Stampede Design
When you live in Langkawi, you are enveloped by nature.
You wake up in the morning to bird songs, inhale a deep breath of fresh air and greet the regular racket-tailed drongos that come to visit your office window. Breakfast becomes a leisurely routine with a good book and a cup of coffee. If it gets chilly, cats and kittens will come to cuddle around your feet. Near the gates on a good day, Rosie the lizard will be out basking in the sun, eyeing you suspiciously as you get close. During the wet season, snails love the soils near the gates, so you have to maneuver the car real good to miss them. There’s also the monitor lizard who likes to cross the road at his own pace, making it wise to stop, alert other cars and let him pass safely. Sometimes, the majestic hornbills come in pairs weeping down from Gunung Raya and that will be the highlight of the day.
Close to sunset, an amazing display of dusky leaf langurs can be seen coming down from the rainforest mountain behind, swaying from one tree to the next. In the evening, our resident gecko – we suspect he has made himself a cosy little pad up on the roof – will croak it’s signature call amidst the jungle ambience.
Taking time to live life and paying attention to nature’s way is quite a recent revelation to us. Irshad Mobarak, the island’s resident naturalist and Sri Sari, Stampede’s new manager, have been our close friends for few years now and their dedication towards nature and its conservation is nothing short of inspirational. The trouble with living on a tropic island is that tourism comes at a price. You see beautiful forests cut down to make way for resort developments and sometimes to fuel political agendas, wildlife’s deprived of their habitats and become victims of roadkills in search of food and shelter. It’s rather unfortunately short-sighted considering that it’s the island’s abundance of nature that keep tourists coming back.
Irshad, an avid birdwatcher and a guardian of the island’s millennia-old rainforest found his life’s call in nature a decade ago and never looked back. I know Sri to be a most dedicated person when it comes to protecting wildlife’s wellbeing. When you see these two individuals out there fighting the good battle, you’ll find a quiet relief because this small little patches of islands, is at least in good hands for now.
Stampede’s day-to-day operation is remotely attached to nature, but it has been our growing concern lately to grow as a team towards something bigger than ourselves. With the launch of Bird Malaysia, Junglewalla and soon enough Rainforest-Aid, we’re now a team that supports sustainable practices and nature conservation.
It is our very small way of saying thanks to all the good things in life.
