19 minute read
Trip Reports 2020
A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE
When Emma Hall (2019 cohort) found her Gap Year project cancelled due to COVID-19, she signed up to a volunteer programme in Zimbabwe helping to protect endangered black rhinos; a plan made possible with support of the TTS Foundation’s Alumni Grant.
“This year has been a bit of a strange one, to say the least. I had originally organised to do a two-week intensive Chalet Cooks course in the UK during my Gap Year, to set me up for a winter season in the Alps working as a chef. I applied for the TTS Foundation’s Alumni Grant to help me fulfil this plan, knowing many Tanglin Alumni who had already taken up this incredible opportunity. Unfortunately, during the very first week of the course, an outbreak of COVID-19 was discovered at the cookery school, forcing the cancellation of the remaining days.
One of my great friends is Zimbabwean, and I had always heard from him about how amazing and unique the country is. After the disappointment of being unable to complete the cookery course, I decided to fly from London to Victoria Falls, in the north-west of the country, and complete two weeks of volunteer work with the Nakavango Conservation Programme (NCP).
The NCP is an affiliate of travel company International Volunteer HQ, and is based on the Victoria Falls private game reserve. It is an amazing initiative that takes in volunteers from across the world and all year round to assist in the conservation of the game reserve. Perhaps most importantly, the programme helps to protect the endangered black rhinos that live on the reserve. During my two weeks with the NCP, myself and my fellow volunteers worked on a variety of projects. First, we helped remove an invasive non-native, or ‘alien’ plant species called lantana; it can be extremely harmful to the animals if ingested. It was tough work, however necessary in order to prevent the plant from overgrowing. We were also lucky enough to be able to visit a local primary school and spend the morning helping the children clear a field for agricultural purposes.
In addition to the volunteering work, we were able to experience the amazing animals within the reserve during daily game drives. I was fortunate enough to see three of the ‘Big Five’ – elephants, buffalos and rhinos – alongside giraffes, zebras and elands (antelopes). Seeing these animals interacting in their natural habitat brought home the importance of the work of the NCP.
The Alumni Grant provided me with a life-changing opportunity to embark on an incredible and educational experience. Planning the trip improved my independence skills, and the volunteering work allowed me to build upon my resilience and work ethic. I know that all these skills, along with many others I acquired, will be extremely important for the rest of my life. I would recommend applying for the Alumni Grant to anyone who is looking for an adventure that allows them to grow as a person and learn something new.”
CONQUERING THE “MOUNTAIN OF DEATH”
In 2020, Sophie Tottman (2016 cohort) successfully summited Argentina’s treacherous Mount Aconcagua, an achievement made possible by a TTS Foundation-funded Alumni Grant. Here, in her own words, Sophie explains what she learnt atop the perilous peak.
“It is 11.30am on February 9, 2020, and I am pulling myself up onto the highest point in the Southern Hemisphere. The air, deprived of oxygen, glints with flecks of snow and ice. A large white cloud whips around the rocky ledge like liquid nitrogen around the rim of a bucket. The sky is dark blue. I sit down to catch my breath; I am the first of my teammates to reach the summit today. When the rest begin to emerge over the ledge, I crack them a bloody smile: my gums are bleeding from windchill and the pressure of altitude. I have not slept in a little over 26 hours. But, no matter – I have made it.
Aconcagua is the tallest mountain outside the Himalayas, and one of the highest of the Seven Summits – the highest peaks of each continent; it is dwarfed only by Mount Everest. It is a little under 7000m high (6962m). For context, the death zone – an area of high altitude in which there is not enough available oxygen for humans to breathe – begins at 7500m. At 8000m, one starts to lose one’s brain cells.
While not a technical peak, Aconcagua should not be underestimated; its nickname is the ‘Mountain of Death’. The high altitude alone presents its own set of risks, but it is the weather on Aconcagua that makes it such a volatile climb. Prior to our summit push, we had been grounded at base camp for six days due to poor weather around the summit that would have made the traverse impassable. In essence, the traverse is an exposed trail of ice clinging to the mountain that must be crossed in order to make the summit. Even during our perfect weather window, we had to walk sections of it backwards so as not to face the wind directly. If we had attempted this during the 120kph winds that had previously been reported at base camp, we would have been blown clean off the mountainside. Aconcagua is all about mental willpower, acclimatisation, and timing your summit push for the best weather. It’s necessary to knuckle down and simply keep putting one foot in front of the other until you moment you reach the top.
