Lightning Strike
Kuala Tahan, Malaysia, September 2018.
After several days in Kuala Lumpur, we’d headed northwards in our hire car towards the wilds of the jungle and settled in Kuala Tahan on the edge of the Taman Negara National Park. Here the jungle trekking, both guided and independent, had been fabulous, the humidity absolutely sapping, the wildlife spectacular.
The food, however, was distinctly average. Despite being able to eat nightly on floating restaurants on the jungle river, just about every dish turned out to be the same noodle-centred ingredients, all of them tasting pretty identical, and not that good. On the penultimate day, Michaela fell victim to “travel tummy”, leading to a night where she lost both several hours sleep and the entire contents of her stomach.
The next day was, for her, a struggle. She did her best, slept by the river, soldiered on, but by mid afternoon it was clear that she was going to have to give in. A while later, she rallied a bit for one last walk around the village, but by now it was obvious that she needed sleep, and with our next long drive due the following morning, the timing was really not good.
Thunder storms are common in the jungle, but this one sounded different right from the start. Even the normally continuous cacophony of jungle birds and insects ceased. The wind through the trees became louder, the rumbles of thunder likewise. Michaela slept on.
By now I had a dilemma. We both absolutely love a good storm, and a belter was brewing here: so do I wake the patient to see the storm, or let her have her recovery sleep? I opted for the latter.
Outside, the rain got heavier, beating on the tin roof of our shack like a rock gig drum solo. The wind howled, the thunder crashed still louder, lightning illuminated the shack in vivid flashes. Michaela slept on.
I wandered outside to weigh up my dilemma again, this was growing into a memorable storm, and one any storm lover wouldn’t want to miss. The combination of wind, rain and thunder was truly deafening. Michaela slept on.
Finally I climbed into bed, the incredible storm now right overhead, raging and lashing the village, but unbelievably it still didn’t stir the patient. Until….. now, from this point, I can only tell you what we felt we experienced. Suddenly, the blinding flash of lightning came immediately after a single bang which was something like the sound of a fuse blowing, magnified a million times. Something – lightning, or electricity, or something – flashed across the room, in a trail from the light fitting to the power points in the wall, crackling as it went. And then the colossal thunder crack shook the entire building, our shack vibrating as if in an earthquake.
Without doubt, we’d been struck by lightning. Michaela was, of course, now awake, yelling something like “WTF” in its full form. Half of the power points were blown, the other half had survived. There was a smell of scorching. We hadn’t felt the infamous tingle, probably spared that by the metal roofing on our shack acting as earthing, but we knew we’d been a bit up close and personal with that particular storm.
As we rose early the next day to set off on our long drive, the most remarkable thing was normality. Kuala Tahan looked just as it always had: nothing changed, nothing collapsed, nothing destroyed. Birds were singing, the sun was rising. In a land of extremes, both humanity and nature simply cope.
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