Baptism Of Fire: Gunung Batu Puteh Hike (7th-10th Nov)

(from group 3's "Quarter Pounder" aka Sihan)

I survived, much to my haters' dismay. Baptism of Fire, the theme of our hike to the 8th highest mountain in peninsula Malaysia, though sounds scary, the real hike proved to be ten times more intimidating than the title. There were people about to raise their white flag, there were injuries, there were seemingly insurmountable obstacles, there was creepy poser like this....

AHHH!! Roderick acted cute...

But most importantly, we could now proudly say, our will is made of steel and baptism of fire has definitely shaped that piece of steel we all have.

Day 0- Of Biscuit Tins, Facial Cleanser and a Bible

Day 0 had nothing interesting to report because we hadn't really started our hike.

Guess what? Just before we departed from IMU, Ray Mun did some routine check on the stuff we packed inside our hiking bag and he found A HUGE BISCUIT TIN which was full of biscuits in one girl's bag. Ray Mun who is renowned of his coolness nearly fainted on the spot.

Happy Meal (From left: Si han the Quarter Pounder, Joey the Oreo, Kevin the Spicy Chicken McDeluxe, Say Yee the Apple Pie, Sin Chin the '5' Choco Tops, May Wan the Choco Sundae, Jeremy the Big Mac and Jeannie the McNuggets) Ray Mun the doublecheese burger 'plzzz' was not in the picture

And this was not the end. Later he also confiscated some facial cleansers from a girl (whose name i shall not disclose on ground of personal security). She must be thinking the organic cucumber+aloe vera extract inside the cleanser is edible and potentially useful when we are lost.

The repacking of our backpack could easily be the funniest moment in the whole hike. Some people really brought some weird things up there. And yes, Joash, my beloved roommate, guess what he brought? A BIBLE. Joash, i need salvation more, not you.

Committee discussed what to do with Joash's Bible

After that we were assigned to 4 teams and each team needed to come out with some really lame name. Ours, being the lamest of all, was Happy Meal!! The other were, Don't Know Yet, Leech Lovers and Apache( the most sane among all) And each of us had our own nickname. I was Quarter Pounder because i think the animals in the jungle won't like beef. Lame...

Soon after we had our briefing, we departed from IMU for Tapah, Perak. I sat in May Wan aka The-Self-Proclaimed-Most-Gentle's car. We arrived at the base camp and rested there overnight before we started our hike officially.

Day 1: First Love Last Rite

After a sleepless night, my body was aching all over but luckily my mind was completely ready for the hike. Joash as usual was too motivated until he felt very compelled to read a chapter of The Bible before going for the hike. After having a light breakfast and fighting for toilets with bunch of school kids, we elected our leader of the team.

Our leader for the first day was Kevin The Most Hamsap. (He will kill me if he sees this)

Due to some transportation problems that cropped up last minute, we somehow delayed our hike a bit. That's why we had plenty of time to kill at Kuala Woh's dam.

Somebody lost his hiking bag. Everyone helped searching

Some Milers were busily courting (OOps I mean socializing), some were just wandering around, finding place to pee and some were sinking into deep muse...

Joey was dreaming of EOS 2

After wasting for more than 1 hour, we finally got to start our hike. The first part of the hike was pretty easy because we were just hiking along the river. The river was just right beside us and it seemed everyone was in high spirit. Some of us even started testing their vocal chord (singing is not really the most suitable word).

En route to our lunch point, we crossed a river using a really cool bamboo bridge. It's really a primitive architecture marvel because it's so stable and we didn't really feel dangerous crossing this bridge which is built of few bamboo sticks.

Our first lunch point was just right beside a river. My first time experience with mess tins was not as disastrous as what I anticipated. I could even cook for other people! And the person who ate my maggi survived the hike.

The lunch was refreshing. Just when we all thought 'how come this hike so easy one', the hard part was yet to come. The path was getting steeper and steeper soon after we left the lunch point. The obstacles also became more and more sophisticated. They ranged from thorny branches and leaves to fallen treetrunks to annoying overhead branches.

We stopped now and there while the path was just getting more and more punishing. To make thing worse, the dark clouds were hovering on the sky. To make thing even worse, Roderick was challenging God to 'rain upon all the non-believers'.

And guess what? God listened to an agnostic instead of a Christian who brought Bible all the way up to the mountain. Soon after Roderick challenged God, it really rained, HEAVILY. The magnitude of the rain was no longer 'dogs and cats' when we were about to reach our first pitstop of the day. It was raining 'cows and buffalos' when we reached the cave.

The cave, anatomically(haha), is consisted of two big rocks. One rests on another. It's a perfect C-shaped cave which can easily house more than 40 hikers at any given time. By the time we reached there, we were all soaking wet and freezing cold.

Fortunately, the dinner was awaiting. Ray Mun cooked for us the pasta and macaroni cheese he brought. It's so good until the food can put TGIF to shame anytime. Maybe just because the hunger pangs were killing us. Anything palatable was considered heavenly when the weather was so cold and the body was low in sugar.

However the drama of the day didn't end here.

Due to its immense complexity, I shall retreat to the most primitive way of explanation: pictorial explanation.

