Lost in the Jungle

What does it feel like to be stranded in the jungle, with no food or water and unable to reach help? One Australian woman tells her story to Andrew Whitmarsh.

“Hello!” she cries into the darkness. No answer. Nearby the leaves rustle and something moves among the giant ferns and dangling vines; maybe the wind, maybe not. She cringes and again yells but her voice is strangled by the sounds of the jungle.

She’s been shouting for hours but there is no one to hear her. She sits down on the muddy ground and puts her head between her knees. The ground is moving around her, alive with biting insects. Angry, confused, tired, thirsty, scared and extremely lonely --she is lost in the jungle.

Going for a Sunday stroll

Brooke Nolan is Australian. After living in Indonesia for a couple of years working as an English teacher, she went home to begin university in Asian Studies. One year into it, she felt the pull of the archipelago and returned for a month’s visit. Having explored Kalimantan for three weeks, she came to Jakarta to arrange a hike up 1,744-meter Mount Halimun in West Java.

“I hadn’t climbed a mountain in a really long time, so I thought this would be a great opportunity,” Brooke recalls.

She joined a local hiking group but knew very little about what she was getting herself into. They had sent out a trip circular yet she somehow hadn’t received it. “This walk will take about 7-8 hours, so we hope to finish before the afternoon rains set in,” the email stated.

Up at 5 a.m., the group of 17 hikers headed toward the double-peaked mountain. They began together but quickly spread out over the length of the trail. Never one to rush, Brooke quickly found herself toward the back of the group. With one guide leading, one in the middle and another behind her, she was confident in where she was going.

Once it began raining mid-morning, she found that her rain jacket was worthless and the soles of her shoes were worn smooth. Lunching by herself at peak number one, Brooke finished off her water, unaware that her trip had just begun.

The trouble begins

By 4 p.m., Brooke had reached the second peak and was heading down. She had fallen far behind the lead pack but was significantly ahead of the person bringing up the rear of the group.

“I was feeling good actually,” Brooke says, “just wandering alone through the jungle.” With the continued rain though, the steep downward trail quickly became treacherous with slick mud. Brooke slipped and slid her way down, falling innumerable times, growing more and more agitated as day turned to night.

“I just kept telling myself that although I was cold, wet, bruised and muddy all over, if I just kept going down, down, down, I could finish before sunset,” Brooke recalls. This, however, would prove to be untrue.

With the sun gone, so was her ability to follow the path. She had been on the trail for more than 11 hours by now. “I f***ing hated it,” Brooke says. “I tried to tell myself everything was OK, but I knew that nothing was OK.”

Brooke’s mind turned toward her fellow hikers: “I thought they must be deranged thinking this was fun; this was not fun, this was sadomasochism minus the pleasure. I could just imagine them all down at the bottom in their cars whinging about me holding them up.”

Then, at an unseen turn, Brooke blindly went straight and found herself sliding uncontrollably down a long, muddy slope that ended in a mess of thick, spiky rattan vines and an impenetrable wall of jungle. She tried to get back up the embankment but found it impossible with her tractionless shoes. She was stuck.

The nightmare begins

Unable to go back the way she came, Brooke tried to forge ahead into the jungle. “I could see a tiny light ahead. I pushed my way into the jungle, into the giant thorns and screamed in pain. The more I pushed, the more thorns, the more I screamed.”

After struggling repeatedly to get back on the trail, Brooke finally gave up. ‘It was an undeniable finality; I could not move.” She then sent a text message to one of the hiking group members: ‘I’m lost. I dn’t know wht 2 do. I’m by myself. I dn’t know where the path is.’

By this time, a search party made up of local villagers and guides had been sent back up the mountain to find Brooke. They knew approximately where she was because she had told them in an SMS she could hear a river. Around 9 p.m., Brooke saw a bobbing headlamp among the trees and cried out “Hello!” The lamp paused, swung about, then disappeared.

By 10 p.m., Brooke began seriously to contemplate a night spent in the jungle. This would be difficult because of the insects crawling around her. Another SMS read, ‘Standing here. Can’t sit down. Ants bite.’

Soaking wet, muddy, exhausted, bloodied and frustrated, Brooke wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep. She recalls thinking of her situation, ‘This is the stupidest thing I’ve done in a very, very long time.’

Around 11 p.m., roughly 16 hours after having started on the trail, Brooke spotted more headlamps. Scrambling to her feet, she shouted “Hello!” again and again. The lights paused, then moved on. Frantic that they should hear her, she yelled at the top of her lungs -- no response. “I began to think about nothing and just accept everything.”

As midnight approached, Brooke heard voices. She repeated her call for help and this time was answered by a voice in English. Recalling the moment of her rescue, Brooke says, “A couple of Indonesian guides came sliding down the embankment and grabbed my hands, they took my heavy backpack and with great strength were able to pull me back onto the path.”

The unbelievable truth and a happy ending

In actuality, the Indonesian search party had known of Brooke’s presence for some time. Rather than go after her, they had avoided her though. Why? They admitted they had thought her calls for help had come from a disturbed ghost or even possibly a leopard crying out. After being pulled to safety, one of the guides even scolded her for shouting in English, rather than Indonesian, so they could understand her calls for help.

Regardless, by 2:30 a.m. Brooke was back at her hotel, cold beer in hand, exhausted, but alive. Looking back at it all, Brooke says, “It was nobody’s fault for what happened. It was a harrowing ordeal but I’ll certainly be back for more. Perhaps next time, I’ll be a bit better prepared.”

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