The last 200-or-so metres before the summit is a famously challenging vertical scramble – it’s the hardest part, at an altitude containing the least oxygen. It’s the point at which many people choose to turn back despite being
Head in the clouds: Sophie (fourth from right) says her exhilarating summit will be the first of many.
agonisingly close to the ‘finish line’. Two men in my expedition team shed tears during this section. Having pushed throughout the night, all anyone wants at this stage is sleep – but of course, sleep is not an option: at this altitude, a nap might kill you. It is a short section that feels endless, and it can take hours if you move particularly slowly.
The summit itself comes and goes in 10 blissful minutes. After that, it’s time to start the descent; a Sherpa digs his nails into my otherwise numb fingers to make sure I can still feel something. While I’m alright, it seems a teammate of mine has developed frostbite in his big toe.
So, you might ask: why would anyone do this? Can those 10 minutes on the top really be worth everything that comes before (and after)?
For me, climbing a mountain is not really about making the summit; in fact, one hardly remembers it. The journey there is what one remembers – the days spent at base camp; supporting your teammates through long acclimatisation hikes; huddling together with your tent buddy at night; marvelling at the Milky Way; figuring out how to use the ‘buttocks flap’ on your summit suit so you can still answer the call of nature and not freeze to death. And once you are back down to sea level, all you think about is when you will return.
I’m so excited by the thought of the next challenge, I can barely sit still. It is the excitement only a free person can feel; one at the beginning of a journey with no fixed destination. I hope I make it to the summit, and that the sky is as blue as I remember.
Thank you, TTS Foundation, for supporting this dream of mine.”
IN THE LAND OF GIANTS
Loane Bobillier (2019 cohort) received an Alumni Grant funded by the TTS Foundation to spend two weeks with the organisation Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand supporting staff helping animals to heal from abuse.
“My two weeks as a volunteer at Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT) began with a three-hour journey from Bangkok to the rescue grounds together with two other volunteers from Denmark. Upon our arrival at the sanctuary, we were greeted by two large elephant statues on either side of the road. What a great welcome!
There are more than 600 rescued animals at WFFT; they stay within the boundaries of a large section of land that was once donated by a local temple. Arriving at the centre was extremely overwhelming to say the least: the space was enormous, and it took a short trek to get from the entrance to where my accomodation was. I was assigned a spacious room with a beautiful view of an enclosure housing three elephants. The sun would set right behind their enclosure, which ensured every day ended somewhat magically!
During my first week at WFFT I worked with the wildlife group, dabbling in different roles to help animals such as gibbons, macaques, bears, iguanas, turtles and rabbits. I particularly loved working with the primates, helping to chop up fruit for their meals; together, we helped staff to make approximately 300 bowls of food per day! The sweet smell of fruit always made this a very enjoyable task. Working with the bears meant covering a good deal of ground; sweeping enclosures, cleaning pools and scrubbing walls. enclosures where each team was given between one and three elephants to look after. As volunteers, the only times we touch the animals were during feeding.
The absence of human interaction is to help the animals maintain their wild instinct; many of them were rescued from abusive environments in which they were used for human entertainment, such as in begging (bears), trekking (elephants) and the circus.
Each morning, I would hand-feed the elephants their bananas and at lunch time, I would feed them ripped up bananas, bran and special pellets. It was an amazing experience to have such close contact with these majestic creatures. Obviously, the larger the animal, the larger the mess: our duties also included cleaning up the elephants’ enclosures and collecting their manure for composting!
Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand is located in Phetchaburi, which is on the north end of the Malay peninsula.
At WFFT, Loane helped to feed, bathe and entertain elephants, many of whom were recovering from abuse. Below: the sanctuary also houses a variety of primates, all of which need feeding twice daily.
Another task involving the elephants was helping to carry out ‘enrichment activities’ that were designed to aid their cognitive development: we would chop up fruit and tie it using plant strings to create a sort of ‘prize’ they would need to compete to get.
Overall, I found the experience to be extremely enriching and humbling; I saw first-hand how hard the staff work to create a beautiful life for the animals living in the centre. While the days could be long and tiring – starting as early as 6am – I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
I am thankful to have had the opportunity to learn more about these wild animals and the work done at the centre, and also to meet volunteers from so many different backgrounds and cultures; it really opened my eyes up to the world!
