About a month ago on the 6th of February (which now seems like a lifetime ago) we went up to Cameroon Highlands. It was a nice change to get up into some mountains with nice fresh air and where wait for it... it was actually cold!! and by cold I mean about 15C at night and 25-30C during the day. However Rachel (being English) and I (just being lazy) didn't take a jumper since we didn't really believe that we would actually need it and got fairly cold at night.
In the Cameroon Highlands we were horribly middle aged and went for "nice walks" to a tea estate, a strawberry farm and ate in some lovely restaurants. We had some incredible Indian food as well as some awesome Roti Canai (as Rachel describes it "roti canai is like when naan and a pancake had a delicious baby) which is served with daal or curry for dipping and teh tarik (ultra sweet malay tea) for breakfast which set us back a grand total of 2 ringgit - less than an Aussie dollar. The scenery was stunning and I spent hours just staring at the wonderful patterns created by the masses of tea plants that grow everywhere throughout the highlands. While sitting in one of the afore-mentioned Indian restaurants Justine walked past which was very random but a great surprise and lovely to catch up with her on her big adventure.
One thing not so middle aged about our trip to the Cameroon Highlands was the fact that most of us didn't bring very practical shoes. Two others only brought thongs which were useless when we walked through the jungle and both Rachel and my shoes gave us blisters. Hence when the time came for us to walk back to our hostel all of us were whining.. a lot. Luckily on the way back down we managed to hitch a ride (don't worry various family relations and people over 30, we figured that in a fight we could take on the driver 6 to 1) from a nice man who took pity on us. I also got to fulfill one of my dreams...I rode in the back of his Ute. SO MUCH FUN. In fact in the Cameroon Highlands we spent quite a lot of time squashed in taxis or in one case the car of Syafiq - a talkative Malay guy whose American university education had left him with a hilarious Malay-Texan accent.
We were in the Cameroon Highlands during the Hindu festival of Thaipusam. During this festival people pierce their body with various hooks and metal bars, in other words it is super painful. So much so, this festival is banned in India because it got so out of hand. It was quite a strange thing to watch and while some were obviously in a trance, some obviously were not and looked in a LOT of pain (check out the photos).
Sorry about the lack of blogs...I've been super busy and super lazy. I'll have another blog up by the end of the week. Love han xo
