A mountain awaits.

Yes it would be perfect to declare an adventurous expedition as a birthday gift for an outdoor guy, as what I did for my own.

"A mountain awaits" -- I put this as my Yahoo Messenger's status message on 30th of April, my birthday, and it sounded like "A party awaits" or "A Lamborghini awaits". I hate the arrogance behind this status message but I couldn't help to think of the excitement that I'd have in another adventurous outing. This time round, after Mt Kinabalu, I went to Mt. Ophir, a.k.a., the legendary Gunung Ledang.

No I did not underestimate the expedition of Gunung Ledang, in fact, I've been advised by my friends about hiking up this mountain. After all, Gunung Ledang is a mysterious mountain which bears many myths and legends. Gunung Ledang is not as high as Mt Kinabalu, in fact, the mountain is half shorter than Mt Kinabalu, but on the other hand, difficulty wise, Gunung Ledang is ranked 6th while Mt Kinabalu is 12th.

The ranking has all said, and we did experience some toughnesses along the journey of hiking up and down. The programme of hiking changed a lil bit from what as planned. We needed to hike up straight to the top of the mountain CP8 after setting up our camp at CP4, instead of having a good rest at campsite CP4 and proceeding our journey up in the next morning.

The changes of the schedule created a mentally-challenging scenario to 17 of us besides the physical toughness which we needed to go through along the hike. Hiking up to the peak of the mountain on the same day meant we have to climb down to our campsite right after that -- and the time we gathered at the peak of Gunung Ledang was already 7:30pm, and the way back to campsite needed about 3-4 hours during day time, expected to be n times longer when we moved closely together in the dark.

So the story went on. The obstacles that we'd made through when going up came back to us with a leveled-up difficulty with low visibility and more slippery track, plus tiredness, and some might have injury and body pain here and there... .....but 'moving closely together' was such a huge motivation generator I can tell. Nobody cried nobody gave up nobody left behind, and we reached the campsite at 2:45am.

As I always believe in, the strength of mentality is much much greater than of our body. The journey in the dark further convinced me of the power of 'I AM IN WHERE I AM, I AM HERE'. I think my childhood made me learnt this and Gunung Ledang reminded me the belief: I am in where I am, so I enjoy the most out of every bit of my surrounding.

So you say a journey of 4186.4 feet up and another 4186.4 feet down was not supposed to be a perfect birthday gift? *LOL* well I enjoyed it. To the most least, this journey had shown me approval that what I've been believing in so far is correct, and the nature had given me allowance to proceed with the belief I hold on until my age of 26.

-- it's like you passed the mid-term evaluation and you're allowed and ready to shift to the next level. Wasn't it an exciting birthday gift?

I am glad to have Fariz and Amir again in this journey -- comparatively my experience of mountain hiking is considered ZERO among three of us, so by having them in the troop I always know who to learn from, beside our mother nature, and the mountain. And this time round we have Sue and Fariz's wife Rina following. Sue and I have a lot of OUTDOOR activities together which include shopping shopping and shopping. So hanging out with Sue deep in a jungle without her shopping bags was something new and.. erm.. interesting. And Kak Rina, an adventurous tough young lady that surprised me with her craving for shopping... (well, they are ladies..).

Besides five of us, we also had Adi the sempoi (the only chap from HR), Nazreen the hot-red, Hasni the cekal, Marina the pretty, JC the optimist, Ana the sporty Ms. 'Adidas', Soon the Mr. 'Men'sHealth', Lai the 'lai-lai-lai', Boy the superb guide, and his cousin Arif, plus Suren and Raj, our agents for this trip. 17 of us, survived, and had good time on Gunung Ledang.