I hope to have contributed positively in some way to this amazing organisation and I am grateful to the TTS Foundation for making this life-changing experience possible.”
PEAK PERFORMANCE
Lara Weiland (2019 cohort) received an Alumni Grant from the TTS Foundation to help fund her training to become a ski instructor in Niseko. She explains the highs and lows of mountain life – and how the experience helped shape her passion for the slopes.
“From November 2019 to March 2020, I worked as a ski instructor in Niseko, Japan. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done and has definitely made me want to complete another season at other resorts in the future! I fell in love with all things Japan – the amazing snow, the culture and its food, to name just a few! I hope I will be able to return one day.
I travelled with a company called Educating Adventures; they provided me with ski training for three weeks in preparation for the New Zealand Ski Instructors Alliance (NZSIA) Ski Level One (instructors) examination I would take in December 2019. The trainers improved my skiing massively in such a short amount of time, and I would not have been able to pass the exam without their help. The exam itself was five days long and consisted of two parts: personal skiing ability, and the ability to teach beginners and intermediates to ski. I hope to be able to complete my Ski Level Two qualification soon as it will allow me to teach higher-level clients and make it easier to find roles in other ski schools.
Once the training and exam period had passed, I started work at Niseko Village Snow School. Niseko Village is the second-largest ski school on the mountain, employing around 130 ski and snowboard instructors. I really enjoyed my role as a ski instructor, especially teaching the children. It was so fun and rewarding.
A typical day started at 8am, when I would receive an hour of instructor/ski training from Ski Level Three instructors, although if there had been a significant dump of powder the night before, we would be free to have fun rather than train. Lessons began promptly at 10am. Generally, my clients were complete beginners, although sometimes I would be assigned higher-level skiers who I could take up the chair lifts or on the gondola; that was always super fun.
For lunch, I would either be taken to a restaurant by a client or eat in the staff canteen. If I was taking part in a children’s group lesson – a personal favourite – I was able to eat at the nearby five-star
Alumna Lara (right) hopes to continue ski instructing once it’s possible to do so safely.
Lara fell in love with Japan during her time in the country, travelling whenever possible on her days off. Below right: socialising with her friends in their accommodation block; leading a children’s ski lesson.
hotel with the kids. The food was some of the best, but it was often a chaotic, albeit fun, experience!
Over busy periods such as Christmas and New Year, I could work for 20 days straight without a single day off. Outside that, though, I usually had around two days off each week. I generally spent my rest days skiing, especially if the snow was good; sometimes I would venture into the backcountry with friends to find fresh powder. More than 500 instructors, lift operators and hotel staff lived in the same accommodation block, so there was always someone I could hang out with or something going on. Everybody knew each other; there was a really nice community vibe.
Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, my season was cut slightly short, and the plans I had made to travel across Japan in the Spring were cancelled. While I didn’t want to leave, I tried to focus on all the good times I had enjoyed and the amazing friends I had made.
Overall, my season in Japan was incredible, and has only increased my passion for skiing. I would highly recommend this experience who is interested, especially with the support of the TTS Foundation’s Alumni Grant. The additional money enabled me to complete the ski instructor course and for that I am extremely grateful. It is a great idea and made my Gap Year all the better. A big thank you to the TTS Foundation and the Tanglin Alumni team!”
THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Daniel Shailer (2018 cohort) received an Alumni Grant funded by the TTS Foundation to swim 33 miles across the English Channel, raising SGD10,000 for the Marine Conservation Society in the process. Here, Daniel takes us through the blood, sweat and stings of preparing to swim across the world’s busiest shipping lane.
“I began preparing for an English Channel swim in April 2019. I did not have a coach, so I sought out the advice of other Channel swimmers who had been successful in the past. The swim’s growing popularity meant April was too late to book a slot for the 2020 season. I rang round all 12 boats and Masterpiece was able to squeeze me into fourth position on a tide window in August 2020 (each boat books four swimmers to take out in order should the weather allow, for each neap tide between June and September).
