Mount Kinabalu - Day Two

The night in the hostel on Mount Kinabalu was my second in a dormitory and therefore my second with virtually no sleep.  I just can't get off when I'm surrounded by others shifting, snoring and farting into the small hours.  Well, maybe it was me farting.  I rose at two and dressed in warm clothes and a head torch hired from the hostel and at 3.00am I and my climbing companion Glynn, joined the throng for the procession to the summit.  I'd met Glynn two days before and we'd decided to hire a Guide together, for companionship and to save costs.  Glynn lives in Greenwich in London, near Sue and my old stamping ground Blackheath.  In his early forties he'd casually mentioned he'd had a hip replacement only a few months back following a kick boxing injury.  Glynn was one of many interesting folk I bumped into on the mountain, including Wally and Faye a retired couple from Australia and a strapping pair of Scandinavian girls, one from Finland and one from Sweden, who I didn't exchange names with.

I say "procession" because that's what it felt like as all the climbers are bunched together on day two so most can reach the summit by 5.30am to catch the sunrise.  It seemed to me we were all worshippers in the modern temple of experience, looking to tick off something on our life list or make the celebratory "look what I've done" Facebook post.  The climb itself was magic, a moving stream of lights up the narrow path under a cold cloudless sky and a cream-coloured full moon.  Most of the way the mountain is smooth granite with only thin grass and lichen growing at this high altitude, adding to the spare and ascetic atmosphere.  Near the summit we got a view of the coast of Sabah around the capital Kota Kinabalu dotted with lights and with the yellow moon reflecting off the sea.  By about 5.30am Glynn and I settled near the summit to watch the dawn.  Most of our climbing companions also made it, though sadly Faye had to turn back early on having only one and a half lungs and suffering with the altitude.

The dawn reminded me of Sue and my only night passage on "La Fulica", when psychotic with tiredness, I was at the helm waiting for Sicily to come into view.  Like then, one's first awareness that dawn is beginning is not the light in the sky but the fact that the sea, in this case the granite, starts to become luminous.  The Sun itself was obscured by low cloud, but the colours were fantastic as more and more light flooded onto the scene.

We started our descent just after six and the less said about this slow, painful nine-hour slog the better.  By three in the afternoon I staggered out of the National Park and found a taxi, arriving back at the airport around six pm ready for my flight.  At the check-in desk I found to my despair that I'd managed to book a flight for June and not March and that that evening's flight back to Sibu in Sarawak was full, along with both flights the next day.  Luckily, I managed to get a standby ticket, helped by a very charming and camp young man in the Malaysian Airways ticket office who at one point had to pull me back from my mounting tiredness and hysteria with a sharp "sir, I need you to concentrate" as we worked our way through the purchasing procedure.

In the end I got back to our house in Saratok after a two-hour drive from Sibu Airport totally exhausted and barely able to crawl out of the car, relieved and peculiarly satisfied.