Question: what do you do if you get lost in the jungle?

Murray Collins answered on 18 Mar 2011:

Well sometimes you get a little bit lost. The first thing to do when you realise you are lost is just to stop and sit down for a minute, and don’t panic! If you panic and start running around you may end up getting even more lost. Once you sit down and look around you may actually realise that you recognise something, like a particular boulder, or weirdly shaped tree, then you can get back on the trail.

Sometimes you can get very lost, though. I normally work with local people who know the forest well themselves. But sometimes they get lost! In Sumatra quite a few years ago, my two guides and a photographer/biologist friend of mine got lost in the mountain rainforests of Kerinci Seblat National Park. We climbed up ridge after ridge hoping to be able to spot farmland or a road on the horizon. But everywhere we went was forest. Our GPS unit didn’t work well because of the forest cover. In the end we worked out roughly where we were and took a compass bearing and followed that to get out.

Phew!