Have you ever set foot in a jungle? I’ve walked through jungle twice, and once actually lived in one.
Jungle, properly defined, is dense, near-impenetrable forest — thickets of shrubs, trees and undergrowth thriving in a warm, humid climate. You’ll find it across Southeast Asia, South America and Africa.
My first encounter with the jungle came in 2019, on Koh Phangan, when I decided to climb the island’s highest peak — 627 metres. Did I think of it, at the time, as a jungle walk? Of course not. I’d only just set foot in the subtropics for the first time, and had no real idea what jungle even meant, let alone what it involved. So to me, it was simply a walk through some woods — however amusing that sounds in hindsight. There was a path, technically, but Phangan is a wild island, and that particular path saw so little use that it kept disappearing altogether, forcing me to squeeze between trees, clamber over roots, duck under branches, and try not to trip over whatever happened to be underfoot. Climbing up, the whole thing felt like an ordinary walk, and I barely noticed a single insect or any sign of wildlife at all — wildlife, whether in a jungle or an ordinary forest, tends to sense people coming and keep well clear. The descent was harder, since the slope was steep enough that I had to move carefully to avoid sliding. I don’t remember the total distance, but the climb took about two hours, and the descent roughly the same. It was only once I’d made it back down that it struck me: I’d just spent the day walking alone through jungle on a wild island, where, in theory, absolutely anything could have been out there.
The jungle revealed itself in its full glory on Bali, though, when I was living on the edge of Ubud, right up against the forest. It turned out jungle is really just a part of the vast tropical forests found there — there’s a technical distinction, though “jungle” simply sounds nicer — and it isn’t merely a dense cluster of trees. It’s an entire world, one that screams, shrieks, roars, scurries about, fights, and devours things — and every bit of it turns up tenfold once night falls. I lasted about ten days there. Every evening, I’d shoo out a frog that liked climbing vertically up the walls, along with a handful of geckos convinced the villa belonged to them. And most evenings, I had a rather more impressive visitor: an enormous gecko I nicknamed Sir Bartholomew — nearly a metre and a half long, tail included. He’d perch on the beams beneath the veranda ceiling and pick off anything that flew past, drawn in by the light. I’d sit there with my tea, entirely content with the arrangement, since fewer irritating insects made it my way as a result. Sir Bartholomew, for his part, seemed perfectly happy too — everyone came out ahead.
At night, I’d lie listening to something thundering across the roof, groaning, screeching, and think to myself: have they come for me yet, or not quite? It was, honestly, a bit much.
On Koh Chang, though, something actually did come for me. I’d set off to find one of the island’s viewpoints — one that had genuinely existed once, and by the look of old photographs, a rather good one, but during the pandemic it had gone entirely unvisited and grown wild. The path had somehow, miraculously, survived. I followed it up, took in the view — or rather, the trees where a view used to be — and started heading back down. I was walking along quite calmly, lost in my own thoughts, when something suddenly grabbed me by the shoulder. I screamed so hard from the shock that the scream itself frightened me even more.
I spun round — and there it was: a slender little vine, tangled in my hair and shirt, holding on with such surprising strength that it genuinely felt like something had grabbed me with a claw.
And that, in a nutshell, is the jungle for you: playful, unpredictable, and just a touch dangerous.
