When I embarked on my world adventure nearly five months ago I had many aims.

The most apparent at the time was to forget about work and enjoy myself, but only days into my trip I soon realised I had several more goals that would have to be achieved during this year long adventure.

Soon enough it became clear that my main objective was to overcome my fears. Now for some people these can be the fear of spiders, the dark, being alone or going to the doctor. Well my two biggest fears are bridges and the fear of falling.

Well, as this trip has progressed I have certainly had to come to terms with these two stumbling blocks of my life.

Asia seems to build bridges, a lot of them, and sometimes it appears just for the sake of building a bridge. This place just loves bridges. Similarly, Asia is the home to some of the world’s most beautiful sites but, sadly for me, these are at a height and then arrises my second fear - falling.

On Wednesday, with Pesky Jamie diving in Coron (report up soon, incidentally), Jenna, Jason and I headed north of Manilla to the town of Banaue the location of 2000-year old rice terraces that were carved into the mountains of Ifugao in the Philippines by ancestors of the Batad indigenous people.

After a near nightmare 14 hour journey which involved a combination of coach and hired mini-bus, the thought of a 12 km hike across landslides and waterfalls pressed all the buttons in my “I am scared of falling” column.

Nevertheless, after a well earned nights sleep the three of us woke up to glorious sunshine at 6.30 a.m. ready for our day of adventure.

Now, the walk up the mountain was no Everest, Snowdon or Kinabalu but for someone who gets scared at the idea of falling out of bed, this was something BIG for me.

The walk up to the peak involved us trekking over recently formed landslides, many loose rocks, through small streams and, at one point, trawling over the edge of a cliff with an ample fall below into a waterfall.

I did it all and the views from the top quickly made me realise that I should never let a fear overcome me. The views below were simply incredible.

With the sun shining brightly, with barely a cloud in the sky, the three of us sat at one of the restaurants at the peak sampling the local rice whilst looking down at the village built on the terraces below.

To put what we saw into some perspective, the Rice Terraces are commonly referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World” and it is thought that they were built with minimal equipment, largely by hand. The terraces are located approximately 1500 meters (5000 feet) above sea level and cover over 10,000 square kilometers (about 4000 square miles) of mountainside. They are fed by an ancient irrigation system from the rainforests above the terraces, with many villages still living there today who have to carry all there items up from ground level. Some task, that is for sure.

The hike back was as physically gruelling for me as it was mentally but one look over my shoulder at the landscape around me put everything into perspective.

On reflection we are all proud of our achievements. We had overcome an horrendous journey to get to the town of Banaue and completed a 12 KM hike and we all really did have a quite fabulous time. For me personally, I overcame fears and that made it even more satisfying.

Everyday of our trip is an adventure and everyday seems to override the previous. Batad Rice Terraces in Benaue fitted nicely into that equation.

Jay AKA SugarDaddy

Footnote: Pictures from our recent adventures are now online.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 1:30 am and is filed under SE Asia, Philippines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.