We set out on a different trail the next day. The jungle here was more open than the area we searched before. We saw many varieties of pitcher plant, known locally as the monkey’s pitcher due to the belief that monkeys drink from them. Green and black leeches fell from above and attached themselves to Jon and Chris.

Several miles into the forest Sahar noticed hair stuck to a tree trunk. It was about an inch long, dark grey, and was a meter above the ground.. Close by pahur plants had been stripped and their pith eaten. We also found a stick with tooth marks in it. The bite was four inches across. We collected the hair for analysis.

Jon’s camera’s motor broke and mine steamed up badly. Further along the trail we found more hair. It was very like the first sample but somewhat lighter in colour. It was also found on a tree trunk one meter above the ground.

We came upon piles of tapir droppings and footprints. We also discovered civet dung. Sadly no orang-pendek droppings! We found no further prints today.

Sahar told us that in 2000 he had heard the cry of orang-pendek. He demonstrated….

“UHUUUUUUUUR-UR-UR” ….A weird drawn out moan followed by two grunts. Quite unlike any animal vocalization I know.

Every so often we stopped, sat, and waited deathly quiet. But our quarry failed to emerge.

The next day we took a swim in the lake. The warm clear water was lovely and at this altitude no crocodiles were present. We were careful not to swim nude because one of the pieces of jungle folklore that the locals really take to heart is that nakedness in the jungle is a strict taboo. They believe that this will anger the tigers and bring their wrath down upon you.

We took yet another path into the forest. The bees here are gigantic, the size of small mice! Chris christened the B-52s. The going was slower here as there was more vegetation and the guides had to spend a long time hacking it away with their parangs. I could not help but feel that the noise they created would scare most animals away.

We found more hair on this day than any other. Over 60 hairs in a hollow tree. They resembled the other hairs, short and grey.

The trail led upwards to a fantastic view of the lake from one of the edges of the collapsed volcano`s ancient rim.

Under a rotting log I caught a 4.5-inch skink of a species I have yet to identify. It was reddish brown changing to burgundy on the head and tail. The eyes were very large.

Sahar did his orang-pendek impression. His call echoed out across the lake but there was no answer.

Gelatin, a nasty stinging plant was very abundant as were bananas. Sadly these were inedible wild bananas. The yellow ones we buy in shops are a mutant strain. It is another great paradox of the jungle that there is so little edible fruit around. Most berries are poisonous. I was missing fruit terribly. The only thing we came upon were some small berries Sahar called “strawberries” that looked and tasted like under ripe, red, blackberries.

Sahar`s brother John left. He was needed on a tiger conservation project elsewhere in the park. He was replaced with another guide called Parentis.

After a cold and sleepless night we broke camp to move to the opposite side of the lake. The fishermen ferried our luggage whilst Sahar, Chris, Jon, and I walked on foot. We found no further evidence of orang-pendek.

The guides set up a new camp and Sahar captured a beautiful agamid lizard closely resembling the Cantonese garden lizard. I photographed it then set it free.

That night I was woken by a commotion. The guides were looking up excitedly into the trees and shining torches at a cat sized, red furred animal whose eyes were reflecting the light like balls of fire. It was a red giant flying squirrel.

I must have lost weight rapidly. I only ate twice a day. Once before starting the day’s hike and once upon return. I could only stomach a few mouthfuls of the rice and noodles.

Chris felt ill and exhausted so only Jon, the guides and myself took the next hike. We took a route up to a knife-edge peak. Jungle swathed, seer drops fell away from us on either side. The peaks were literally a couple of feet across. The views were exquisite. We found the pugmarks of a golden cat. I discovered the newly dead cadaver of a shrew like lesser gymnure – a tiny jungle insectivore the size of a mouse.

In a clearing Sahar found two long brown hairs. They looked much more like what I had imagined orang-pendek hair to look like.

Back at the camp we met a couple of tourists passing through on a tour of Indonesia . It was nice to talk to other strangers in the jungle.

We never made it to the infamous lost valley. It think we would have had to make an extra camp in the jungle as it would have taken more than a day’s walk to get there. I hope to return to Gunung Tuju and make a special effort to get to the lost valley.

God I HATE rice!

In the morning the fishermen took us back across the lake to the edge of an incredible waterfall that tumbles down thousands of feet to the plains below. We had missed this spectacular sight on the way up.

As we climbed down again we saw more wildlife in a single afternoon than in the whole of our stay at the lake. Mitred langurs, a linsang (a normally nocturnal member of the civet family), a small toothed palm civet, and a pair of horse tailed squirrels. Also found the droppings of a golden cat.

As we reached the lowlands a massive bull elephant with impressive tusks loomed out of the bushes. I thought for a moment I had been lucky enough to see a wild elephant but it was one of a pair of tame elephants used by the villagers in the foothills of the mountain.

The village shop sold beer, bliss.

We took the bus back to Sungia Penuh and collected our things from Debbie. She was having trouble with a golden cat. The animal was caught in a snare after killing a goat. Villagers were now holding the animal. She would have to negotiate it’s release and tend to any injuries it had sustained.

