After staying in the not so nice Medan for 2 nights, I arranged a jungle trekking trip, in northern Sumatra. When I thought about doing it I was like yes! This is the proper adventure man! Not like oh lets go to exotic Thailand where everything is so organised and over travelled that even the ladyboys are old news.
Jungle trekking! Yes! Orangutans, double yes!
2 hours later we were dumped by the river in the little rural town of bukit lawang. Bukit meaning 'hills'.
The night before, after I'd sorted out what I might need for a 2 day 1 night trip into what is one of the last truly wild places on the planet, to be honest I was more than slightly scared! What to expect! Was I fit enough? Did I have the right shoes? Clothing?
Off into the jungle. See now this trek isn't like what you might expect, or maybe you would, but it’s a trek trek. Like I should've trained in the Himalayas, had hiking boots and brought a knife with me kind of trek. In some places the jungle was so close around you that you brushed it with both shoulders when walking through and hung onto monkey vines for dear life, when scaling down the paths.
There used to be a rehabilitation centre for captured orangutans so a lot of the orangutans we saw in that trip were semi wild, and quite accustomed to gawking humans. They spoke about some of the well known ones including Minna, who is even mentioned in the LonelyPlanet, who apparently has quite a temper and a habit of biting people so if we saw her we ere to keep well away.
They recognized them like they could recognize human faces. I nice thought.
They said that if she, or any other volatile orangutans grabs you by the leg, they are 3 times stronger than humans so you pretty much have absolutely no chance of escaping and even less chance of not being bitten.
It was hard to remember that when we saw the docile ones. With them, hanging in the nearby trees wit their little skinny babies, it was a lot of grab a leaf, take a bite, swap an arm, stare some more, munch - munch and on it goes.
We did come across Minna, and we all had to cut a wide path around her. She did in fact follow one f the other groups for a long while, causing a lot of us to run down the treacherous forest slopes to get away from her as she has already bitten 80 people!
Later in the day, in a particularly challenging stretch of the forest going downhill, we saw an orangutan way off, tossing her weight to make the tree she was in sway from side to side. The guide couldn’t tell if she was wild or not so we watched but started to move on. Just at that moment, the orangutan starts rapidly swinging from tree to tree crashing through the forest and heading straight for us. Our guide tells us to run down the path but she is too quick. She lands on the floor not too far from us, 2 tourists down the path in front of me, one behind me and the guide standing directly in front of me shielding me from the orangutan who seems to be making a b-line for me. She swiftly grabs around the guide, grabs hold of my leg with a fantastic strength and through my shouting" she's got my leg, she's got my leg' I waited for the bite and thought oh crap! I was imagining having to be carried out the jungle, bite getting infected, bones cracking and the works . . . but it never came.
The grip she had on me was powerful yes, but not painful. It was firm in a way that I knew I had no chance of wrenching free, but it was almost peaceful. I thought to myself well what the hell to do now? The guide didn’t seem too worried to be honest. Watchful and a little anxious but not really worried for my life, which seem to irritate the crap out of me as no one else had an orangutan holding onto them!
I calmed down and just tried to see what she would do. Orangutans are very intelligent after all and if she did bite me, well I was in her jungle after all.
She slowly climbed up on me from being like I was an odd shaped tree, and came to rest with her legs around my waist and her arms over my shoulders. The way she moved was so gentle and when she stopped, there was a definitely feeling of 'she's getting comfortable!'
It was then that I noticed she had a tiny baby clinging onto her, that was now trying to find a good grip onto the front of my t-shirt with its little orange poking fingers. Her face was right next to mind and mixed with the knowledge that she is really close to my neck if she did indeed bite me, I was struck by how freaking amazing it was. Her hairy arms holding across me just like a person would.
Indrah said that I should just carry on walking down the path, like this was something bloody normal, but her and her baby were about 40kgs and after 6 hours of trekking, I couldn't carry on for long! Besides, I had a bloody monkey on my back that seemed perfectly comfortable and wasn't about to carry on as if nothing happened!
Coaxing her with bananas and kneeling down, she eventually climbed off me, but would not let go of my hand. In the end she had to be prized of, stole all of our fruit and we had to run away from her.
The orangutans name is Jackie. And I found out afterwards that she loves being carried and holding onto humans and has not really adapted to foraging for food so is often really hungry . The guide wandered if maybe I looked like one of her handlers at the centre as normally she doesn’t hang on so long . . .
An hour, 2 hours, the next day even now 2 weeks later, I think what a once in a lifetime moment. Seeing and feeling her hairy orange arm under my chin and the poking fingers of her little baby.
