Page 62 - ELITE PLUS MAGAZINE VOL5

REFLECTIONS OF MY LIFEwas much heavier chose to carry mine and leave me Chalerm’s. At least it was a way of helping me not to lag behind too much.Someone else that made me feel guilty for having invited him was Tuek, or Professor Harirak from Thammasat University. Tuek wasn’t much used to going into the jungle or out at sea and he was rather well padded, but as I had thought this trek would be rather easy I had invited him to join us. I guessed that while he gasped and gasped as he climbed the mountain he must have concluded that he had been taken in. And by the time dusk came he must have reached the stage where he swore to himself he would never ever have anything to do with me again.I arranged for Chalerm and Tuek to walk at the head of the column behind the guides, for them to be the ones to set the pace and decide on the pauses. All of us insisted that the two of them shouldn’t force themselves when they felt exhausted and shouldn’t hesitate to tell us to stop, because in any case we didn’t have any pressing business on the mountain.After about an hour’s walk, we stopped to eat on a mountain ledge. From then on we would have to walk60 Elite+for another hour to reach the ridge. Progressing on the ridge wasn’t actually difficult as most of it was straight and level. The overcast weather all year round turned the surrounding forest into a typical rainforest, meaning that apart from a dense growth of huge tropical trees there were all sorts of plants that crept and covered the ground or wrapped themselves around tall tree trunks or clung onto strata of vines of the greatest beauty, not to mention the strange jungle mushrooms that wekept seeing along the way.The pristine beauty of the land-scape added to the easier walk along the ridge did much to dispel our exhaustion, especially for me, who after pouring with sweat like a sponge began to recover to some extent.But as events turn out, it is when you are confident that bad things happen in life.From what we had planned, our walk today would cover some twelve kilometres, which meant that after walking along the ride for four or five hours we would cut downhill to the mouth of a small stream by around five o’clock. That stream, called Kum, threw itself into the Lang Suan. Wewould set up camp near it. Confusion in direction came as towhen to cut across and leave the ridge. A few minutes past five we found that a Lang Suan guy who had forged ahead with the guides had turned at one point and disappeared heaven knows where. The two guides from the PWCM unit thus asked to go back and find him. We chose to remain on the spot to rest and wait for theirreturn.We waited and waited and stillthey weren’t back. None of us knew which way to go from here. After shouting until we got hoarse and getting no reply, Tong suggested I shoot a couple of bullets in the air so that if they had lost their way they could guess where we were.In the jungle night falls faster than anywhere else. That, and with those dark clouds overhead, after five o’ clock the entire jungle dimmed, and as darkness grew anxiety covered us like the blanket of the sky at dusk, because if the guides didn’t find us, we would have no other option than to stay put until dawn.Another source of worry was the shortage of water as we had a limited number of flasks and had had to ration the water all the way. By now all the water had entered the bodies of all of us and our bodies had disposed of it as well. During all the hours we had walked along the ridge we hadn’t seen a single source of water which would have allowed us to replenish our flasks. Although everything around us looked green and moist, it was a fair- ly narrow ridge with steep slopes on both sides, there was no running stream nor any hollow where water could have collected.Several of us including me hadn’t drunk since before four o’ clock and the hope of drinking some water again was contingent on being able to reach the meeting place on time.Finally, some time past six, the