I am not a superstitious person, so once I was back in London, I was amused to discover that the events I am about to retell occurred on day 13 of the trip. It all started innocently enough – it was to be a two-day long trek into the jungle, nothing particularly onerous, but it would involve an overnight camp.

We left at 10, with our guide, Haji, who would be in charge of leading our treks and organising the camp. Down at the jetty we were met by Zaidi, who would drive the boat and help man the camp. Loading complete, we zoomed off across the lake heading for the area where we would make camp, about a 40 minute boat ride away.

The lake is man-made, about 30 years old, and swallowed up a number of settlements which had to move up to higher ground. Dead trees still stick up out of the water everywhere, particularly in the shallow sections, where they form a complicated maze. Zaidi weaved the boat in and out of the trees, obviously knowing the best route through.

On the way, we had to stop at an aboriginal village to pick up our Orang-Asli guide. The Orang-Asli are Malaysia’s aboriginal people, who have lived in the peninsula area of Malaysia for tens of thousands of years, virtually undisturbed until the arrival of colonialism in the early 1500s. They are divided into three groups, roughly according to where they came from, and these groups are divided again into tribes. Each tribe has its own language and customs, some are semi-nomadic, all quite distinct. The one that inhabited the land surrounding the lake was called the Jahai. According to the government’s Department of Orang-Asli Affairs, there are 1,049 of them left. They now have a recognised claim on their land, so their numbers are fairly stable, and they are actually quite wealthy from selling logging rights.

It being their land, an Orang-Asli guide is required to accompany any trips made into the jungle bordering the lake. Ours was called Num. He came aboard the boat and that made five. I was feeling, not for the first time, slightly outnumbered. A tour leader, expedition leader, tribal representative, and boat driver, all required to lead an expedition of one person. It was nice to have more people around, but it would have been nicer if they weren’t all essentially in my employ.

The boat approached the shore for the second time and the dead trees grew more dense again. Having navigated a path to the shore, unpacked the boat and walked to the campsite, we made camp. To be precise, the Malays made camp, while Alex and I went for a walk. The jungle was strikingly beautiful, and very dense, but studded with majestic sights which would appear suddenly as you got close enough for the rest of the jungle not to be in the way. A magnificent Kapok with massive buttress roots dominated one area, and not far away another tree with two trunks which merged 10 feet above the ground formed an arch over a stream. Following the stream led to a waterfall, not exactly a torrent but the water was falling quite a height and would have made for a refreshing shower in the morning. Of course by the morning we would be viewing the trip in an entirely different light, but we weren’t to know that yet.

We sat down and had an increasingly trivial discussion for a while about how forests should be classified, and when we returned the camp was complete. Two tents, two hammocks, and two large groundsheets with tarps hanging above. The hammocks, tents and one groundsheet were for Alex and myself. The other groundsheet/tarp was for the three Malays.

After lunch we left in the boat for an Orang Asli settlement. This was great fun. The tribe were very friendly, there were dozens of cute kids to photograph, and I had a blowpipe lesson. The blowpipes were used for hunting, which the chief and his brother were out doing right now. Hunts could last for days. Meanwhile, the chief’s son, who was about 8 years old, clearly felt himself to be very important. Unlike the other kids, he lounged back on the bamboo bench, feet on the table, plastic bag on his head. You can do stuff like that when you’re the chief’s son.

“It’s probably for the lice”, said Alex. “Bob, the hat – for lice?”

He was talking to Bob, a polio-inflicted amputee with fifteen or so children and the best command of English in the tribe whose predictably indecipherable name had a short section that sounded a bit like bob. Bob was quite adamant that the bag was simply decorative.

A couple of missionaries lived with the tribe, and were keeping a fairly low profile during our visit, busy building themselves a new house. Apparently they’d been with the tribe for some time, but had not been very successful at converting them to the righteous cause of Christ. The attendance figures spoke for themselves. Malay lessons drew the crowds, but no-one was particularly interested in God.

Just before we left, I turned to watch the children, who had decided to play some group games. Astonishingly, they began to run around in a very obvious game of Oranges and Lemons (a very traditionally English party game). Maybe the missionaries taught it to them.

