It was about midnight when I had awoken to the loudest thunder and brightest lightning I had ever seen. Yup, the storm was back. And we were now in the middle of it… in a treehouse. This wouldn’t have been a problem, normally, if we were in our safe little residence hall rooms. But we weren’t. No, we were quite far away from our dorm rooms last week. We were in the middle of a jungle in Laos. Better yet, we were in a tree. Sounds like a safe place to be in the middle of a storm, doesn’t it?
“Did you hear that? Ashni, wake up!” I whispered. Ashni was dead asleep. “Don’t worry,“ Ashni mumbled sleepily, “everything will be fine….” The dim lights switched on outside our little makeshift cloth tent. “Ash, no, everyone’s up, there is a storm, get up!” I opened the tent. Everyone was getting their equipment on outside. “In case we have to zipline out of the tree in the dark. That lightning is awfully close to us. There is a chance it will hit us,” Adam said. Panic shot through all of our faces. The eight of us were completely frightened. Would they come save us?
Only about six hours before, we had been evacuated out of our treehouse because of the storm. It had been getting dark, and our treehouse was too unstable. While the winds rocked our treehouse back and forth, Ashni and I had ziplined out quickly in the heavy rain and had run for cover with the others. But that part of the storm had passed… the wind and rain had stopped and we had gone back into the treehouse… We were safe… well, at least we had thought we were.
We looked out, trying to see any shadow or indication that somebody was coming for us. “Helloooooo!” Adam yelled out into the dark, rainy jungle. But there was no response. Lightning flashed again. The entire jungle lit up in its bright, white light. “It’s getting closer,” Adam said. The lightning was getting closer, and the thunder was getting louder. But there was nothing… there was nobody. Scared and cold, we realized it. Nobody was coming for us.
“This is it,” I said, completely frightened, “This is not so fun anymore. Adventure, yeah that’s great. But danger, I can’t do. Risking my life… no. No can do. It’s time to go home.” Six giant spiders in our treehouse, fine. Bees in the bathroom, okay. Trekking uphill until I felt like I was to fall over… somewhat acceptable. But potential death by lightning… no. Not okay.
Another flash of lightning lit up the jungle. “There we go,” Adam said, reassuringly, “See? That one passed us. That means we are okay. Everybody, you can take your harnesses off and go back to sleep.”
I
t was over. That was fast, I thought. I took off my shoes and harness and went back into my tent… but kept my contacts in, just in case. I was still scared, and I was awake until the rain started to slow and I felt safe again.
In the morning, we missed our scheduled hike. But good thing, we found out later, because the ground was covered in leeches. Fabian did us all the big favor of finding this out before the rest of us… He had ziplined out and hiked about before us, and came back with his feet covered with the nasty little things.
Oh god, those leeches. We hiked and ziplined for three hours with those leeches… Denise and I probably squealing the most when we saw them climbing up our shoes. So much for “There are no leeches. It is dry season in Laos!” said the woman at the Gibbons Experience office. Hah, very funny.
Our Hmong guides, who walked through the jungle just fine in their rubber thong sandals, didn’t seem to have a problem with the leeches. Actually, they didn’t seem to have any problems at all. They were one with nature and one with the animals. They would climb ziplines like monkeys and make things out of the trees for us: fans, walking sticks, drinking fountains, etc. … Whenever I turned around, exhausted, looking to see who was behind me, there was our guide, without one speck of tiredness in his face or body!
Okay so we all made it back in one piece. Well, besides the three who had gotten bitten by the leeches (“An anticoagulant,” Andrew explained, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. It’s a substance that leeches put in your blood to stop it from clotting. That’s why you can’t stop bleeding.”) and the rest of us, who came back with all sorts of sicknesses…
Yes, I would say it was quite a successful adventure!
Cheers to my very last adventure in Southeast Asia… Oh, how time flies.
Resham