Sunday, June 18, 2006

Nature Ramble (Ramble In The Woods II)

Bukit Timah? Macritchie? Nah~ Those are normal and stale when you know exactly where to find what and you know exactly how to get from point A to point B.

I was inspired after my first attempt of 'Ramble In The Woods', especially when there were plenty of things to see. What fun is it to be following someone? You miss out on all the fun of discovering and exploring. Anyhow, 5 people braved themselves to come 'ho-lan' with me. My only bet was that, I had pocket tisu, who was with me on the previous ramble and ninja, who used to stay at Jalan Kayu before she married.

The sky was overcast. We were busy trying to escape from the huge water droplets as they descended from above, prata on one hand, bag in the other. We passed by the TPE, the army camp, the church and onto the cycling path we went.

The air was fresh, there were raindrops on leaves, giant snails, african tulip trees, durian trees, saw's 'sabun' trees, ninja's 'earring' trees and plantations. There were so many things here which I never noticed 3 weeks ago. I picked up a tip from photographer who told me never to take a picture against the direction of the light. He was right.

The cycling path became a deserted road led us to Seletar Airport and Seletar Country Club. We initially thought we were 'lost' and ended up taking a small detour into West Camp Road only to come back out to recognise that this was the place we were looking for. Eureka!

Seletar Airport marked the end of civilisation as we ventured into the woods. There were clearly had indications of construction work soon to commence.

It rained yesterday and again, this morning. The ground was terribly soft. The mud caught my shoe. SHIT. Out came my foot. In an attempt to step backwards to rescue my shoe, out came my other foot! ~!$#%^&*( I was still cursing and swearing when we found frog's eggs in the pool of water nearby. It was really quite cool and looked exactly like the ones you find in cheng tng, except that its bigger. Someone said (had a feeling it was pocket), lucky my shoe came out. Indeed! It was (still cursing and swearing).

We walked the entire stretch that was semi-wet, and missed our turn amidst all the excitement of finding sea snails and sea snail's eggs. It was quite a sight to behold as there were just so many of them. And so, we traced our way back to ready ourselves for the 'bashing' effort.

I was busy looking for a tree and its very distinctive bird's nest fern. It made me realise the difference between then and now, was that, then, there was an army of people walking in front of me. Now, there was no one walking in front of me to be creating the 'flat grass' trail. Suddenly pocket let out a scream. It was really quite funny, because HE sounded like a SHE.

We found the tree with bird's nest fern and spent the next 5 mins walking in grass taller than us and reached the 'wasteland' that was filled with treasures. This is where you'll see the banyan tree, more african tulips, indian eggplant, petai, many weaver bird nests, kingfishers (and several other species of birds), jacob's tears and so on. We saw the Yishun estate, Orchid Country Club and the mrt tracks from across the reservoir. We speculated on the possibility of camping at this place actually as there were so many things to see and do...like, tree climbing/abseiling.

This being a 'ho-lan' trip, I proudly declare I have reached my objective. Not that we really 'ho-lan-ed' but we have come to be able to recognise the place. The next time I'm back, we'll probably attempt to do it backwards. It sounds easy enough but if you've hiked enough, experience tells you the way back, somehow has a way of not resembling the way here.

I'll post more pictures soon!

Posted by LiTTle-FooT at 8:33 PM with 0 comments