The Jungle Trek - Part 2

Two people were emerging from the trees about 10 metres away.The one at the front was a European guy in his twenties, the one behind, his stick-bearing local Indian guide. The tourist and I locked eyes in a look that simultaneously said "Hey, check us out! We're off road!" and "Where the fuck are we, what are we doing here, and where are these guys taking us?"
The two guides exchanged a number of furtive syllables and with their sticks waving threateningly, gestured for us to continue. I turned and followed Rajesh deeper into the trees. We were sandwiched between them, surrounded by our two guides and god-knows how many others watching us from the foliage. I could hear monkeys whooping excitedly from the treetops. The faint smell of bananas permeated the thick, moist air.
They had us trapped and were marching us to our doom.

"Shit weather, huh?"
The other tourist had sidled up behind me. He was English and expensively educated.
"Yup," I said grimly, pausing to look up and shade my eyes in a worldy manner for dramatic effect. "Looks like it's gonna get a hell of a lot worse too."
I stared at him as forbodingly as i could, imploring him with my eyes to recognise the gravity of our predicament, but he was also looking upwards, straining to find the source of the whooping in the treetops.
"Yah. It's certainly getting heavier, the rain." He continued. "Pretty annoying really. This is my last pair of clean clothes."
Laughing, he looked down at himself. He was wearing a solid pair of hiking boots and combat trousers with a dark Berghaus waterproof jacket over a woolen sweater.
This guy obviously had no idea what was going on and was totally unprepared for the reality of the situation we were in.
I bent down and pulled a leech from my muddy pyjama bottoms and wiped my hand on my hoodie, which was soaked through.
"Nasty little fuckers, eh?" He said. "Here, try this."
He reached into his all-terrain Invicta rucksack and pulled out a small pack of brown powder, bending down to sprinkle it liberally on my legs and ankles.
"It's tobacco powder. Snuff. They hate it. Burns them, you see? Give me a shout if it washes off and i'll chuck some more on."
"Thanks." I said, genuinely touched by his naive generosity.
That Ray Mears shit might save you now, but it'll be no help later when we're being stalked through torrential rain by hordes of simian-serving psychopaths!
He stood up to face me.
"Did you say something?"
"Er... No."
He smiled. "Well, shall we carry on then? I'm Keith, by the way." He held out his hand.
"I'm Adam."
We shook on it. He had a strong grip and i felt a glimmer of hope. He was a big lad, 6-foot something with a stocky rugby-player build. But he had soft hands and i sensed that he didn't have much fight in him. On the pitch he'd be fine, but here in the jungle he probably wouldn't have it in him to kill a man if that's what it came to. At this stage, he was still a patsy, oblivious to the dangers that surrounded us and blissfully ignorant of the murderous, and doubtless perverted, intentions of our guides.
The whooping from the trees quietened and i turned to follow Rajesh again, deeper into the forest, the others a few metres behind me.

The rain got heavier and, although it wasn't as hot as it had been earlier, and although the air was slowly cooling, it was still fairly stifling. I'd put on my glasses in order to see more clearly, but they were constantly steaming up and i had to keep pausing to wipe the condensation off.
It was all part of the plan though. I figured they would make me look a lot less threatening and hardcore. Less Brendon Fraser and more John Hannah. I could be the bumbling English intellectual, no problem. Keith could be the slightly dumb, but brawny, action hero. That's exactly what they'd be expecting and therefore the last thing they'd anticipate!

As we walked, Keith and I chatted amiably.
He was from Wallingford, near Oxford, and lived in Tulse Hill, South London. He'd been in India for a few weeks, this was his second visit, and he would be here for another two. I told him about Munnar and the tea plantations, as he was intending to head in that direction, and he sounded enthused. As i was turning round to state some incredibly witty and interesting observation on the vaguely communist infrastructure of tea plantation life, and the fact that it seemed a lot like a kibbutz, only less cruel and sadistic, Keith grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back.
"Watch out, man. You nearly walked into that web."
I looked up and and saw a huge spider web stretched accross the path infront of me, a mere inch or so from my face. On it was was an enormous, evil-looking, spider the size of my hand, with legs like knitting needles. Somewhere in the treetops there was a rustling noise and some agitated whooping.

