Standing amid tropical vines and a cacophony of cicadas, I look Piyan in the eyes, hoping he is pulling my leg. But the young man is deadly serious: He claims he has just seen the golden back of what sounds like ngah in the unwritten language of the Batek people -- one of Peninsular Malaysia's 18 seminomadic orang asli (aboriginal) subgroups.
We are in Taman Negara, Peninsular Malaysia's largest park, which includes the ancestral lands of the Batek, and I cannot believe that I have just missed the Malayan tiger encounter I have dreamed of for 14 years because I lagged a couple of meters behind my unstoppable jungle guide
.jpg?width=178&fit=cover&gravity=faces&dpr=2&quality=medium&source=nar-cms&format=auto&height=100)
