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| The target in sight... |
2 February
Yesterday was relatively uneventful as I expected as it was Sunday and to be honest not much happens most days but even less on a Sunday. I biked out of the the town and found the village of Kiriwong. The small village seemed to span both sides of the crystal clear river and it didn't take long to find someone to ask about trekking. The problem being that in order to go to the summit I needed a guide but as I have stupidly just arrived at the height of the mangosteen harvest, all the would be guides are out picking the fruits which turns out to be a little more lucrative than taking some fella up a hill (100baht per kilo). At this point Alex turned up, he was a guy from Latvia and also wanted to trek the hill so over a plate of noodles we conjured up a plan to go on our own into the jungle....
I had decided to stay in the village, initially in a homestay but then heard about about a place by a waterfall that you could hang a hammock for free.
This would be my first night out camping on this trip.
3 February
It had got colder than I had expected last nite so I needed more than just a silk liner if I was going to trek higher. Alex needed some better footwear so we decided to take a songthaew back into Nakhon Si and prepare a little better. If was obvious now that we were on our own as no guides had been
found. Most of the day was spent getting to and from the town with extra supplies and a sleeping bag
for me. We had a good trip interacting with the locals and answering all their questions, again they
are so friendly and helpful. On return to the village and some food we set off in the late afternoon
sunshine with a plan to walk upstream of the river. As the sun started to dip we found an old hut with a shelter to hang hammocks just by the river which was brimming with fish! By 8pm it was pitch black and the insect chorus from the jungle was my lullaby.
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| brimming with fish here... |
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| Camp -1st night in Kiriwong |
4 February
From first light we were off
on foot heading upstream. The river was almost dry as the rainy season had long since
passed so we used small paths and the dry river bed. We were making good progress
that was until we got to this...
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| Soi Dao waterfall |
At this point it was obvious we couldn't follow the river so we had to
climb out and up to find a track. These tracks riddle the jungle and are used to connect small houses and used by the people that work the jungle growing jack fruits, mangosteens, bananas and durian amongst probably many other things. They travel up and down them mainly on motorbikes with gardening implements and simple tools to areas that need attention
or harvesting. On many occasion we stopped the local traffic and tried to
verify our way to khao luang peak. Sometimes we were heading the right way, sometimes we weren't and had to turn back and take another of the
many paths. No wonder they say you need a guide! After walking all day
it became clear that without a guide, getting to the top was going to be impossible and if we continued then we could get very very lost. With water supplies getting low we decided to head back to the river and camp up.
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| Camp 2 |
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| Songtaew back to town.. |
5 Feb
Khao Luanng summit had beaten us and left 2 guys knackered after a mammoth effort - still we were not broken but had enjoyed the
opportunity of trying and had spent some quality time in the depths of the jungle.
Back in the village we enjoyed noodle soup and tied my bike to the top of a songthaew for the 30km back to Nakhon Si and checked into the Thai Hotel - number 1 on trip advisor and got a good en suite room for 350 baht. Time to enjoy a day of rest....
Previous blog post title inspired by...Neil Young : EASY : 1 point
I could pick a NY song for every post but I liked this one for the last post.
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