Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Asia » Malaysia » Sabah » Kota Kinabalu
July 20th 2005

Published: July 20th 2005

Edit Blog Post

Barbzie

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei International Airport

PRE-TRIP

"Hey, any plans for the March holidays? Shall we do something interesting?"
"Sure! What do you suggest?"
"What about let's climb Mount Kinabalu? We've got 3 months to prepare for it!"
"That's quite an idea! Why not?"

That happened in December 2002. 4 of us, therapists at a special school, decided to plan and train for the trip to conquer Mount Kinabalu. However, between December to March, we only managed to do a little 3 hour hike as part of our training programme. I came down with a bad flu about 2 weeks before the trip. The rest of the time, we were all too caught up with things happening in school.

3 weeks before

"Have you done any research?"
"Nope, I just booked the ticket for us with Air Brunei"
"Do we need to arrange accomodation and stuff?"
"I don't know. According to what I found on the net, we can arrange it when we get there! Couldn't get any other information"
"Alright then!"

Though the trip was taking place within weeks, nobody really panicked at our lack of planning. We were all having a crazy term and we would be totally thankful

Mosque

if we survived it. In any case, we were certain that we were flying there since we had our air tickets booked and we would make the climb happen.. somehow..

Time to fly

Very quickly, the term came to an end and thus began our 4 days 3 nights trip. We boarded the plane, feeling totally ill-prepared, hoping that everything would come together as "un-planned". Before the flight took off, the Muslim prayer for journey safety was played in the cabin. I uttered my own little prayer for safety and a successful trip for it would probably take a miracle for that to happen.

We transitted in Brunei before we arrived at Kota Kinabalu. As we stepped out of the airport, we learnt that we needed to hire a cab to take us to the base of Mt Kinabalu. Asked around and finally hopped on a taxi.

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country. I caught sight of a mosque, a building characterised by the dome, crescent and the star. This place welcomes devout believers every Friday for prayer and other religious activities. The mosque also broadcasts the reading of the Koran, Islam's holy

Bunk

book, and sounds a ring when it's time for prayer.

Base camp

We arrived at the base camp in the evening. It started to drizzle. Cold. We found the information booth. We were told that all the guides had been hired. We would need to wait for any cancellation before we could climb. That was not good. We had to climb the next day in order to make it back in time to catch our plane home. Well, we'd see.

All thanks to the Higher power, there was an empty room with 4 beds available for us to rest our heads, the only beds left in the whole vicinity. Was that a miracle or what?

Bunk

Barbzie

July 20th 2005
Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Hopeful Morning

I was awakened by the sound of the rain. I looked out of the window. It was barely 8 am. It was raining real hard. Would any climb be possible in such a weather? I

Breakfast

wondered. We got ready and headed towards the office with our fingers crossed. We were early. We went to the restaurant right across the office building and had our breakfast there. Could hardly see the mountain that was covered by thick clouds. We sat there and stayed hopeful that a miracle would happen. Let's enjoy our breakfast meanwhile