"Blimey, that could have been nasty." Continued Keith. "Horrible thing. I wonder if it's poisonous. Hey, Hamid." He gestured over his guide. "What's this then?" Hamid approached.

"Tiger spider."
"Is it poisonous?" I asked, surveying its lethal-looking mandibles.
"Yes, yes." Nodded Hamid, excitedly. "Very. But it never attack."
"Never attack?" Derek scoffed. "Bloody would have attacked you if you'd walked straight into it!" He punched me butchly on my shoulder. "I wonder why your man didn't point it out."
"Yeah weird." I said "He must have somehow stepped around without seeing it."

At that moment, Rajesh re-emerged from the bushes infront of us, and evidently annoyed that i was still standing and not writhing in agony on the floor and clawing at my face, shook his head and gestured for us to keep up and keep close.

I stopped to take a photo of the spider, hoping that if the worst came to the worst, someone might find my camera and be able to retrace our steps to find out what happened to us. They'd probably be pretty impressed that we'd survived this far, what with all these terrifying booby-traps set up to maim us.
We ducked under the web and followed, continuing our meaningless chitchat.

He worked in marketing but was bored and uninspired and had decided it was time to switch jobs when the credit-crunch happened. He figured it wasn’t a good time to be unemployed, but it was a good opportunity to have a holiday, so that’s what he was doing. The conversation worked its way through the financial crisis and mortgage rates to environmental-global-armaggedon, when suddenly I realized I had no idea where we were.

Up until then, I’d been keeping a mental map of our progress through the network of tracks, past bushes, trees and rocks that I felt I would remember.
Up until then, I reckoned I could have gotten us home pretty easily.
Now, I was totally lost.
Damn real-life and the distracting yet comforting trappings of a consumerist, capitalist existence!
I told Keith that I had no idea where we were.
“Yah. Me neither.” He laughed. “For all we know, these guys could have been leading us round in circles for the last few hours.”
Round in circles, eh? I thought. Indeed…
“Perhaps they don’t know where they’re going either.” Keith continued, joking.
“It’s always possible.” I said, stroking the area where my beard used to be.
I looked over towards Rajesh who was thrashing at a bush with his stick. Although everything I had on was soaked through, i still felt relatively comfortable. He was only wearing a t-shirt and was evidently quite cold.
“I don’t suppose they were expecting it to rain today," I mused. "Perhaps the heavy rain and the low visibility has forced them to take shelter down here and take an alternative route. We may be way off course.”

“Let’s call it a day,” said Keith. “I’m soaked and could definitely do some breakfast. Ask him if he wants to head back.”
I approached Rajesh whose thrashing had become more laboured.
He turned round, weary and bedraggled.
“Hey, dude,” I said, attempting to filter from my voice all the loathing and resentment that had been building for the past few hours and replace it with a more sympathetic tone and a friendly smile. “Shall we head back? It’s shit weather, and we’re not gonna see much wildlife like this.”
He nodded and smiled and looked back at Hamid to see what he thought.

We stood for a moment in silence.

The detour had indeed taken too long and by now the monkey high-priest would doubtfully have enough time to perform the sacrificial ceremony by midday. He’d probably been waiting for our arrival before he even started with his head-dress and crazy make-up, so now he’d be way behind schedule. Perhaps Keith and I had sufficiently distracted the guides with our mind-numbingly dull chat about US foreign policy, global warming and why some parts of East London just weren’t as adequately serviced by public transport as others, and the guides had become so disorientated and confused in their attempts to keep up, that they’d taken a wrong turn and gotten lost.

