The Trek Part 5: Walking to the Karen village

After the cave we said farewell to our cave guide and thanked him for his help. It was then time to start hiking. We were told that the hike took about 3 hours for us to finish, but that an average hill tribesman would be able to complete it in about 2 hours. Setting out the path was well worn, but slowly the path petered out and it seemed like we were just walking through the woods, hoping that our guide knew where he was going. The going wasn’t exactly quite, as the leafs that had fallen were huge and they crunched with a lot of power. When we were no longer on the trail and merely walking across the path, the ground was covered with dried leaves the size of dinner plates. The trees stood all around us like pillars holding up the sky. From time to time we would emerge from the forest onto the side of the mountain and see for miles, looking at layers of mountains shielding the valleys from our prying eyes.

As we walked along through the forest, the leaves at our feet making quite the racket, Ar found us a bug to look at. Its body was about the size of a thumb, and its legs extended to about the size of my hand. It was a creamy white color, and when Ar handed it to me, its head started jerking up and down and it made almost a barking sound as it twitched in my hand. After having tasted bugs at the market a couple weekends ago I wondered how this little guy would taste, but I had purchased oranges earlier so we let him go.

Eventually we came to a wooden fence and passed through the gate of it. Ar informed us that we were in a ranger station. There were about 4 buildings in the area, and many animals running around. There was a cat that was very affectionate, and a bitch being chased around by her thirsty puppies. A handful of chickens ran around, attempting to wrangle their respective chicks. There were a few picnic tables set out which we sat on for a few moments to let our feet rest and admire the sounds of the nearby river.

We were soon all handed bamboo walking sticks and told we should take off our shoes, it was time to cross the river. Rolling up our pants we hesitantly plunged into the cold mountain water. Luckily after walking as far as we had, it was quite refreshing both in temperature and on the feet. Unluckily, the current was rather strong in places as made balancing on algae covered rocks, with a moderately heavy pack on our backs a bit more challenging than I had expected.

The river was maybe 10 meters across, but the crossing took quite a few minutes. Bringing up the rear was Jennifer, who may have been disadvantaged by here small size, as the river was a bit deep in certain spots. On the shore we all rolled down our pants legs and those who had taken off their shoes washed the sand off their feet before putting them back on (I wore teva sandals so it was no issue for me).

Heading off again we worked our way up and down the hills, mostly sticking near this river. Eventually we started to pass people in the river or on the trails to the river. There were fishermen, perched on rocks in the middle of the river, throwing their weighted nets into the current; there were people swimming, and others doing wash. I of course had the expectation that we were right near the village, yet 20 minutes later we still had not reached it. 20 minutes later however our hike had taken us out to a wonderful lookout point. From this vantage we could see mountains behind mountains, hiding the valleys we hiked through. Ar pointed to one that was about 4 valleys away and was too indistinct to be captured by our cameras and said that that was where we had started our trek that morning. I felt rather accomplished as the distance was literally as far as the eye could see, and pulled an orange out of my backpack to celebrate. (both me and Jennifer purchased a kilo of oranges since we are so used to eating constantly from street vendors in Bangkok). After a short breather it was time to press on, and so off we went. We walked across some dry rice paddies on a hill side and went away from the river, hiking up and down small valleys.

As we started to see signs of civilization (such as a dead water buffalo) we saw up on a hillside an elephant. At first it was rather hard to figure out what was behind the trees, as the elephants gray coloring is actually quite wonderful camouflage for it. We were all very impressed that it was able to get where it was, as the thick brush looked hard for us to navigate, much less the large boulder of a beast that the elephant was.

A past the elephant we walked past banana orchards and then the village school, before long we were on the main road of the village, where we were invited to the ‘Hotel California’ by a villager.