That was tough!
I mean, we weren’t anticipating a gentle stroll, but the track up into the hills above Tanah Rata proved to be a steep, ragged, slippery, root-strewn struggle that didn’t let up for the better part of an hour, before easing into a more or less level ragged, slippery, root-strewn struggle. Which continued for another good hour and some before beginning the ragged, slippery, root-strewn descent. It was great! But gruelling, and then some.
Eventually we emerged onto a small road which brought us after 20 minutes or so onto a large road, with the prospect of a half hour slog back to town. No roots though!
But our luck held – barely ten minutes on, a scrappy truck pulled over, the door was pushed open, and the driver beckoned us in. Squeezed into the single seat, we gratefully endured the five minutes back before being let out a couple of hundred metres from our hotel.
Then a quiet afternoon before venturing out for what turned out to be a delicious Chinese. Slightly taken aback by the bill, I checked my bank app back at the hotel to find the damage to be £10.53. Maybe time for a reality check…
PS That evening in the hotel we were approached by a wisened old German woman, who began regaling us with tales of her day – not that dissimilar to ours: “I hef been vorkink all my life, but in all my 72 years, zis vos ze vorst!” By the sounds of it, her track had been even tougher than ours: she described sections where she was left no option but to swing down to the next level Tarzan-stylie, using creepers. 72! Respect, lady!