Mar Sánchez-Cascado |
Hong Kong (EFE).- Two decades after the impact of the Indian Ocean tsunami left a devastating trail of death and destruction, one of its survivors, the ultra-marathon runner Hyun Chang Chung, returned to Sri Lanka last January to become the first person to complete the 300 kilometers of the Pekoe Trail in less than 60 hours.
As fate would have it, Chang and his family were trapped by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami on the southern beach of Unawatuna, and for this reason, this Hong Kong resident has wanted to return, to encourage the flow of responsible travelers to some of the most remote communities of the country of tea and bring prosperity to them.
“We usually got up early because our one-year-old daughter woke up very early. But that day we didn’t go to the beach because the little girl slept more than usual. Around 09:00 we began to hear desperate screams that woke us up”, recalls Chang about that terrible episode.
Surviving water and mosquitoes
“We heard tormented voices coming from outside. We looked out and saw that, in a matter of seconds, the water entered, invading everything and dragging everything in its path, so we had to grab the girl and run away,” Chang recalled.
This South Korean runner, who grew up in Argentina, managed to take refuge by climbing some steps to the roof of a house under construction, and stressed that “the problem is that when the sea advances furiously, you don’t know when it will stop. They are fast moments, in which you do not know what is happening. It’s frightening”.
That night they all slept on the roof, restless and riddled with mosquitoes, not knowing that the next day, the most shocking thing would come when they went out into the street and saw corpses on the roads scattered everywhere.
But “seeing so many inert bodies makes you numb,” lamented Chang to EFE, who recalled that this wave devastated villages, left houses flattened to their foundations, and annihilated entire families.
The tsunami took a dramatic toll on the unsuspecting Sri Lankans: 35,322 dead, half a million displaced and more than 100,000 houses destroyed.
Furthermore, half of the areas affected by the damage had suffered a harsh 21-year armed conflict, which made access difficult.
For this reason, when the Spaniard living in Sri Lanka, Miguel Cuñat, told Chang that he had designed a circuit to promote cultural heritage and promote its conservation for the benefit of local communities, he did not hesitate to join the challenge.
300 km to appreciate the simple things
Modeled after the Spanish Camino de Santiago, the Pekoe is a 22-day, 300-kilometre network of trails, with a cumulative elevation of 10,000 meters through the tea country, and funded by the EU and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Each section, planned to be completed in one day, is between 10 and 15 kilometers long, but Chang completed the entire course in just 58 hours.
“It is a cultural itinerary from village to village, which combines history, tradition and nature. There are no cathedrals, but there are tea factories, which almost act as cathedrals,” Cuñat explained to EFE.
For this South Korean director of technology in Investment Banking and passionate about Trail running, this challenge was not new, since he has competed in more than 50 international marathons.
In addition, he has been one of the few who has completed the 298 kilometers of the Hong Kong Four Trails Ultra Challenge in less than 60 hours.
But if there is something that differentiates this experience from other past adventures, it is the exposure to wildlife, “in an outdoor environment where leopards and snakes roam freely at night on their hunt.”
“To avoid them, I walked the path armed with a bell,” added Chang.
Beginning in Kandy, the spiritual heart of Sri Lanka, the trail traverses seven valleys, passes through some 80 villages, crosses the eastern foothills and traverses some of the most spectacular and difficult mountain terrain.
“One of the memories that fascinated me the most was a rock formation with a sacred footprint near the top, considered by the Buddhist tradition to be the footprint of the Buddha,” Chang described.
“I went there for the adventure of a lifetime, and I came back enriched with incredible memories and a better appreciation of the simple things that make our lives more valuable,” the runner highlighted.