The sudden sound of a cockerel crowing broke the eerie silence and we all jumped. It wasn't the most immediate thing that you'd think might surprise you in a jungle, but you don't really expect to see, let alone hear, chickens in this type of environment. As it was, it wasn't an actual cockerel, but Hamid's mobile phone ringing.
We all turned as he fumbled to get it out, answering and speaking in hushed tones as Rajesh gestured to him across us. Rajesh was shaking his head forlornly, and Hamid, starting off relatively animated, was quickly reduced to sounding rather apologetic and remorseful.

Their monkey-overlords were obviously giving him a bit of a grilling.

Due to a combination of our cunning survivalist skills and their ineptitude, they had failed to deliver us to their JungleBook-style temple in time for the sacrifice, and the monkey-gods could now not be appeased.
It would surely be another month before the moon would be in its correct banana-phase again. Their inability to get us there could well have jeopardised this entire quarter's fruit-n-nut harvest and the Tyres-Hanging-From-Ropes-In-Trees Festival, one of the highlights of the simian callendar, would probably have to be canceled too!

There would surely be some questions for Rajesh and Hamid to answer when they got home. Their monkey-wives would doubtless be furious.
For a moment i felt sorry for them. They looked tired and defeated.
Then the full realisation of their murderous intentions returned, and i saw them for what they really were. However misguided, or perhaps even brainwashed, they were still cold-blooded killers, even if they were enslaved to a primitive race of hairy, singled-minded fruit fiends,.

"I wonder if anywhere round here in will do bacon and eggs," said Keith, and we followed Rajesh back towards Kumily.
The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful There were no near-death experiences or animal sightings, and even the sound of monkeys angrily whooping seemed to fade behind us as we got closer in to civilisation.

It was nice to be able to drop my guard a little. I was exhausted, and now that the imminent threat of spontaeous abduction or unprovoked bludgeoning was gone, i felt i could relax a little and really enjoy my jungle experience.

It was shitting down with rain, which it had been for hours, i was cold and soaked through, and as i looked down, i saw that the exposed area of flesh between my shirt and beltline was covered in blood-sucking leeches.

Fuck this for a laugh. Monkeys or not, I'm done. Get me out of here!

We treked back to the outskirts of Kumily and said our goodbyes to Rajesh and Hamid. I was eager to maintain the facade of a satisfied tourist, and in order to ensure that there was no doubt in their minds that i hadn't been onto them, I paid and even gave Rajesh a good tip. We returned to them our leech-socks and said our goodbyes. They slunk off reluctantly, undoubtedly to be reprimanded by some high-ranking monkey-official in a treehouse somewhere.

The murderous air that had hung about them earlier was gone.
They no longer looked like occultish assasins any more, just a pair of tired, bedraggled Indian chaps who wanted to go home and have some tea, having been paid pittance by a couple of exploitative westerners for a pointless trek through the jungle in the rain.

I looked down at my navel. It was bleeding heavily from the leeches i'd been pulling off.

"So," said Keith. "What are you up to now? Do you fancy grabbing some breakfast? I'm starving."

"Sure," I replied.

"Great. Well there's a really nice little cafe down by the bus station. Let's meet there in an hour. I'm going to grab a shower."

"Sounds perfect," I said. "But i'll have to be relatively quick. I want to catch a bus to Allepey pretty soon."

Keith frowned.

"Oh, you won't get a bus today. There's some kind of strike. A political thing, i don't know what. The next bus will be tomorrow morning."

I heard leaves rustle and the sound of whooping filled my ears. I noticed a number of monkeys in a tree behind Keith watching us and stopped examining my leech-wound, standing up to face him.
Blood dripped onto the ground from my hand.
He stared back nervously and smiled.

Oh, Keith. Not you too...

He turned and walked down the alleyway, calling over his shoulder.

"See you in a bit!"

I stood and watched for a minute, then wandered slowly back to my hostel.

What a strange morning. I thought.

I climbed the stairs of the Rainbow cottage up to the balcony where the door to my room was.

There was a monkey on a nearby rooftop eating a piece of fruit. It saw me and whooped one solitary defiant whoop, and as I turned the key to my room and entered, out of the corner of my eye, i was sure could see it shaking it's fist at me.