My Map Pins (16): Tanjung Puting, Borneo (Posted March 2021)

 

The orang utan in the photo is wild. Or semi wild. This is the Tanjung Puting national park on the island of Borneo where orangs are well protected, and where captive apes are re-introduced into the forest, so some of the orangs here are more relaxed around people than others. All the same, they aren’t always easy to spot in the trees, so it was a magical, heart-stopping moment when this mother and her child swung down towards us and reached out her arm. I think Sue’s face in the photo fairly accurately reflects the way she felt.

I have blogged about this before I know, so apologies if you feel you've read this all twice - but I do want to plug this as a tourist experience. It is almost incomparable. And orang utans need the visitors. The more people who visit, the more incentive there is for countries like Indonesia and Malaysia to keep the parks. You don’t need a swanky travel company. You can find little tour-boat companies in Candi on the Kumai River if you search online. Which is how we did it. This is how it works. You fly to Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan, and you hire a klotok, and a crew. A klotok is an Indonesian river boat. Your crew is a captain, an engineer, a cook and a guide. You have the boat to yourselves. You set off into the Tanjung Puting reserve up the Sekonyer River which is the only way you can get there. The river winds languidly through the jungle. It is a three day trip. You spend both nights on the top deck, underneath a mosquito net, listening to the sounds of the forest. You’ll see hundreds of proboscis monkeys. You’ll see flocks of fruit bats. All manner of birds. You’ll see orangs and gibbons. It is blissfully peaceful. You rarely see another boat – except at Camp Leakey where all the boats park up to let you go off exploring on foot. There seem to be around twenty boats on the river. But it is a big river. Wildlife watching trips don’t get much better than this.  

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