Seribu Riam | The Land of a Thousand Rapids
Join six British university students as they brave the wild rivers of Central Kalimantan. Through challenges and shared adventures, they discover the beauty of nature and the strength of their teamwork. Words: Pretam Gurung Since its inception in 2005, the British Universities Expedition (BUKE) occurs every two years. It’s an opportunity for a young, relatively [&hellip
L’article Seribu Riam | The Land of a Thousand Rapids est apparu en premier sur Kayak Session Magazine.
Join six British university students as they brave the wild rivers of Central Kalimantan. Through challenges and shared adventures, they discover the beauty of nature and the strength of their teamwork.
Words: Pretam Gurung
Since its inception in 2005, the British Universities Expedition (BUKE) occurs every two years. It’s an opportunity for a young, relatively inexperienced team to test themselves by planning and executing a kayaking expedition. For student paddlers in the UK, it’s an honour to be selected. The team for 2022 consisted of six paddlers from all over the country: Aaron White and Jonah Morgan from the University of Dundee; Barra Liddy from Surrey University; Matt Stephenson from the University of Nottingham; Piers Oliphant from Cardiff University and myself representing the University of Strathclyde.
I woke suspended between two trees, thousands of miles away from help, and completely soaked. It could have been sweat from the inescapable, unrelenting humidity. It could have been the rain running down the ropes of my hammock.
Something wasn’t right. Something sounded different than when I fell asleep. The blitz of rain falling on the jungle camp hadn’t changed; it was still deafening. It was something more subtle. Sliding around my slippery plastic cocoon like an oversized maggot, I found my headtorch bundled in the ball of clothes at my feet. Peering at the ground through the fine mesh, I rode a horrible wave of realisation to its cresting peak. The river, which should have been twenty meters down the beach, was lapping over the roots of the tree below. Taunting me. Reminding me that I’m at the jungle’s mercy.
“We need to move.” An unfamiliar voice cut through the thunderous explosion of rain. No shit. As I made to get out of the hammock, it hit me. It built rapidly, leaving me unable to do anything about it—the unmistakable, unstoppable force of diarrhoea. “Not now,” I groaned as I helplessly made a bad situation worse.
The people I was with weren’t people I knew particularly well. In fact, before I found myself in this situation, I didn’t know these people at all. However, at that moment, that didn’t matter. What did matter was that the river was rising at a rate that I didn’t even think possible. It was 2 am and pitch black, I’d just shat myself, and we needed to move farther into the suffocating Bornean rainforest to escape the raging torrent. Finding a good spot for the hammocks had been hard enough in the daylight.
After several long minutes of frantic jungle bashing, I found an acceptable spot. My stomach gurgled like a sleeping volcano. I knew it could erupt catastrophically at any moment. Eager to get camp sorted so I could get back into bed, I picked up the pace. Suddenly, sharp pain radiated out from my foot and up into my leg. “What was that?” Jumping around, shouting and swearing in pain, I thought, “It’s my first night here, and I’m actually going to die.”
Yes, this did happen, and no, nobody died. Strangely, this is now one of our fondest memories from an incredible trip to Central Kalimantan and the 2022 British Universities Kayaking Expedition.
>Check out the full length article on the NRS website here<
>Check out the full length film on YouTube here<
L’article Seribu Riam | The Land of a Thousand Rapids est apparu en premier sur Kayak Session Magazine.