on a shoestring

Its 3 months too late I know. I was relying on Ahmedabad Mirror to publish it; but as they never bothered too (*@#&#), I might as well do it here.

A last minute plan, discounted air tickets, a tight budget, 2 other friends and just a backpack. It was my maiden international trip, one for the foremost pages of the memory books.

A holiday in Malaysia isn’t obviously unheard off. A lot of people do it; a lot of acquaintances have in fact. Everyone knows about Genting and Langkawi. For us, besides the fact that we were on an extremely narrow budget, we wanted to avoid the usual holiday crowd and of course get a taste of backpacking. A 5 hour flight to Singapore followed by a 6 hour bus ride bought us to Kuala Lumpur, the capital and of course the city with the twin towers. As we had only one night to spend in KL, we quickly got ourselves a tiny room, dumped our packs and were off to witness the city Lonely Planet has told us so much about. From the China Town market, where we found knock offs for every mighty brand under the sky, to KL’s premier shopping street, Butik Bintang, we travelled through the city with wide eyes and an open mouth. After getting lost in a mall for a few hours, an over-whelming visit to the Partonas Towers, a dreadful foot massage and a tummy-full dinner the day was already over and we were back to our tiny room. It was the first and near-perfect pit-stop towards the long trip ahead.

The next day was an early morning bus out off KL and on our way to Taman Negara, the oldest rainforest in the world. A bus from KL to Jerantut and another from Jerantut to Kuala Tembling, from were we along with 12 other people squatted in a tiny boat and took off for a 3 hour boat ride to Kuala Tahan, the village right opposite Taman Negara. Kuala Tahan is a small village with a few chalets and dorm rooms to stay at and a few floating restaurants. Right opposite these restaurants across the river was the mighty rainforest, Taman Negara. We were completely mesmerized by the beauty and vastness of the rainforest. But we had never imagined that Taman Negara was to be the adventurous peak of our trip. Among the various activities one could do there, a night trek in the jungle as it read, seemed very interesting and caught our attention immediately. We met an English guy who was also on a backpacking trip and decided to tag along with us for our stay there. The night trek wasn’t disappointing. A 2 hour walk into the mild exteriors of the jungle amidst heavy rain, a few snakes, a tarantula, shining deer eyes and glowing mushrooms, our first encounter with the forest was a pleasant and an enjoyable one to say the least. We returned to the village, completely drenched but with high spirits and an eagerness to go back and so we decided go further into the jungle the next day. The next morning with a day sack packed with a couple of bottles of water, bread, canned tuna and a sleeping bag we set off for a 12 km trek inside the jungle to a viewing point where we’d be staying for the night. We were given a map and were told that we’d reach our point in about 6 hours, but the jungle had something else in store for us. It took us 14 hours to reach our destination. By the time we reached there, we had leaches all over us, we had been bitten by flying ants, bruises and scratches everywhere and a particular stench that I still have in the t-shirt I wore that day. We survived on stream water, damp bread and tuna with a very weird smell. We were pretty scared by the time it was getting dark. Now this was a forest where the trek kept going up and down and where once couldn’t sit for 2 minutes without being covered with leeches and our destination was still nowhere in sight. We thought we weren’t going to make it. Though it was 12 kms on paper, we travelled more than 16 going up and down the jungle trek. Though we did reach the dock just about as it was getting dark, the stay at the observation dock wasn’t any better. Out of food, but fortunately tired and sleepy enough not to even think about hunger, we crashed onwooden bunks into an uncomfortable stupor as the worry about completing the same trip the next day was a feeling all of us shared. But as before, there was something else in store for us. A 3 hour trek through an alternate route bought us closer to the river and in reach of a boat which took us back to the starting point of our trek in 20 minutes. Though the irony of walking 14 hours one way and returning back in 20 minutes is ridiculous and unjust, we were much much more than relieved to get in touch with civilization again. After 3 huge glasses of milo, an hour long shower to wash away the blood, the mud and everything that we had carried along with us from the jungle and a failed attempt at laundry, we sat and reminisced about the previous day, about being alive, about having survived it all, about having blood clots and leech teeth still logged all over our legs and about the trip ahead of us. The next morning we took another bus back to Jerentut and then another to Kuala Besut. From here, we took a speed boat to the Perhentian Islands.

A tropical island, placed to the North east and around 10 miles off shore from Malaysia, it was a complete contrast and a much needed rest after the pit-stop over at Taman Negara. We settled our sacks in a dorm, again on a beach chalet, managed by a Pakistani. Conversing in Hindi never felt so good. Perhentian can’t really be described in words. It is a quintessential paradise which could woo and mesmerize anyone; be it a group of German girls on a vacation, a retired Canadian couple, an Englishman who had been staying at the island for more than 10 days, another who re-joined us after our brief meeting at the rainforest, a Canadian girl, who decided to stay back and work at the island or just a bunch of Indian boys. Our 3 day stint on the island was mostly spent underwater, snorkeling around feeding fishes and baiting sharks, chasing turtles, being stung by jellyfish and diving off piers. The food was finger licking good, something that I direly miss. If not underwater, we spent our time with expensive liquor and eating all that we could. We also spotted a 6 foot iguana, played volleyball, had a crazy intoxicated encounter with 3 drunk British guys on a trip very much like us and caught the Champions League final at 4 in the morning amidst the frenzy and jubilant atmosphere the drunk locals created. Taman Negara took us closer to the end; Perhentian bought us nearer to bliss. 3 days went by in a flash and we were soon on an early morning speed boat back to Kuala Besut and from there a 10 hour bus back to KL. A brief stay at KL and we were on a night bus heading towards the last pit stop of our trip, Singapore.

4 days in Singapore were all out fun. The highlight was obviously the food scene. We tasted an array of sea food which included tiger prawns, crabs, squids, octopuses, stingray and our last night when we consumed more than 7 animals at a Brazilian stake house. We danced on Hindi music bang in the middle Singapore’s entertainment district till the wee hours of morning, visited the Singapore zoo and returned with a kiss from a sea lion, came back from the majestic Sentosa Islands after patting and playing with Dolphins and most notably marked the entire trip with black permanent ink on our arms.

I went through Malaysia on a shoestring and slinged through Singapore with 2 best friends on a pocketful of cash and got a taste of how adventurous backpacking can be. It was the trip of a lifetime, the best graduation gift I could have asked for..