Mount Kinabalu – Malaysia

I feel that telling people how many countries I’ve travelled to is like revealing how many people I’ve slept with. For some it may be impressive, for others it might be bragging, then there are others who could see it as disappointing. However, unlike sexual encounters, people are a lot happier to ask the number of countries another has travelled to, a question I’m not particularly fond of for the very same aforementioned reasons. As we touched down and spent our first night in Malaysia I officially reached another round number but still quite a way from triple digits. This is why I stick to my claim that I don’t travel to tick off countries, it surely takes all the fun out of it and simply isn’t possible if wanting to fit in a bit of actual work and return to countries for whatever the reason may be. I travel for me and me alone, I respect my little sister for having the balls to travel to New Zealand for one of only two foreign countries in her 34 years as much as I do Michael Palin getting to visit apparently everywhere; we all travel for different reasons and bragging rights should not be one of them. But on saying all of this, I would like to say I’ve now visited three of the top four largest islands in the world, excluding Australia. Greenland tops the list, second is New Guinea, followed by Borneo and Madagascar. Greenland and Madagascar are among two of my favourite places to have visited, now it’s time for Borneo to make its case.

For reasons I simply can’t be bothered to explain here I returned to the UK for one week from my two-month spring walkabout, met Rut, enjoyed my birthday, watched Blur and then jumped back on a plane down to Malaysia. The flight to Kuala Lumpur was wonderful because it was with Emirates who are one of the very few airlines that didn’t implode during the pandemic, however our flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, a Malaysian state in the north of Borneo, was with Air Asia, the Ryan Air of southeast Asia. It’s a ridiculously cheap airline, you get what you pay for, it does the job, and to be honest I was so exhausted I didn’t care if my legs had to be stored in the overhead locker. So tired in fact, I swear we were going through some kind of ground hog day scenario as we waited an age to get through immigration in Kuala Lumpur to be greeted by heavy rain outside, to then transfer to the domestic terminal, to land in Sabah, to wait in line for immigration again and exit back into more heavy rain despite a two-hour flight. Time was both with and against us. Against because it was mid-afternoon, and we still had a long way to go until the magical time of 9pm that any traveller should stay awake until in order to help beat any mythical jetlag. With us because it meant we had time to look for a good feed. Rut and I will forever disagree over choosing restaurants when travelling as I want to walk around and pick somewhere that doesn’t look too scary while she will do a full-on investigation through reviews on Google maps and in-depth research on Instagram. Sure enough she chose the most Instagram friendly place in the neighbourhood, one to her credit that was only a five minute walk away, not that distance matters on an evening where torrential rain caused torrents in the streets and a combination of raincoats and umbrellas failed to work effectively. On arrival to the tech start-up-workspace-cum-restaurant it soon became apparent that (who could have guessed) we had made a mistake as we were informed there would be an hour wait for food. We couldn’t be bothered to go elsewhere, grabbed the drinks menu, and took seats to then discover no signs of alcohol anywhere. The final straw was after waiting for 20 minutes for them to not have taken an order of fruit juices and we gave up and made the most of a break in the weather. This was a high risk move as now I had a hunger driven grumpy and tired Argentine who had been failed by the holy grail that is Instagram and was preparing for yet another lecture by me about the evils of social media while trapsing around a foreign town in search of something that looked edible and mildly vegetarian. Luckily for me, we came up trumps, following the tested method of stopping at a place full of locals.

A couple of days later we were stood at the entrance to Mount Kinabalu or so we were told, not that the highest peak in southeast Asia could be seen through the dense cloud and yet more torrential rain. I still haven’t worked out when is the best time to climb Kinabalu but our guides did mention that the weather was rather unseasonable and it would be touch and go as to whether we would be able to summit the mountain. We packed for rain, and for once in my life I packed rather light and sensibly for which there was little excuse as the trek would only take one night and two days. Sure enough we woke to the sound of wind and rain, the latter easing by the time we started the trek at 9.30am. We had six kilometres to hike on the first day that would take us from 1,866 metres up to 3,272 metres where we would fuel up and spend the night in dorms before making a move for the summit. This would take five to seven hours we were told but a group of us did it in four which made me feel rather good about my overall fitness for once. The short people in the group told me I was at an advantage because 99 percent of the hike had been uphill with many steps to navigate and my long legs provided the advantage. I disagree as I am heavier and I believe gravity affects heavier objects to a greater degree, that and my short girlfriend also made it up the mountain at the same time as I, although it’s fair to say she had been struggling for some reason. The rain had held off for most of the hike although the wind maintained a constant menacing presence making a 30-minute lunch stop a little cold and miserable and we were glad to be in the hostel out of the wind on our arrival. Fantastically dinner was served up at 4.30pm and we were tucked up in bed by 7pm in anticipation of a 1.30am wakeup call.

As is usually the case 1.30am slowly dragged its arse around as most of the evening was spent not sleeping. It was cold, the wind was howling outside, but the guides were confident we could crack on so long as the rain held off. Heading off into the night at 2.30am it soon became apparent that this was going to be a long ode climb with little rest from the bruising wind and Rut immediately hitting an altitude sickness wall. This was not supposed to happen. She flew up Toubkal last year leaving me behind in a cloud of dust as I attempted to crawl up the mountain while refraining from soiling myself. Now, barely at 3,500 metres, Rut was hunched over like Quasimodo, stopping and sitting down every 100 metres like a dog refusing to walk any further, and declaring herself a failure. I can only assume my Kyrgyzstan hike a few weeks before had prepared me better than I thought and so although getting harder, I was far from incapacitated by the altitude, and so with all the empathy I could muster I administered a motivational talking to and told her to get a move on. That she did. Altitude sickness is a bastard, especially when experiencing it for the first time. For the most part it’s a battle of mind over matter and on one of those rare occasions my girlfriend listened to me, put one foot in front of the other, backed herself, and eventually found herself over 4,000 metres sat on a rock in the freezing cold rain. Kinabalu wasn’t going to play nice. After three hours and almost three kilometres, using ropes for a surprising amount of time to haul ourselves up steep sections of smooth granite and smashed by the wind we finally made it to the final 100 metres. There was no sunrise. The heavens opened. Thankfully our guide encouraged us to make a bid for the top, one that required all available hands and feet. The rain went as quickly as it came but the damage was done, we were wet, and the wind made sure of the cold. A quick picture was snapped at the top (4,095 metres), the merino/possum jumper was deployed to stop Rut believing she was quickly freezing to death, and we headed back down the mountain. The hike back to the hostel was almost as difficult as going up and we were thankful to arrive around 8am for a good breakfast and at least three mugs of sugary tea. After a short nap we departed in glorious sunshine arriving back at the park entrance in time for a huge lunch and some well-earned beers. As far as mountains go, Kinabalu may not be the tallest by any means but it takes a surprising amount of effort to climb regardless of the altitude. Either constantly up or constantly down there was no extended flat sections where I could ruminate on why I still think climbing mountains is a good idea, nor a bad idea, and therefore it is likely that I will put myself through it all again and you will have to read about it once more.