A hundred and fifty feet away from me, at the end of the garden, a girl from Michigan is talking politics. Well, trying to, she isn’t very intelligent, can’t sustain an argument and is having difficulty in getting a full sentence out at one time. Not, I hasten to add, due to any lack of fluency in her speech, but because she is up against a group of well educated Europeans who keep contradicting her and challenging the statements she is making. I mention her here because she is a perfect example of a phenomena that I have observed many times - the single voice that carries. Of the seven people sitting around the fire, hers is the only voice I can hear clearly. I can just about tell that there are other people speaking, but they are easily ignored, drowned out by the clicking frogs and the bar’s radio. Miss Michigan’s voice rings out clear and sharp, without distortion or fading; she could be sitting next to me. Why? Should I wish to make my voice carry like that I would almost certainly have to shout and I would end up coughing, my throat hoarse. A related phenomena in such people is that the voice that carries, carries nothing of interest.
I ran this morning, choosing one of the trails closest to town, my expecting that it would be popular and well worn, climbing, as it does, the nearest peak to town. Four minutes into my run I was stopped by a large Malay family who wanted help with a photograph. They posed in front of the huge concrete signpost that marks the beginning of Tanah Rata. I asked what they wanted in the photo, thinking that it would be difficult from where we were standing to get in much of the beautiful mountains behind them. “Just the sign,” they said.
Spending MR4 on a map and being assured that the trails were easy to find by the plump girl in tourist information, I set out from the road looking forward confidently to the climb ahead. It would be good to try out my new trail running shoes I thought. Already I was impressed with the amount of cushioning under the balls of my feet.
Within minutes of leaving the road I was lost. A startled Indian lady pointed me in the right direction, although with hindsight it is clear that she had never made the climb.
A faint trail led first through an abandoned vegetable plot before plunging into the jungle. I ran along enthusiastically, deciding whether to try and remove leaches as they attached themselves or let them drop off when they were ready. Scrambling up a steep clay bank I disappeared into the dense undergrowth and the town of Tanah Rata might well have been a hundred miles away.
The trail was surprisingly overgrown. I jumped and ducked and wove around various impediments, some large some small, smooth and whippy, sharp and clinging. This is great I thought, a huge grin on my face.
It was so innocent, just a dark green palm frond stretching across the path. It grabbed me by the shorts, pulled me round and, to borrow a phrase from Robin William’s new move RV, used my momentum to ‘floss my but’. I screeched to a halt and began disentangling myself from the hundreds of thorns on the underside of the leaves.
The trail then vanished completely, thanks to a new building development, dug deep into the hillside. Clinging on to branches and vines, I managed to skirt the edge of the excavation and rejoin the trail a couple of hundred meters further along, only to find that the trail disappeared again, this time completely, in half a mile.
This was machete territory and I had only the small pocket knife I use as a keyring. Walking now, I tried to push my way forward, but I was soon entangled in thorns which ripped six inch snags in my running shirt. Giving up and headed back to Tanah Rata, wondering how a trail so close to a thriving tourist town could be so overgrown.
I ran this morning, choosing one of the trails closest to town, my expecting that it would be popular and well worn, climbing, as it does, the nearest peak to town. Four minutes into my run I was stopped by a large Malay family who wanted help with a photograph. They posed in front of the huge concrete signpost that marks the beginning of Tanah Rata. I asked what they wanted in the photo, thinking that it would be difficult from where we were standing to get in much of the beautiful mountains behind them. “Just the sign,” they said.
Spending MR4 on a map and being assured that the trails were easy to find by the plump girl in tourist information, I set out from the road looking forward confidently to the climb ahead. It would be good to try out my new trail running shoes I thought. Already I was impressed with the amount of cushioning under the balls of my feet.
Within minutes of leaving the road I was lost. A startled Indian lady pointed me in the right direction, although with hindsight it is clear that she had never made the climb.
A faint trail led first through an abandoned vegetable plot before plunging into the jungle. I ran along enthusiastically, deciding whether to try and remove leaches as they attached themselves or let them drop off when they were ready. Scrambling up a steep clay bank I disappeared into the dense undergrowth and the town of Tanah Rata might well have been a hundred miles away.
The trail was surprisingly overgrown. I jumped and ducked and wove around various impediments, some large some small, smooth and whippy, sharp and clinging. This is great I thought, a huge grin on my face.
It was so innocent, just a dark green palm frond stretching across the path. It grabbed me by the shorts, pulled me round and, to borrow a phrase from Robin William’s new move RV, used my momentum to ‘floss my but’. I screeched to a halt and began disentangling myself from the hundreds of thorns on the underside of the leaves.
The trail then vanished completely, thanks to a new building development, dug deep into the hillside. Clinging on to branches and vines, I managed to skirt the edge of the excavation and rejoin the trail a couple of hundred meters further along, only to find that the trail disappeared again, this time completely, in half a mile.
This was machete territory and I had only the small pocket knife I use as a keyring. Walking now, I tried to push my way forward, but I was soon entangled in thorns which ripped six inch snags in my running shirt. Giving up and headed back to Tanah Rata, wondering how a trail so close to a thriving tourist town could be so overgrown.
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