We checked into the Aroma hotel. Even the VIP lounge had no hot water and was home to cockroaches you could put a saddle on.

We took Debbie and a couple of her tiger conservation team out for dinner. One of the men had seen orang-pendek although he almost refused to admit it. He thought he had seen a sun bear standing on it’s hind legs until Debbie pointed out that sun bears are black and the thing he had reported seeing was yellowish.

Barbecued chicken, after days of rice and noodles you have no idea how good it tastes.

The next day I interviewed Debbie about her orang-pendek sightings.

Me: Could you please tell me how you first heard about and got interested in orang-pendek?

Debbie: I was traveling in Sumatra as a journalist in 1989. I was climbing Mount Kerinci and heard of a legendary animal that I thought would add a bit of colour to the travel piece I did. Then I started meeting people we claimed to have seen something that didn’t appear to exist. At that stage I didn’t believe or not believe, I was trained as a journalist, which is a respectable profession so I took a look into it.

Me: Can you tell me about the first time you actually saw orang-pendek?

Debbie: I saw it in the middle of September; I had been out here four months. At that time I was 90 percent certain that there was something here, that it was not just traditional stories. I thought it would be an orang-utan and that it would move like an orang-utan, not bipedally like a man. I had my own preconception of what the animal would look like if I did see it. What was the real shocker was that I had been throwing away reports on the animal on the basis of colour that didn’t fit into what I thought the animal would look like. When I saw it I saw an animal that didn’t look like anything in any of the books I had read, films I had seen, or zoos I had seen. It did indeed walk rather like a person and that was a shock..

Me: What did it actually look like?

Debbie: A relatively small, immensely strong, non-human primate. But it was very gracile, that was the odd thing. So if you looked at the animal you might say that it resembled a siamang or an agile gibbon on steroids! It doesn’t look like an orang-utan. Their proportions are very different. It is built like a boxer, with immense upper body strength. But why an animal with immense upper boy strength should be lumbering around on the ground I don’t know. It makes no sense at all.

It was a gorgeous colour, moving bipedally and trying to avoid being seen. I knew there was something in the vicinity because the action of birds and primates in the area meant that there was obviously something moving around. So I sent a guide around as far as I could to where the disturbance was. What ever was concealed in the undergrowth would try to avoid my guide and move away in front of him. I was concealed looking down over a small shallow valley. We didn’t know what we were going to see. It could have been a bear, it could have been a tiger, it could have been a golden cat, or anything. Instead, from totally the wrong direction, a bipedal, non-human primate, walked down the path ahead. It was concentrating so hard on avoiding my guide it didn’t look towards me. I had a camera in my hand at the time but I dropped it I was so shocked. It was something so new my mental synapses froze up for a minute trying to identify something I hadn’t seen before.

Me: You have seen it a couple of times since. Could you tell me about those sightings?

Debbie: I saw it again about three weeks later. Again it was on Mount Tuju and again I had a camera in my hand, again I froze because I didn’t know what I was seeing. It had frozen on the trail because it had heard us coming. All I could see was that something across the valley had changed. I looked through a pair of binoculars. Something didn’t look quite right in the landscape. By the time I trained on the area the animal, whatever it was, had gone.

Those were the only times I could have got a photo of it. I have seen it since but fleetingly. Once you have seen an animal you can recognise it. If you have seen a rhino you can recognise a bit of a rhino.

Me: Can you tell me a bit about your theory of why orang-pendek walks bipedally?

Debbie: Everyone has pet theories. I think the only thing that makes sense is the massive volcanic event about fifty thousand years ago that created what is now Lake Toba up in north Sumatra. It created a biographical divide. You get the Malayan tapir down here but not up there. You get the Thomas’s leaf monkey up there but not down here. In recent geological history it was the biggest volcanic event. It was absolutely immense and would have caused massive habitat destruction right across Sumatra and into Malaysia.

All I can think is that surviving animals down here would have had to become terrestrial. They would have found themselves with very few trees.

Me: But fifty thousand years is a very short time for something to change so radically.

Debbie: What you could suggest is that fifty thousand years is not a long time for something to change its muscles. Maybe there wouldn’t be much skeletal change, there would be some but not a lot. But the main change would be in the muscles. An adaptable animal that is being forced to walk erect. Gibbons can walk erect so perhaps another, larger ape could become bipedal. Speciation that’s what makes the most sense.

Me: What do you think of reports of other bipedal apes in Asia?

Debbie: I don’t believe in the abominable snowman. My father was in Tibet and saw what he was told were yeti tracks but they turned out to be bear footprints. They are just too big. I think three-meter tall apes are too big. Maybe there has been exaggeration through fear. I don’t believe in things like bigfoot. The yeren in China might exist. Orang-utans like in China in the Pleistocene. It could be speciation in the orang-utan. The forests of Assam might be a good place to look as well.

Me: Thank you.

END OF PART TWO…..