G.R.A.C.E Guts, Rythmic, Articulate, Endeavours: 07/11/05

I can't remember when was the last time I actually did a hiking in Malaysia. Even if I had, those were the mild ones, like trekking in 'Gunung Kledang' in my hometown, which is now a childplay after what I did on last Sunday. When Kian suggested for a hiking in New Territories, the egotism in me was shouting for me to go. And usually, whenever I go visit or travel to a place, I always have the habbit researching the place before hand, a.k.a checking out in travel guide book, 'googling' on the internet and etc so that I have a brief idea of it and will appreciate the place more. But I was torn down by exhaustion the night before going to hiking hence I did very little research on our hiking place. I briefly know the route we were going to trek because Kian roughly pointed out the route for me and reassured me that it's going to a easy trail, but little did I know what seems like an easy and short hiking route on the Lonely Planet was magnified into the scale of 10.

And so, the 18 of us gathered together and bravely marched to the start point of the trail we were going to conquer in the next 1 and a half hour, at least all of us thought so. And Kian said so. All of us didn't have any doubts on it. Hence we started off our little adventure happily ...at least for the first 10 minutes...humming songs, appreciating the flora and fauna, worshipping the beauty of mother nature, feeling in heaven to be away from the hustle and bustle of the hectic city life for a while. Everything seemed perfect. Until the hot heat from the sun started to heat us up like the roasted pig and we started to sweat like a pool of human waterfall, as what Johan put it. Suddenly the humming of songs and worshipping started to turn into a tirade of swear words. Blame the heat. And to highlight the whole event of our hiking half way through our journey, we saw a sign written:

Just as the right type of information we need to know ! We are now a bunch of inexperience hikers without any equipment except for bottle of waters, sun-screen, banana ( couldn't understand why Markos brought a babana, which he ate it later before surrounded by monkeys after reading the sign of "No feeding of monkeys" ) and god know what else. The message might be a turn-off to most, but it acted like a booster for eogistic people like me to conquer the Lion Rock. Albeit I was swearing hard, I know I wanted to make it to the top. After 4 hours of leg-torturing journey, we finally drag ourself to trek 495m and make it to the top of Lion Top. I still can't believe I had trekked for 495m. A sense of satisfaction and accomplishment made up all the swearing and cursing along the journey.

By now, I can't no longer feel my feets. They were detach from me and being master of their own when we were trekking down the hill. My legs ached immensely the day after, as if being chained with extra pounds around my legs.

Albeit all the complaints and blaming, I enjoy every bits of it. It was one my proudest experience so far. Kudos, Kian !