We sped back to camp, and then in the dying hours of the day, when the sun was low enough, we went out again to find a spot to swim. After a 30 minute swim and a good wash, we were back in the boat for the return journey, just as it began to rain. Alex was worried, and kept examining the sky and changing his mind about whether a storm was going to hit camp. He’d concluded that it was going to miss just as we arrived back at camp.

It didn’t. Fifteen minutes later we were sitting under the tarp watching as the rain swept in across the lake. The forest canopy sheltered us for ten minutes or so, but then the rain started thundering down over our heads. It was no more than a few minutes before the water was threatening to run rivers though our groundsheet. We were getting splattered with mud and water and if it continued, we’d be drenched.

In the distance, on the opposite side of the lake, steam was beginning to rise from the hills. The thunder and lightning was growing further apart. The storm was ending. Thank god, I was starving. The meal which Haji and Zaidi had been preparing before the storm was superb – battered chicken with vegetables cooked in coconut sauce, and rice cooked traditionally in banana leaf stuffed in a piece of bamboo. It was still raining, but not hard; probably just water left in the forest canopy.

However, as we ate, the opposite side of the lake was disappearing. Suddenly, Alex noticed that it wasn’t visible anymore, just a veil of dim mist in the failing light. An early warning of a few minutes at most – another storm heading our way which was already over the lake. We retreated into our tents for this one. Mine seemed relatively dry, so by the light of a torch I started trying to sort out my stuff. The storm was getting louder, but I wasn’t particularly worried – it was only rain after all. The tent could cope with that.

CRACK CREEEEEEEEEK BANG

“Oh shit” – Alex
“Alex! Get out!” – Haji

A tree had fallen down. How exciting! It had sounded so loud when it hit the ground that I had jumped in shock. I couldn’t even tell which direction it was coming from. Time to go I suspect. I went to unzip the tent.

“ANDREW, get out, right now!!”

Sounds good to me, Alex. Which is why I was fumbling around for the zips and trying not to panic too much.

CRACK crackcrackcrackcrackcreeeeeekcrackcrack….

Oh hell. This was a big one. The crack of wood splitting right outside the tent sent a chill down my spine. I’d got the first zip undone, but it was clear that what was obviously a rather large and heavy tree was currently on its way to earth, and taking down anything that stood in its way. I dropped everything, hit the deck and curled up to try to make myself as small as possible. The sound of splintering wood followed it all the way down.

BOOUM. WHOOOOOSSSH

The tent was uprooted and thrown forwards by the rush of displaced air (though I didn’t know this at the time and assumed some branches had fallen onto the tent). I don’t know how far the tent moved, but I came to rest sitting on top of the door flap. It took me a good ten or fifteen seconds to work this out, and then longer to get the thing open, as I had to practically lift the collapsed tent over my head. I managed to get my feet into my shoes, grabbed my bag and legged it to the far side of the campsite, where Alex, Haji, Zaidi and Num were standing.

We risked dashing back into the camp briefly to grab our stuff, and then headed for the boat to evacuate the area. It was now completely dark – although there was a full moon, it was being obscured by the clouds that continued to pour rain down on us. We were now totally exposed to the storm, but it felt better to be away from the trees. As the storm continued, bolts of lightning lit up the sky and reflected from the lake, suddenly painting the landscape in a brilliant light which for a brief moment allowed us to see the dead trees sticking up from the water. Otherwise, they were nothing but ghostly shadows.

Haji decided we should head for a floating house that he knew would be empty, one that we passed earlier in the day. I realised which one he was talking about. The one that had a tin roof, floated on metal barrels, and was the tallest structure for several hundred metres in all directions. I didn’t relish the prospect of swapping falling trees for lightning strikes, so I explained in the strongest possible terms that I didn’t think this floating lightning conductor was a very good refuge.

We ended up heading for an Orang Asli village. Not the one we had been to the previous day, a much larger resettlement village that the government were sponsoring. Absurdly, the village was in the midst of a karaoke competition when we arrived, and Bad by Michael Jackson could be heard very distinctly from the outbuilding in which we had set up camp. Num went to talk to the chief, who gave us permission to stay (and some mosquito coils), before returning to belting out some 80s classics.

Alex and I had a brief rundown of our collective near-death experiences, to which this was to be added (he had a narrow win, and you’ve got to give the man serious respect for six weeks of dysentery whilst in India). I laid down to get some rest on a thin bedroll and concluded that this had been one of the strangest days of my life.