Juara Mutiara, Tioman, Malaysia, August 2009: Tioman is a tiny island off the eastern coast of the Malaysian peninsula accessible from Mersing by only a ferry. Juara beach is the only beach on the eastern coast of Tioman. It's remote and spectacular. It took us nine hours and different modes of transport - taxi, bus, ferry, 4x4WD - to get to Juara from Orchard Road in Singapore. Soon after we reached, the husband suggested we bike around the island through the lush rainforest. As a South Mumbai teenager, who never had to bike her way to college, my riding skills are less than average (give me a horse instead, anyday). I told my husband. He asked me to try. We hired two cycles from the hotel for RM40 for half day. I started riding and my confidence grew as picked up speed. Soon there was a narrow bridge I had to cross. The husband shouted to slow down. I tried the brakes but couldn't slow down. Then, from the other side came a giant 4x4 with more tourists. I veered off the path and jumped off the bike. I scraped my thigh, but my bigger worry was the damage to the pedal of the bike. We needed something to hammer it in. The next 15 minutes went looking for something hard enough in a dense evergreen rainforest with such thick undergrowth that even coconut kernels don't dry up. There are few places in the world where finding a stone is a very hard task. This is one fact we missed in our geography classes in school. Since we couldn't do anything with the pedal, we carried the cycle back to our hotel. Lessons learned: 1. learn to ride. 2. Don't look for stones or rocks in equatorial rainforests.
#Cycling #BikingInTheForest #StonesInRainforests
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