The Wildwood of Borneo

In the early morning, the read from my gallery is charming. Mist hangs within the trees, forming a white veil from that solely the tallest treetops emerge. 3 sambur cervid step daintily past a clump of teak trees near my house, stretching to nibble the massive, cordate leaves. Nearby, an outsized bearded pig snuffles within the thicket.



The sounds, too, ar thrilling. Barking lizards grunt, a brown piciform bird makes a repetitive "tonk-tonk" decision, and cicadas sound like dentists' drills. From the jungle, gibbons whoop and because the mist lifts, I spot a family of orang-utans swinging through the distant cover.
I am staying at the island timberland people the center of the biggest living space of primary forest in dominion. Today, palm-oil plantations cowl most of district, and lorries laden with hardwood trundle in convoys from different remnants of jungle. however the dominion regime has ordained a 30-year ban on work from 2008, and within the Danum vale, a hundred seventy five sq. miles of lowland timberland are selected a protected reserve.
The field centre here is one among the leading tropical timberland analysis stations in South-East Asia, and therefore the near  lodge is Associate in Nursing eco-friendly house with twenty three affected  huts engineered of native wood and stones.
Equipped with leech socks (one-size-fits-all canvas baggage worn within trainers), I depart on soaked jungle trails with Donny, the chief naturalist guide. soaring trees, four hundred years recent, ar encircled by slender buttresses that make cave-like chambers. immense fallen trunks ar lined in fungi and shining spiders' webs. the bottom could be a dense mass of leaves and branches. It's hot, and with wetness usually at one hundred per cent, nothing evaporates. Flies, desperate for salt, land on my sweating body.
A giant milliped curls into a ball as we tend to approach, however I notice it laborious to identify forest life. Donny sees clues all over. He points to Associate in Nursing orang-utan nest of collapsible branches in a very crown. A pile of fruit seeds and scats underneath another tree show wherever the owner had breakfast. These holes within the ground were created by hunting wild boar; this planar  circle of earth, cleared of leaves, is that the sexual practice space of a silvery-grey argus pheasant; which tangle of bent lianas was trodden by Associate in Nursing elephant.
Donny explains the healthful uses of every tree - one secretes rosin that's utilized in HIV medicines, Associate in Nursingother produces toxic sap that kills fish whereas the sap from a 3rd tree prevents protozoal infection - Donny drinks an infusion of this each month.
At the bank, we tend to watch a cavorting family of long-tailed macaques on the way bank. They swing on lianas and push one another into the brown sunstruck stream from the lank branches of a fruit-tree. Associate in Nursing agamid, sort of a 12in archosaur, stalks by my feet. All day, leeches, blind however crafty, sense our approach, and hesitant from leaf tips, clamp themselves to our legs, arms, necks and backs as we tend to pass. solely our shins and ankles ar safe in their canvas socks. Donny has the solution - he strokes the leech to confuse it, and because it loosens its grip, sharply flicks it away. My leeches are not thus simply confused, thus Donny accommodatingly flicks them on behalf of me.
We follow a slender path to a water that thunders into a circular pool of muddy grey-green, forming a natural whirlpool bathtub. the cover virtually blocks out the sky, however alittle blue gap admits a shaft of sunshine. A coraciiform bird skims over the water. this can be an ideal place to cool down off.
Donny tells American state that he comes from the pongid Sungai tribe - the "river people". Danum was the name of a social group king World Health Organization depart into the forest and was gone for therefore long that one among Donny's ancestors was elective  king to interchange him. once Danum came back unexpectedly, he postponed to the new king. In honour of his bravery and his modesty, Donny's relation named the stream once him.
After the Second warfare, once British took over from the island Company, social group folks were inspired to allow up their roving lifetime of searching, gathering and growing rice on temporary fields. Donny's family started work on tobacco plantations and reborn to Protestantism. Donny's first name was chosen by the Australian missionary World Health Organization baptized him.
After our dip, we tend to clamber up rough-cut steps to a rocky shelf dominating the curve of the stream and therefore the lodge. Here, members of Donny's tribe historically brought their dead; from this vantage the spirits might check their descendants. hiding a body underground was seen as a final penalty, reserved for the foremost evil and criminal.
Donny's grandpa, Nenek, was Associate in Nursing pongid tahu - a sage - whose magic might cause failure and even death. Donny's earliest memory is of his grandpa. Donny, aged four, wished a coconut and commenced chopping at a tree with a matchet. Nenek told him to attend along with his eyes shut. Peeping through his fingers, Donny saw Nenek purpose at the palm, from that many coconuts instantly born to the bottom.
Donny's grandpa was greatly in demand to kill members of rival tribes like the Keniah Dayaks - formidable hunter-gatherers World Health Organization might survive for a year alone within the jungle. The spirits inhabiting Nenek's body prevented him from dying, and it had been only if he renounced magic at the age of 107 that he finally gave up the ghost.
The recent man had warned his grandchildren to not follow him into magic, however to check in class and forget social group hostilities. As he wanted, nowadays young Dayak and pongid Sungai naturalists work aboard one another at the reserve, and Donny has married a lady from another tribe.
We climb steps to a span of slippery ironwood struts and metal cables a bouncy, unsteady catwalk 100ft up, however an excellent place for recognizing a red-legged monkey imbibition fruit in a very crown, a vivid scarlet-breasted minivet, and a loud odd-toed ungulate coraciiform bird. nascent trees poke from a mesmerising ocean of inexperienced.
Night falls suddenly and at 7pm Donny takes American state on an evening drive. Following the beam of his torch, I peer through binoculars (which, oddly, work absolutely within the dark) at a bird of night feeding its young on a branch, 2 rabbit-sized chevrotain, a snake curled on a pteridophyte, a red flying opossum glide elegantly from a high branch, and a seldom lynx-eyed western primate, a primitive primate. Donny turns his torch off, and we sit, being attentive to the timberland noises and therefore the thundering stream. the celebs ar hidden by looming rain-clouds and except the odd firefly, the night in one among the world's most remote wildernesses is totally, intensely, unthinkably black.
Essentials
The Ultimate Travel Company (020 7386 4646; WWW.theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk) will organize a custom 10-night keep in island, together with treks through the Danum vale and therefore the pongid utan sanctuary at the Sepilok Nature Resort, from £2,200.
The price, that relies on 2 sharing, includes flight from London, personal transfers, an evening in Kota Kinabalu on arrival and departure, one night at the Sepilok Nature Resort, 3 nights on Lankayan Island and 4 at the island timberland people the Danum vale. personal jungle and forest cover walks, radio-controlled tours at Sepilok and most meals also are enclosed within the price.
A two-week itinerary, starts from £2,500 per person, might finish with a four-night reside the Datai resort on Langkawi with its secluded white sand beach.