TRAVEL MEMOIRS

A College Football Jock, an Artist and a Family of Wild Orangutans

The people, and animals, I met backpacking in Asia

“Run!” said Achoo, our guide. “They could bite.”

‘They’ was a quartet of wild Orangutans (one of which was a baby clinging to mom) my traveling companions and I had been quietly observing for the past 30 minutes high in the trees of Mount Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra.

But curiosity must’ve got the better of the adorably magnificent apes. Upon noticing us, two of them descended down the tree and casually sauntered toward us as if to welcome us to their jungle.

I’d feared encountering poisonous snakes or the elusive and rare Sumatran tiger on the trek. Spotting Orangutans with their disheveled bedheadish red fur, droll expressions and gentle disposition seemed akin to encountering a litter of friendly puppies.

But I took heed to Achoo’s warning and briskly trotted away along with Jodi, one of my travel companions. My other travel mate, Mick, decided it was a good time for a close-up photo op.

“Mick! This is no time for National Geographic quality photos,” I hollered.

Mick caught up with us and we ran until we lost sight of our new friends. After, Achoo told us that in his six years of guiding, he’d only seen Orangutans in the wild a few times before.

Like lifelong friends, we reveled in our rare, shared experience. Yet the three of us had only met a couple of weeks prior. How did we end up together in the jungle of Sumatra?

Mindfulness with breathing

I was a couple of months into a one-year backpacking trip. Never one for planning, I only had a vague itinerary — a one-way ticket to Bangkok via Hong Kong with the intention of buying a cheap flight from Malaysia to Australia, India or even somewhere else. “I’m going with the flow,” I’d say.

While traveling in Thailand I heard about a ten-day meditation retreat for Westerners held every month at Wat Suan Mokkh, a Buddhist monastery in the south of the country.

It was ten days of tofu, vegetables and rice, pre-dawn walking meditations, post-breakfast yoga and afternoon sitting meditations. That was in addition to lectures on being present, letting go of attachments and practicing mindfulness with breathing. All in absolute silence.

While we each had private rooms, with the men and women in separate buildings, the accommodations were austere, if not jail cell-like. The bed was a raised concrete platform. The walls were concrete as well, with just a hole cut into the exterior wall for some light and fresh air. I bought a straw mat in the nearby town the day before the retreat started and used my one sweatshirt as a pillow. The bathroom was communal with pit toilets and cold mandi wadis (an open tank of water with a hand bucket to pour the water over you onto the floor) for bathing. It was our first lesson in practicing non-attachment I gathered, given that I was attached to having a soft, thick mattress like most folks.

We were all given jobs at the monastery. Mine was dishwashing. It was where I met Mick, a former college football star with long sun-bleached blond hair tied back in a ponytail, blue eyes, movie star looks and a toothpaste commercial smile. Since we weren’t allowed to talk, we made up sign language between us to decide who’d wash and who’d dry each day. I could prevent myself from talking, but I couldn’t prevent blushing from my school-girl crush.

One day heading back to my room after lunch, I saw Mick behind an outbuilding talking to another woman. Talking! Her name was Jodi. Turns out when the rest of us were napping in our rooms as per the daily schedule, Mick and Jodi were hanging out in the nearby forest getting high.

I was gutted.

Mick spotted me. I was so desperate for conversation after days of silence, that when he beckoned me over, I ardently complied, despite not wanting to be a third wheel. But that day the two of them became the three of us.

A 12-hour train journey led to a new adventure

On the last day of the retreat, we were all heading to Malaysia — Jodi to get a new Thai Visa and Mick to continue his travels to Indonesia and beyond — so we took the night train to Penang together. That twelve-hour journey turned into almost three weeks of traveling together in Malaysia and Sumatra, highlighted by two three-day jungle treks where we encountered the Orangutans.

The treks, however, weren’t for the faint-hearted. We encountered treacherous river crossings and blood-sucking leeches that were only slightly deterred by the local custom of soaking one’s socks in tobacco water. We pooped in rivers, trekked up monsoon-saturated muddy hills and on most nights, slept in the jungle under nothing more than a plastic tarp.

I’ve never been athletic and I struggled to keep up with Mick and Jodi on the treks. Despite our recent enlightenment at Wat Suan Mokkh, I worried they’d find out who I really was; an awkward naïve wallflower. Jodi was strong and decisive, Mick confident and ambitious. And both were intelligent and street-smart. I imagined them being the cool kids in their circles back home.

But independent travel is the great equalizer. I remember a well-meaning friend asking me before my journey if I was running away, because as he’d added, “You take yourself with you.” I told him I was running to something.

Because when you travel and immerse yourself into the everyday environment of your destination, i.e., eat where the locals eat, use local transportation (as opposed to an air-conditioned tour bus), sleep at low-budget, family-run pensions, you’re given the opportunity, if you choose, to discover the essence of who you are. And even learn how to become more of who you want to be.

A journey of self-discovery

When you embrace other cultures and environments, you find out what makes us all human and it’s pretty much the same across the world. Things like love, connection and friendship. Mick and Jodi knew this as well. They were both on their journeys of self-discovery too. There’s no one else I’ve ever been able to sit together with in extended silence and have it be completely normal other than Jodi and Mick.

The three of us spent our last days together relaxing on Samosir Island located on Lake Toba. We reflected on our time together sharing a deep and transformational experience of learning how to let go, being present in the moment, pushing ourselves mentally and physically and of course, meeting Orangutans in the jungle.

I think we knew that although we were three very different people, we were connected for life as we shared a desire to learn more about ourselves through other cultures, religions and independent travel.

It’s thirty-three years later now. Mick’s married with kids and works in sports rehab and Jodi lives up north, trains dogs, bakes up a storm and practices her art craft, but we still stay in touch.

I often look back on my time three decades ago experiencing the silent meditation, the Orangutans and the treks with Mick and Jodi as one of the most transformative and exhilarating experiences of my life.

Thanks for reading!