Come January, I bought a pool membership and began training more concertedly and focusing on speed, with shorter interval swims of 2-5km, broken into repetitions of 100-800m. At that time, I also began training for the cold water in Parliament Hill Lido, London. Winter swimming also served as my first introduction to a large and welcoming community of wild swimmers.
My plan was to continue with speed work in the pool and short cold swims in open water until May 2020, only one plan of many across the globe that would be interrupted by COVID-19. I paused training in April, believing my big swim would not go ahead. I was lucky enough to spend lockdown in Dorset, close to the UK’s South Coast, and so in May I resumed training in the sea. I began with 20-minute swims and built up to five hours in Poole Harbour, with my dad escorting me in a kayak.
By the start of July, I was facing a difficult decision. I was coming off a bad week of training after travelling to Cornwall for my first seven-hour swim, and needing to leave the water shivering after two hours; battered by waves and tides, and spooked by jellyfish. That week, Channel swims became possible again and I was offered a slot just three weeks later. I took the slot and booked a last-minute training camp in Dover for one final burst of swimming to set me straight.
When my tide window arrived on Monday, July 27, I packed my kit for the big swim and waited for a call from my captain. Conditions would be too windy until Thursday, when the first wave of swimmers eventually went out, and would worsen once again. The following Monday, my captain called me at noon with a quandry: the wind on Tuesday would be calm enough for the swim, but there would be a stronger, Spring tide. While all swimmers travel 21 miles across the Channel, stronger tides make landing on the French coast more difficult and so the distance travelling up and down the Channel increases. Also, to catch the tides at the right time, I would need to start swimming at midnight. I had never swum in the dark before, but I was too excited to pass up the opportunity I’d been preparing for, for 14 months.
Daniel’s swim took more than 15 hours and involved crossing both English and French shipping lanes.
I arrived in Folkestone Harbour with my crew (Mum, Dad and my girlfriend) and our kit for the swim. We found the boat at 11pm and began the journey to a small beach between Dover and Folkestone, on the English coast. I had my crew cover me in suncream and Vaseline on the way over, and I attached lights to my goggles and the back of my trunks so the boat could see me in the water. Once the captain had positioned the boat as close to the shore as possible, I jumped in the water and swam back to England. A spotlight from the boat found me, and then the captain sounded a horn. I waded back in.
I was swimming for 15 hours, 15 minutes, and covered a little over 61km (33 nautical miles) before I finally walked onto a beach along the coast from Calais, France.
I stuck to my feeding plan for the whole journey: swimming for two hours before stopping to tread water and take a drink; I would stop to refuel hourly after that. The first two hours were some of the worst; swimming in the dark was very disorienting and at one point I lost the boat in the dark and the swell. The following hours felt comfortable in comparison; the sunrise five hours in was a highlight. After six hours, my goggles broke and I swapped to a tinted pair. The seventh hour saw me enter the separation zone (between French and English shipping lanes) and swim into several jellyfish. I had been stung on my forearms earlier in the swim, but this time I was stung on my face, including an especially painful sting on my lip.
Another challenge arose after 10 hours. I noticed a sandbank just beneath my hands so, at the next feed, I asked whether we had entered shallow waters. The crew looked concerned: as it turned out, we were in the middle of nowhere. I continued swimming and dipped my head to touch the sand, but my hand went straight through it. I suddenly realised it was a hallucination. There were others too: in the following hours I saw birds that weren’t there and at one point fancied my mum, standing on the boat, was holding a gun (it was a mobile phone).
Throughout hours 12-14, I swam against tides that were pushing away from France. The captains found a sheltered cove and we swam in for the last hour. I had convinced myself I would never make it, so when I saw the captain moving the dinghy in readiness for the final stretch to shore, I felt a very intense rush of emotion.
I walked out of the water and took a moment to take in my surroundings. I picked up a pebble as a talisman and returned to the dinghy, ready to be rowed back to the big boat.
One aim of this project was to raise money for the Marine Conservation Society. I was very proud to reach my fundraising target of £10,000 the day after the swim. During my fundraising period, Westminster School had invited me to talk about my swim and later held a mufti day that raised another £700. I am so grateful to the TTS Foundation and the Tanglin Alumni team for making it possible for me to complete the swim.”
Tanglin Trust School Ltd 95 Portsdown Road Singapore 139299 Tel: (65) 67780771 Fax: (65) 67775862 alumni.tts.edu.sg
