He could not speak English but the others did the translation. Especially two NGOs, who were trained in the USA and spoke very good English.

We had a quick lunch and organized three vehicles: one old Jeep Cherokee, one Mitsubishi pajero and General’s highbred vehicle. Yes it was highbred alright: the body was a relic Reno left from French times, but the engine was mother of all engines a huge Mercedes god knows how many hp. General’s driver looked like a Mexican bandit, a skinny, very fast moving guy, there was a cigarette between his lips all the time.

The First 20 miles we traveled as a convoy on the two lane blacktop, General’s monster was leading, after all they were the KR – ex that is - and only they knew how to get there even on the tarmac. Than we left the "highway" and entered the bush country. Vegetation consist of heavily degraded dry dipterocarps and bamboos The terrain was flat or gently undulating, the road was actually made by the continuous traffic of the ox carts and damaged by the motor vehicles especially traveling during the monsoon. . For a forester this was OK. All you have to do is hang on something to save your head and your ass. Otherwise both will turn to marinated beef at the end of the day.

Gradually conditions start deteriorating and finally binary effect generated by the mix of bad driving and bad engineering doomed on us. Luckily we were to many men and horsepower and equipped with a thick rope managed to pull out the car. But deterioration maintained its trend as we travel away from the main road the faith started to knit its webs like a giant invisible spider.

We were still on the flat country, most of the "road" was under water but soil was mainly sandy so we kept going like a hovercraft. Being lucky is not a steady state. Otherwise "LUCK" would not be a part of our terminology. Sand suddenly turned in to silt and the Mitsubishi having a bit lower clearance than the other cars set on its belly. No problem thanks to the General’s monster highbred jeep and the rope we pulled it out.

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