Woke up in the jungle of Bukit Lawang with a monkey sitting right above my head

We slept that night in an inflatable tube on the river. The next morning we'd float back to the village.

During the day we'd hiked through the jungle and spotted orangutans on the way, just hanging between the trees a few meters away. The kind of moment where you think this can't be real.

That evening I couldn't fall asleep straight away. The forest was constantly making noise, things moving, the occasional sound of a monkey somewhere in the dark. Everyone around me was already out and I just lay there staring up thinking how insane it is that I'm just lying here.

Somewhere in all of that, while my mind was drifting through everything and nothing, I fell asleep. The jungle does something to you. All that noise but somehow it empties your head. I think your brain eventually just gives up trying to be in control of anything.

At 06:20 I woke up. Looked up.

A monkey was sitting on a branch right above me. Just there. Looking down. Me looking up.

I grabbed my phone and took a photo. And it's fine, but it's also just a photo of a monkey in a tree. It captures nothing of what it felt like to be lying there and suddenly lock eyes with something that could have been sitting above you the whole time you were asleep.

I notice that a lot when I travel. You experience something and reach for your phone, and the photo just never manages to be what the moment actually was.

Does anyone else get that? A moment that was so overwhelming in real life that no photo even comes close?