In the enchanted forest, I stumbled upon two Orang Asli kids and their puppy. The children are from the Temuan indigenous tribe. Photographed near the old Bentong road this morning.
Olympus OM-D, ISO 800, f6.3, 1/160 sec.
In the jungle, one way to charge the camera, satellite phone or walkie-talkie batteries is via the red box seen here. The inverter converts the vehicle’s 12 V to 110/240 V. Alternatively, one can also use solar chargers or a portable generator.
This Toyota Land Cruiser Series 79 belongs to Team Azimut from Venezuela and is christened Amazonas. The 4×4 arrived in a shipping container via Australia. Incidentally, petrol is the cheapest in the world in Venezuela at USD 0.02 (6 sen) per litre.
You can go equipped with heavy-duty winches, knobby tyres and a 500 horsepower engine. The sneering rainforest takes no prisoners. It will swallow your shiny 4wd vehicle into a giant mudhole and spit it out as colourless vomit, if you are lucky.
Sometimes torrential rain, floods or mudslides sweep away the vehicle before one can even grab the camera bag. It has happened before and will happen again. This is the nature of the merciless monsoon and tropical terrain. And it is these risks and challenges that attract international participants from as far as Russia and the USA.
The torturous journey for men, women and vehicles in the annual Rainforest Challenge (RFC) makes tough but interesting photography subjects. I try to follow the gruelling expedition whenever schedule allows. Here’s looking forward to this year’s coverage with the new all-terrain Olympus OM-D 🙂
