Just Back: A sweaty slog through a Sri Lankan rainforest
Patrick Strode wins £200 for his colourful account of a hazardous trek through the steamy Sinharaja rainforest in southern Sri Lanka.
I am roused from sticky slumber by my partner attempting to shoo an obstinate monitor lizard from the porch. It is unreasonably early and steam still pours off the steep hillside as we lace up and slip into the dark fringe of Sinharaja.
This fecund rainforest adorns the south of Sri Lanka, providing shelter for a bewildering array of wildlife. Roots twist deviously, seeking to screw an ankle or stub a toe. Our guide, Ravi, barefoot and nimble, picks a haphazard track ahead of us. He is limber and slaloms easily through the densely packed boles of trees. His keen eyes home in on infinitesimally small movements, ever wary of lethal snakes.
The heat is belligerent where the sun spikes through the canopy. Skins slick with perspiration, our shirts clinging, we battle upwards. Rounded craters ahead of us indicate the path of a forest elephant. No doubt his practised footsteps caused less consternation to the flora and fauna than our blundering. As we stagger on, purple-faced langur monkeys study us noiselessly from above. Their gaze is indifferent, disparaging, aloof.
When our leaden limbs are at the point of capitulation, the endless foliage abruptly thins
The trees break at the silty shore of a creek. Ravi calls us to a halt. A habitual chewer, he spits gory red betel nut on to the sand, where it looks like a gunshot wound. He mops his brow and confesses that even he is finding it somewhat warm.
We scoop the cool water over our ruddy faces while fish arrow through the glassy depths. I prise off the leeches off my boots, their blood-seeking bodies flicking and flailing. Divvying out salt, we season our ankles to ward off the hungry suckers. We are replenished by sickly sweet tea brewed from honey that Ravi has taken from the forest.
Seven times we hopscotch smooth stones across the same stream on our way up as it winds through the dank forest.
Higher and higher our trajectory reaches and soon we are squeezing our bodies over and under fallen, putrefying trunks harbouring cities of writhing insect life.
The thrum of the cicadas is shrill and constant, punctuated by the chatter and chirp of the drongos and babblers swooping and darting for their prey.
Momentarily I am festooned in a net of creepers. Ravi offers me a hand but I thrash myself out and wade on through the thicket.
Finally, reaching for each other, we heave our aching bodies up the incline. Gasping, we summon vestiges of energy and then, when our leaden limbs are at the point of capitulation, the endless foliage abruptly thins and the blackened pimple of Lion Rock punctures through.
We edge out on to the precipice with jelly legs and below, far beneath us, a carpet rolls, vivid green and tumultuous. We gulp down the air and watch in silence as a hunting bird circles on the breeze, scanning the million treetops here.
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