As you already know, we slept in a cave which consists of two big rocks. Because of the rain, the cave became a bit slippery. While we were sleeping at night... sh*t happened...

A: The place we initially slept on.

B: I woke up suddenly and to my dismay, I slided all the way to B

C: I woke up again, this time awakened by Joey's scream 'OUCH MY HEAD'. I slided down to C and hit Joey's head.

Eventually, me, May Wan, Say Yee and Kevin didn't get any sleep because we were too afraid to move or sleep, fearing we might slide and end up at nowhere.

Day 2: The Importance Of Being Earnestly Focused aka Sondoh JEH

Early morning, after braving the usually cold weather just to get some water from nearby stream, we started our hike again, with rejuvenated spirit. Physically, despite the torturous night spent in the cave, we didn't really feel the lethargy, maybe it's largely due to the adrenaline gushed through our veins.

'Peak day' is always exciting. Everyone loves the idea of getting up the peak. Perhaps that's why we moved in an uncannily fast pace. The route was about the same as the day before, except the inclination just got steeper and steeper. Besides, the species of flora gradually changed to something that some of us have never seen before in our whole life.

Just before we reached Gunung Kak camp site, there's a famous 4-storey high rock climb (without ropes) we all had to surmount. Well, it's not as tough as what we had anticipated. The rocks, though were slippery, were strategically placed that we didn't really need to worry about our footing.

After that, we rested for a while on top of Gunung Kak and had our lunch.

The view offered by Gunung Kak was generous. We could easily see the pseudo-peak of Gunung Batu Puteh and the real peak of Gunung Batu Peak which was partly concealed in the clusters of clouds.

We continued to hike for another 4 hours before we reached the peak. The route was getting muddier as we edged closer to the peak. Some of us had our shoes stuck inside the nutella-like mud and one of us even fell into the mud. However, everyone had only one goal in their mind, THE PEAK.

So, we sondoh-jeh(GO GO GO), as suggested by Ray Mun. Finally we reached the peak and the sense of achievement was simply overwhelming when we saw the beirut standing high near the entrance of the peak.

Most of us were exhausted. We pitched the tents and had our dinner. The dinner was great and the food, none other than maggi, again tasted heavenly on top of the mountain.

After the dinner, the surprise arrived. Ray Mun told us there's a Milers' tradition which they normally carry out on top of the mountain. This tradition has certain sacredness in it and ought to be passed down batch by batch.

It turned out to be a VIVA!

Viva, though scary, was fun. Sin Chin simply couldn't resist to dig out more secrets from other people and I was not spared as well. I was saddened by some stories told by the others and i couldn't help to wonder why the stories all so emo one...

Day 3: Baptism Of Fire

In the early morning, suddenly it rained. The temperature straight away plunged. When i woke up, I was shivering deep down inside my pants because my pants were all wet due to the condensation of the vapour.

The peak was covered by mist and apart from impregnable layers of mist, we couldn't see anything else. And our emo-centre was stimulated again. Some of us began to take farewell photos and some of us had the sudden urge to lapse into state of self-indulgence.

Soon after we had our breakfast, we prepared to leave and of course, we didn't miss the chance to take our one last photo on top of the peak. Before that, we were already told that our team would be the sweeper team on the last day.

Without realising how arduous sweeping can be, we gleefully embarked on our journey down the hill. Personally, I feel that going downhill is more challenging than going uphill because it's mentally-tiring and the stress on the knees can be quite scary.

Our downhill hike didn't start off well. Soon after we started hiking, one of our seniors sprained her ankle and she had to endure the pain all the way down. Eventually she made it, what a tough woman she is...

Then, more accidents happened. Some people slipped, some people hit the overhead branch (which I did for n-times) and some people also picked up some minor injuries here and there. These incidents severely slowed down our hike and we were told by the mountain guide that if we carried on hiking on this pace, we might reach our base camp after 11pm...

Hiking in the dark? Worst-case-scenario we all wanted to avoid. And luckily after making some arrangement, we managed to move faster.

10 hours down the hill, we hardly ate anything. All we had were some cereal bars and chocolate bar because we didn't have time to stop and have proper meal. By the time we reached our first lunch point, it was already 5.30pm.

The jungle was getting darker after that and by the time we reached the bamboo bridge, it was 7 pm. Now, everyone had their headtorch on because if we didn't, we could hardly see the obstacles.

The last one hour was simply insane. Lots of my friends had long exceeded their own limit, they managed to finish the remaining hike solely on adrenaline rush. We reached the base camp around 8.30pm.

I was so relieved to see the lights of the base camp once again.Then I realized something...

Finally, I finished the hike and all the self-doubts were finally disproved by my own strength and support from my friends. I survived eighth highest peak in Peninsular Malaysia.

Afterthought:

I couldn't have done this alone. When my physical strength was drained out, my mental strength kept me moving. When my mental strength faltered, I had my friends. They were always there, motivating each other, telling each other 'keep moving'. My friends, you were all awesome.

Besides the friendships, I learned another thing. Having dream or goal is pivotal. No matter how your dream will end up, the journey of chasing your dream is what life should base on. I dream of climbing a real mountain and I was up there. Despite the mountain was not as amazing as what I had imagined, the journey, nonetheless was rewarding.

I was changed by the journey.