I was told last Monday that I could join ZSL field team in Berbak the next day for a week or so. This is a great opportunity for me to go into one of the last places with wild tigers, so I jumped at the opportunity.

The first few days were spend waiting mainly, either traveling from Jakarta to Jambi (Tue), or waiting for a boat in Jambi to Haritam Laut (Wed), or for the boat to be fixed and the entry to the national park to be cleared (Thur).

The boat journey is an adventure in itself, used by locals to go back up the river to their riverfront house. It is certainly made for Indonesian size people, and quite uncomfortable for a fully grown man over 5'6.People mainly seem to go to Jambi to buy supplies, large bags of rice, water, gazoline, and yes, live chickens as well. Once all that is crammed on the small speedboat, off we go for an initial 3 hours ride. One stop to buy food and drink. Unfortunately no bins around there, and all rubbish ends up in the river. We changed boat once for a similar boat but less crowded to finally arrive at Haritam Laut late afternoon on Wed.

The village at the border of the Park is mainly wooden and corregated iron houses, on stilts over the water or swamps. Many houses have large extensions to house birds, in order to collect their nests for resale to China as a culinary delicacy. Which makes for a lot of noise at dawn and dusk when birds fly in and out to feast on insects.

We stayed the first night at the Captain's house, who lives with his wife and baby daughter. They also have a convenience shop selling food, clothes and petrol. Diet consists mainly of rice and sardines, either in oil, dried or in spices. Sweet potatoes fried are also basic breakfast staple.

No one in the party speaks much English, so my dictionary is coming in handy, and I am learning new words every day! They refer to me as "Mister" all the time, or of course as Bule (which literally means Albino, and is usually affectionate).

The day of waiting was mainly spent reading, or watching stray dogs fight whilst mating (quite distressing). We went for a walk on the beach, which is relatively clean considering they throw so much garbage in the water (or burn everything).

The second night was spent at the Berbak National Park offices, where about 15 men had gathered to meet. Some spoke English and were interested in my taking part in this trip. We all slept in 2 rooms, waking up early as people were going for morning prayer.

The Friday we finally left with ZSL's boat. There was 7 of us, all men, 5 from ZSL, 1 from Berbak National Park, and myself. We entered the park and went to pick up camera traps from different locations, which can only be found with GPS equipment. It's not called a jungle for nothing, and is not very hospitable nor accessible. Water levels in the swamps were not very high, which meant no more than knee level in certain places. We had to cut our way through the jungle, and of course it's hot, humid and full of bugs ready to feast on humans. I fell a couple of times, one of which on a palm tree which has many splinters. Kept me busy for a couple of days getting these out! We found an illegal loggers "hut" and destroyed it.

The Saturday was spent at the Carbon Project site, where 3500 trees are marked for monitoring. ZSL staff took the GPS coordinates of all trees, and I followed them for a while until they sent me back on the boat as the terrain was becoming too difficult to access.

On Sunday the group split, 4 to finish taking GPS coordinates of the trees, and the others to go back into jungle to put camera traps back in. I went with the latter group, and only to the first site. It took us over an hour to find the location as we did not have any GPS. I therefore chose to stay on the boat after that on the excuse that I was probably too slow for them anyway.

We slept both nights on the boat. 4 in the cabin, and 3 at the front where they had built a temporary shelter. We have a generator on board which means electricity at night. But also means bugs, of different shape, size and friendliness.

The back of the boat is the bathroom area, to wash oneself, wash dishes or clothes, all with one bucket on a rope. We cannot swim in the river as there are crocodiles. The water is disturbingly brown, but refreshing. On the way back the rope broke and the bucket stayed in the river, for which I was mortified. Thankfully it was on our way back as I am not sure how we would have dealt with the situation otherwise.

My travel companions like eating, at all times in no particular structure. We mainly had fried eggs (and I mean deep fried), rice, some fish, pot noodles and fried chicken. And a lot of snacks.

I have also come to the conclusion that Indonesians have no sense of noise. Loud music does not disturb their sleep, nor morning prayer calls. I on the other hand had short nights!

The stars at night are stunning, and lying on the roof of the boat, I realised how lucky I was for the experience. Even if I (thankfully) did not see or hear any tigers, I saw wild pigs, monkeys, many birds, a crocodile (although it could have been a bit of wood but was assured it was one) and many bugs (one particular large cockroach seems to have slept with me under my mosquito net, as he woke me up in the morning by walking over my face - no lie-in for me!).

We went back to Jambi on Monday, and I flew back to Jakarta that evening, in order to finish my work at ZSL Indonesia, as I fly on Friday to Phuket for a week, then to Bangkok and head west for the rest of the month.