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Off-Road Addicts Get Trapped in Malaysian Jungle: Adam Majendie

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The nighttime noises of the Malaysian jungle recently included a thick Central European accent discussing a buckled, but vital winch axle: ``If you carry on like this you are going to screw it up. I am engineer. Let me finish my beer and do what I am doing.''
The observation was one of dozens of nocturnal discussions on broken auto parts, 4x4 folklore and jungle tactics in an encampment of vehicles from around the world. In the glow of battery-powered strip lights, Land Rovers, Jeeps, Toyotas, Nissans, and Mitsubishis were being repaired for another day in what marathonrally.com calls the world's hardest off-road trophy.
The decade-old Rainforest Challenge takes place each year in a different location in Malaysia. The genius and folly of the event, and one of the things that sets it aside from many other 4x4 competitions, is that it takes place in the middle of the monsoon. Overnight, rivers turn into impassable barriers, tracks into mudflows, solid ground into a swamp.
Off-road events such as next month's Dakar rally, the world's biggest, are traditionally races, attracting wealthy amateur enthusiasts and professional drivers. The jungle tests ingenuity more than speed. While Dakar covers 9,270 kilometers (5,700 miles) in 15 days, the toughest part of the Malaysian event allowed contestants three days to go just 14 kilometers. None made it.
If you like souped-up machines, tough living and mud, it's a lot of fun. The 10-day event started in Jertih, Terengganu state, with two days of man-made obstacles in a field outside town: a bridge made of two parallel logs, ditches big enough to swallow cars, precipitous hills.

Flipped Over

Vehicles crashed off the bridge, got stuck in watery holes and flipped over on the slopes, to the delight of the hundreds of local families who came to watch, picnic and run in front of the competing machines. More than 400 participants represented 35 nations took part, with vehicles shipped from as far away as Poland, Sri Lanka and Australia. Most had been altered almost beyond recognition.
Body panels and rear compartments were stripped away; wheels, axles, suspension, shock absorbers replaced; winches, roll bars, anchors and searchlights added. All were plastered with the logos and stickers of sponsors. My favorite, in writing upside down on a roll bar, said simply, ``if you can read this, one of us is having a bad day.''
By the end of the initial stages, 13 of the 46 starters had dropped out, unable to continue for the real adventure as a convoy including vehicles for media, organizers and marshals headed into the jungle.
Inside the rainforest, the trials continued. So-called special stages -- short, timed sections of marked track -- were fashioned out of the terrain to test the capability of the vehicles and the two-person team of driver and navigator.

Vertical Drop

One, for example, consisted of driving along a river bed to a point where the co-driver jumped out into the water and dragged a steel cable up a 30-foot high mud bank. The line was attached to a tree and the vehicle winched up to an undulating track cut through the undergrowth. Dodging trees and ripping through bamboo clumps, the car weaved around the hilltop to another near-vertical drop back into the river.
The course designer had calculated that the drop was high enough to roll the vehicle twice on the way down to the rocks below if you screwed up, an acceptable tumble.
``Slow rollovers are not really a problem provided you don't have axes and chainsaws and stuff that are not tied down,'' said Stu Garrow, a marshal from Australia.
Then, it was through the water again, over a stretch of jagged boulders, through a narrow chicane and into the finish gate. Time allowed: 27 minutes.

Fat Spider

The jungle offers other hazards too. Traveling with an advance party of marshals to set up the fourth day's trials, Garrow advised me to keep the window closed or wear gloves to fend off spiky tendrils of rattan and evict creatures that might enter from the foliage scraping the vehicle's sides.
``You tend to attract a lot of livestock,'' he said. ``You get this big fat spider come in and land on your shorts.''
At the camp site, the sand along the river banks was covered with fresh tiger tracks -- a tigress and her cub. The place was beautiful. Two hundred yards upstream, hidden by a bend in the river, twin waterfalls cascaded either side of a rocky outcrop, creating a series of natural, stepped Jacuzzis. I stripped off and submerged myself, polluting the frothing water with two days of accumulated mud.
Neither the thought of feeding a young family of tigers nor the sight of a swaying leech waiting patiently on top of my boot when I got out could damp my feeling of wellbeing.

Firecrackers

At night, we slept on camp beds under a canvas sheet slung from the side of a 4x4, interrupted periodically by deafening Thai firecrackers set off by the local volunteers to scare away inquisitive jungle cats.
When the rest of the convoy arrived, the evening took on the air of a beach party. Old acquaintances were reestablished, new friends were made, beer was swallowed and the day's damage repaired, accompanied by jokes, food and mystifying technical discussions.
``Need a PTO straightener...''
``Wiped out on the outside and rolled four times...''
``You need a four-pound hammer?''
``Use Peter's head.''
After five days, I had to return to Singapore, sad that I couldn't remain with these obsessed people for the hardest part of the course. I joined a small convoy of vehicles, two of them broken, for a 14-hour drive back to the airport. We were among the last to get out by road.

Seas of Mud

By the time I reached tarmac, the monsoon had arrived in earnest. The rivers swelled to torrents, tracks became seas of mud. Vehicles had to be winched yard by yard.
Media and support vehicles were pulled out, but became trapped between rivers in full spate. The 24 vehicles that entered the notorious stretch nicknamed the ``Twilight Zone'' had to abandon the attempt and rejoin the stranded convoy, said Luis Wee, founder of the event.
A day after the event was scheduled to finish with a gala parade on the coast, some 40 vehicles had been abandoned in the jungle, according to Wee. Attempts to rescue contestants by military helicopter failed as the weather worsened. Contestants eventually had to be evacuated by boat from a nearby village by the fire and rescue department.
``They had one heck of a time,'' said Wee by phone. ``It became a nightmare. You couldn't get out.'' Organizers hope to be able to retrieve the vehicles from the forest in the next two weeks if the rivers subside.