So, was it a guided tour where I engaged in bird-watching and partook in culturally enriching experiences like having packed lunch on a ferry down the Amazon river?
Nope.
Think extreme mental and physical endurance where flotillas of mosquitoes and wasps feast on every inch of the body as if they’ve got a buffet passing through. Also, think a mixture of Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Rings and Cast Away. Minus a script.
No contact with the outside world. No technology. No electricity. Bad sleep with no sanity. Just my trusted 16-gauge shotgun, a Rambo machete, and yours truly.
My 89-year-old grandmother asked me ‘Why pay to suffer?’ – not in English, but in Gujarati. But in both languages, it’s a good question. My answer is simple: an explorer must explore and an adventurer must go on adventures. So there.
Luckily, I wasn’t alone. Otherwise, it would have been my last birthday. My team comprised three Peruvian hunters, resolute men who knew the intricate mysteries of the Jungle. Dalmio, Humberto and Miller didn’t speak a word of English, and didn’t care for modernity’s silly stuff. Humberto was the chief of the Witoto tribe. A father of three who had also spent years working for a gentleman by the name of Pablo Escobar in the latter’s Colombian cocaine fields. Humberto knew how to track and kill animals, deal with deadly anacondas, and navigate through an area 28 times the size of my country, Britain.
I hiked for hours on end as my 20 kg backpack rubbed against sweat that mixed with the blotchy insect bites that tattooed my skin. My mind was forced to be fully present. Time became a distorted concept, the clock of the jungle not ticking at the same speed as the one in my body. At various points, I became disillusioned. Questioning what was real, allowing the mind to wander as it galloped free from the confines of the internet, social media and communication. I missed people immensely, thinking of worst-case scenarios back home, and the impossibility of any news being communicated to me.
It is difficult to capture the whole expedition in 700-odd words. But if I were to pick two specific situations both would revolve around – you guessed it – animals.
Day 3. Morning. A ceremony known as ‘Kambo’. This involved capturing a hypnotisingly green frog and tying its arms and legs to sticks while stretching its body to make it sweat profusely. This potently poisonous sweat was collected and dried overnight.
The next morning two men sat me down on the soil, burning two holes into my shoulder, exposing the flesh and creating a gateway for the poison to dance into my bloodstream. And dance it did, the full lambada — a complete purge of the body in preparation for nocturnal hunting. All odours eradicated, sweated out and thrown up. Thirty gruelling minutes of the poison viciously attacking the body, an essential practice for those serious about surviving the Amazonian jungle.
Day 6. Midnight. A prophetically dark sky watched down on us as we strode through the overgrown conduits. My shotgun loaded and on the look-out for piercing eyes glowing through the blackness in front of me. I noticed a monkey perched upon a tree some 20 m ahead. I took aim, inhaled and pulled the trigger while exhaling. The powerful recoil attacked my shoulder as the monkey fell. In its expired form, it became breakfast and lunch the following day.
Boiled for breakfast and barbequed for lunch. Neither format was appetizing. Yet, I forced myself to eat the chewy unseasoned meat I killed in a desperate search for some calories.
Day 12. Midday. A ginormous plate of spaghetti, a shower and salvation. Hundreds of messages and emails followed by the slight yearning to walk straight back into the very place I was so ready to leave.
