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Laos is blessed with some outstanding adventure terrain. If you like to get out and about, this is the place. But it is also the place of meeting tribes, people and cultures far off the beaten trail. It is a place of rivers and jungles. But it is also a country that has endured one invader after another. And where we were headed, the most recent war would continue to remind us.
Laos has more mountains and rivers you can count. We, and our guide Noy, were on our way to do some river and jungle trekking off the beaten track. A short five hour (after the amount of hours we had spent on a bus, five hours was a doddle!) bus ride through the mountains saw us deposited off at the biggest town before the border for the night. Ban Nahin only has about 1000 people! It is a major town on a road that links the plains with Vietnam (just trying to give a little perspective). But the town's cow population use this road to get from one pasture point to another. It is not very busy!
After a quick noodle soup lunch it was off into the mountains to trek to the nearby waterfall of Tat Namsanam. Secondary forest quickly gave way to primary forest and the sounds of the road, monastery and screaming children very quickly faded away.
Noy told us that three weeks previous to our visit, an Australian had got lost for 11 days trying to reach the waterfall we were walking too now. Even though this was thick jungle, and the world seemed like it was miles and miles away, you would have to be slightly challenged to get lost here. All water flows downhill and where there is water there are people. Simple. We shook our heads in disbelief on hearing the scale of the operation that was needed to try and find him! Twit!
But having said that, it would have been very easy to have missed the path without a guide. Yes we could have reached the waterfall, but it would have been a lot harder than what we had it. After a few hours of river crossings, up and down spurs on the river and through thickets we eventually made it! High above us, the main fall tumbled off the lip of the mountain to later emerge as this gushing cascade of lovely cool water and swimming pool. Bliss after a very sweaty couple of hours trekking to get here. I am sure that I might have caught snatches of Jeremy Irons playing his clarinet as we headed back in the diminishing light toward our spot for the night.
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