Our two day long journey comes to an end with the jungle within our grasps! Pulling up into Kuala Tahan, first impressions where of surprise, in my mind i had dreamt up this image of tents and 4x4s, jungle rangers with a machete at his belt and a rifle over his shoulder surrounded by the dense jungle sneaking its way ever closer to recapture the village cut out of it….

In reality it was like any other town, you could be in the centre and not know there was a jungle a stones throw away containing Tigers and Elephants. It was obviously touristic, half the stores being that of tour guides and information centres, budget resorts and homestays littered the road way. We found our way… quite a ways away to ours.

With ours we had hit the jackpot… or maybe we won second prize, as anyone who could afford to stay in the Mutiara resort had won the gold! that place was on the other side of the river, inside the national park. Ours was also a resort of sorts, we negotiated a great deal and had a huge room ready to ward of the daily dormant flood of insects!

The jungle had many set trails, the beginner ones those that where closest to the rangers station/mutiara resort, they all had board walks. This made treading quietly impossible so any wildlife had enough time to snooze his alarm clock, brush his teeth, have a reasonably sized breakfast and still have time to put on his trousers before we even got close.

The best trails, where the ones you had to work for! off the board walks you had to scramble over huge fallen trees, climb up steep rooted slopes, cross rickety bridges and watch every step as not to disturb the hordes of insects carpeting the jungle floor.

We where true adventurers, we waded across rivers, spent time hiding to wait and see deer and wild pigs, followed the fresh dung of elephants! Always just me and Grenouille, none of this guided tours and expertise nonsense! The tigers have to eat sometime anyway…

Now this was the jungle I had dreamt off.