We did some stretching exercise at the foot of the mountain. The guide told us that we would be taking the toughest route up the mountain and descending with a moderate one.
Stretching Exercise
The initial climb was daunting and tiring. We were all drenched with perspiration. Students started to fall back. They were all encouraged to move on… Go E1 Cluster. We finally reached our first checkpoint. It says “huan ying deng shang nan ba shan” literally translated, we should have been on the summit of the mountain. However, our hope was shattered. That is only the starting of that long and steep slope. It was indeed steep, but not as difficult as I have thought. As we are using all fours to climb, our weights are distributed on them. Hence we don’t get tired easily. Coupled with the speed that we progressed (due to safety reasons), we don’t get shagged out easily.
It’s was long, but fast. In 1 hour plus, we reached the summit. Like Mt Belumut, the summit was a bear area with vegetation by the side. Yet another breathtaking scenery. We had our lunch on the summit and took our group photos again YES… we took a photos with our NPCC flag, haha...
Quickly we descend the mountain. It has come to the end of our toughest time for the trip. We are so, so relief. When we reached the campsite, we discovered that some of the tents were ‘destroyed’ by the wind. My tent was one of them. The magic wand has broken. The students were given a long break to get themselves ready for their group performance for the campfire. During the break, I had headache, I tried to ignore it and went to take some photographs of our campsite. Now is my chance to show off my photography skill…
My headache didn’t really go away. Hence I took my medication and move on to the next part of the programme. They had a session of survival skills. They learnt how cook eggs, rice, boil water and even how to set traps… It was really interesting isn’t it? As it was the same as what were taught last year. I wasn’t really listening. The students had great fun, they were even trying out the skills… having hand-on session. Their practical session was all around the teachers’ tents, what if they burn them down.
Night falls, it was campfire time. This time, it was a real campfire.. as I vivdly remembered that in Belumut, we had ‘torchlight’ campfire as we were not allowed to set fire. The students enjoyed themselves through their laughter. We were ask to judge the performance, and we came up with an unanimous result. Seriously, that was the only group that we understood what they were performing. And you know what, ‘SEX’ seems to be the theme for all group. Overall, it is still quite enjoyable.
Soon, it’s time for bed! I’m really tired.
At about 3.30 a.m. something bad happened. A horse tripped and collapsed onto a tent. When we reached the site, the boys were already evacuated from the tent. I took a closer look and realize that the horse was the male horse which was roaming around the campsite with its partner earlier this afternoon. It looked very sick and it could not stand up anymore. I guess it was having a runny nose, as this afternoon, it has mucous flowing out of his nose.. Soon the ranger arrived, and the other horse was taken away. We feel better, as we were afraid the female horse might just go berserk after witnessing the death of his partner. And true, the ranger came with a truck and towed the male horse away on its neck. The horse died on spot. It was dragged away till it disappeared from our sight.