This morning, Mak gave me a morning call at 5AM. I woke up to answer the call, only to fall asleep again. I got out of bed at 520AM and from there it was a mad rush to make my cereal, brush my teeth, stuff my contact lenses into my eyes and change my clothes. I got to the train station rather early. In fact, there wasn't even a train that was going towards JE when I arrived so I went to withdraw money. The train finally came at 559AM when I was supposed to meet Mak at 555AM! And I was thus accused of being late! Outrageous! Luckily for us, we didn't have to wait for a cab as there was one right in front of us when we crossed the overhead bridge.
We started our tracking when it was pitch black. And the freaking moon was still in the sky.
Yeah, something like that! I couldn't see much and it really reminded me of field camp. There were numerous times where we had to travel with minimum light along the jungle paths. I couldn't see much of what was on the ground, other than the fact that some of the soil looked darker than the others because it was wet. We managed to escape a huge puddle just in time too.
As it got closer to 7AM, the sky started to lighten up, but only to reveal that there were thick clouds crowding around in the sky. We were optimistic that we were going to reach the Tree Top trail before it rained, but it seemed that we would have very little chance of reaching back home dry! We continued walking and walking and walking on the dirt track, surrounded by trees on both sides.
Occassionally there'd be a clearing and we'd get a good view of the Macrichie Reservoir. We actually wanted to witness the sunrise, but due to the plentiful number of clouds and the fact that we weren't in the right places to begin with spoilt that plan. After walking for a rather long time, we finally came across a map.
And we realised one terrible thing. We'd just walked one huge round around Macrichie Reservoir! We could've reached our starting point in half an hour; one hour at most. However we went in the wrong direction and tracked the 11km route instead! Well, we were quite surprised that we hadn't reached it, but at the same time, the adventurous spirit in us enjoyed every moment of it. After all, we've been through worse outfield experiences, like BMT fieldcamp and Brunei, which couldn't be compared to this!
This was taken somewhere rather near a particular golf course. I think I've a good eye for the composition of photos! Along the way Mak showed me an edible flower and some berries. He learnt about it during his jungle survival course. I tasted both of them. The flower's pretty tasteless, while the berry tasted pretty good! But I haven't exactly acquired the habit of picking off wild plants for food.
We set our target as Jelutong tower. It was 2.6km away (while the Treetop trail was 4km), so we decided that it'd be our checkpoint! Helps to keep us from getting demoralised and seem that we're travelling nowhere! Anyway, we reached the top of Jelutong tower after a very dizzying climb up the stairs.
Hmmm... the view up there was picturesque (even better than the Treetop trail!). Again, we could barely see the sun because of all the freaking clouds. We could only catch mere glimpses of the sun rays peaking out from behind. Oh, and the tower is really rather tall. We caught sight of some very farway HDB flats.
The Jelutong tower is a famous landmark among NSFs who've gone through the Navigation Exercise.
For the sake of those who actually went through all that sh!t, looking at this can trigger lots of memories. Being at the place itself made me feel as if I went back to that time when I was carrying the heavy fieldpack and how relieved I was to stop for lunch. It was a place where we really got to rest. In fact I remember us having lunch with oranges and then sprawled all over those benches for a nap. The winding staircase was crazy as well; I was too tired then to climb all the way up to see the view!
After taking a brief breather, we continued walking. And walking. And walking. It was with great delight that we finally saw the wooden planked steps that led to the Treetop Trail. Again it reminded me of the time where I was lugging the fucking signal set up all those steps and that my buddy helped me carry it down from there! Haha... It was 810AM when we saw a sign that told us we were 0.1km away from the Treetop trail!
The park ranger who took this photo for us (look at my drenched shirt!) was also kind enough to inform us that the place only opened at 830AM, and that we could take a walk around the area before going there. He was going to do a "pre-ops" check kind of thing, to ensure the monkeys didn't do anything to the bridge.
Yeah, that's what he told us!
It is with crazy impatience and anticipation that we paced around the area waiting for time to pass. You can see it written all over Mak's face! Enough said.
When we finally entered, it was a little bit of an anti-climax. The 250m structure did look bloody impressive and was really a suspended bridge. It shook a little every time we took heavy steps. However it was a bit of a short walk, and there wasn't really much to see even though we looked very thoroughly for animals. I'm not a plant lover myself and the bridge wasn't that high above the ground. It was very safe. The view wasn't that magnificent, but still good. The only animals we managed to see were these two birds with red-ringed eyes. Took our time to take a couple of photographs while they tried their best to dodge out from our line of sight. Boo.
And we were ecstatic to have reached our destination and conquered the track to have reached the place! After that it was a long walk out from there.
We reached this certain intersection where this photo was taken. We then took a right turn and walked, hoping to meet so main road where we could take a bus or something. As we walked, it started to look startlingly familiar, and we ended up at Singapore Technologies. Rifle Range Road. The starting point of Exercise Wild Cat.
To say I was shocked to death is an exaggeration but I knew what laid ahead of us - a bloody long walk. I remembered that the tonner took forever to reach this place from the main road. I was feeling a tad desperate (luckily Mak offered me Clorets), but yeah, I was sure as hell that there'd be plenty more walking. And there was this truck that I wanted to thumb a ride from. Couldn't possibly get into a car in such a stinky and sweaty state! But in the end the only truck we saw zoomed past us, without even slowing down!
We walked past the Rifle Range flyover and saw two large satellite dishes and the expressway just below us. And we finally saw some mammals - monkeys. They were performing acrobatics on the electric wires, blatantly ignoring our presence as we stood there taking snapshots of them. So we continued walking. It's a pretty simple thing really. We just followed where the road led.
We walked.
And walked.
And walked.
And walked and walked and walked. By that time we've already been on the move for 3 and a half hours or so, and covered approximately 15-20km. My legs were starting to ache and I was becoming just a little cranky.
The long and winding road. It never really did seem to end. Bah!
Okay, I should quit whining. Even though it was a really long walk outside, I quite enjoyed it. Pain for pleasure maybe? Or maybe the fact that we couldn't experience that kind of relief when we saw CIVILISATION after walking on the road that had towering trees on both sides and passed by weird places like the Ammo dump and HQ for transport and something, and some gun-range. When we saw houses, we were like...
WOW. On the top right picture is Mak confirming the fact that we'd be reaching the end of the bloody road! We came across this train track and it sort of reminded me of the Tintin comics where people'd be tied to the track and maybe get killed by a passing train.
Just a being a little bit morbid there.
After that we went to the once-gorgeous place known as Beauty World. There wasn't much/any upgrading done to it, and it looked pretty much the same as 12 years ago. I could still see the places that I'd jump around on, hide in and played the monkey at. Ahh... those were the days. Anyway, we were craving for breakfast after the terribly long walk and we had...
After that, we went to play pool for a little while, followed by lunch at the foodstall on the opposite side.
Went on to meet Wee Lee for gym, and now I'm back here, my entire body aching like mad.
Hope you've enjoyed this entry as much as I've enjoyed writing out my experience today! Had a hell lot of fun, and yes, it was worth every minute of walking!
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