Kinabatangan River

Wow! Where to start? We just returned from three days along the Kinabatangan river where we had an amazing time. Before we get to the really good stuff, a little background of the area. Palm oil is a massive industry in Borneo. It's made from the fruit of palm trees. An incredible amount of rainforest has been cut down to make way for row after row of palm trees - as far as you can see in any direction at times. Not only is the declining rainforest a problem for the animals that live there, but going from one of the most biodiverse areas in the world to a one-crop plantation is a major problem. It's like a ecological desert. Luckily it's not all bad news. There are still large areas of rainforest that are mostly intact and semi-preserved for the native plants and animals. Most of this is in the mountainous interior of Borneo, which unfortunately isn't where orangutans and elephants and some of the other major wildlife like to live. Some areas of lowland Borneo, luckily, still remain viable habitats for much of it's wildlife. That brings us to the Kinabatangan river (no, I do not know how to pronounce it). Most of the rainforest along the upper Kinabatangan has been logged heavily and converted to palm oil plantations, but along the lower Kinabatangan there remains a narrow strip of rainforest on either side of the river. The area is relatively small, maybe only a mile or two wide in places, others much narrower. The good thing about this, at least for us tourists, is that all the wildlife from the area has been squeezed into a relatively small space. This makes the lower Kinabatangan one of the best places to view wildlife that we have ever seen, right up there with Yellowstone. There are, of course, many different tour companies offering trips to the region - mostly packaged 3-day 2-night trips at lodges along the river, similar to what we did in the Amazon. For this trip, however, we decided to go for a homestay instead of the package thing. This will give us a more intimate experience with the wildlife and a short glimpse into the daily lives of people that live here. Osman's homestay provided all that, though to be honest we were glad it was just a short glimpse. Osman, his wife and 6 kids live very simple lives that center around the river. They bathe in the river, do their laundry in the river, and use rain water for drinking and cooking. They do have electricity but no air conditioning. It was the most basic accommodation we've ever stayed at, but Osman and his wife made us as comfortable as possible and fed us three big meals a day. After all, we didn't come here to stay in luxury.

Shower time

Days along the Kinabatangan involved boat cruises and jungle treks in the morning and evening, with breaks during the early afternoon for lunch and to play with Osman's kids. You are constantly hot and sweaty here. I just don't know how they do it. Steph and I would be worn out just from being in the heat all day and be in bed by 8pm. Anyways, our favorite activity was definitely the boat cruises. The cooling breeze as you glide across the river in the boat felt amazing, plus it's the best way to spot wildlife. Our first cruise started right upon arrival. They told us "Do you want to go on cruise now? I just saw elephants across from our house." We looked at each other and said, "Uhh, ya!" So off we were, just across the river from Osman's house was a huge herd of wild pygmy elephants. Pygmy elephants are a unique species native to Borneo; different from the Asian elephants of mainland Southeast Asia. Pygmy they may be in relation to other elephants, but they certainly aren't small. First we saw just a few lined up along the river, eating the grasses that grow on the river bank, but as we kept idling up the river, the line of elephants grew longer and longer. We counted at least 60 elephants right in front of us! It was surreal - it felt like we were at some theme park that has been cleverly designed to resemble a natural river. Could these really be wild elephants?

Elephant shower - note this is upstream of where we showered

Steph thought the babies were "soooo cute"

The elephants stayed along the river during our entire stay, and we went back to check on them before and after every river cruise. Actually we think the number grew as the days went by - we're pretty sure there were at least 80 there at one point - splashing around in the water, trumpeting at us and at each other, and of course always, always eating. We saw lots of babies with their mothers, big males and everything in between. The elephants were gathering on this river in order to cross to the other side for greener pastures. Historically they would never do this, as it is a dangerous swim for the babies, but the shrinking forest has forced them to cross back and forth for food. It's a sad circumstance, but it allowed us to see a few swim across the river! We were lucky to see a baby with it's mother on one side and another female on the other make the long swim to the other side.

There is an incredible amount of wildlife along the Kinabatangan. You basically cruise around in your boat and watch for movement in the trees along the bank. It reminded us of Yellowstone - if you see another boat stopped and it's people have their cameras pointed into the trees, stop and see what they are looking at. We saw all kinds of birds - Oriental Darters (similar to shags or cormorants), Pied Hornbills (cousin of the toucan), egrets, cranes, eagles, kingfishers, and other colorful species that I wouldn't know. We saw all kinds of monkeys - long- and short-tailed macaques, silvered and red leaf monkeys, and the proboscis monkey, our favorite of the lot. If you've never seen a proboscis, it's something to behold. The males have a huge nose that hangs down their face, sort of like a squishy gourd. They gather along the river banks every evening to sleep, so the afternoon cruises were a great chance to see them up close. On one cruise we were in a small tributary, maybe 40 feet across, with two large troops of proboscis monkeys on either side. Maybe 40 or 50 altogether, jumping from tree to tree, chasing each other, and calling across the river to each other. It was so cool. We sat there for about 15 minutes (along with about 5 other boats) and just tried to take it in all the commotion happening around us.

Oriental Darters

Pied Hornbills - the male has the bigger beak on the left

A whole troop macaques in the tree if you look close

Proboscis monkey with her baby

A male proboscis monkey - check out that sniffer!

One day Osman took us for a short trek through the jungle. It's very difficult to see any wildlife in the dense jungle, but it is cool to just walk and hear the sounds of the forest. It was during this walk that we saw one of the coolest as well as the undeniably least-cool thing of the whole trip. You can guess which is which - leopard footprints and leaches. Okay, so I think it's pretty obvious that leaches are the coolest! Ugh, not so much. Osman found one the second we got off the boat, so Steph and I were pretty paranoid about them the entire hike. We wore long pants, but Steph had the added security of gum boots while I only had my running shoes (they never have big enough gum shoes for me). The leaches hang onto leaves close to the ground and grab onto you as you walk by. Every few minutes we'd stop and check each other and flick off any leaches that had gotten onto our pants. We did one final check in the boat and though I remained leach-free, one had managed to crawl down Steph's boots and got on her leg! Ha! Luckily it hadn't started sucking blood yet so I was able to just pull it off her. Steph took it all pretty well. So the cool thing we saw on our trek was fresh leopard prints in the mud. Osman said they were made only the night before, so the leopard could still be close by. As usual, Steph was terrified, I was excited, though even Osman said his heart was beating fast. That's not so comforting from your jungle guide!

Leopard print. No leach pictures. You think Steph was gonna let me pull
out the camera before pulling that thing off her?

Okay, so the elephants were great, the monkeys were hilarious, but what about that great ape that brought us here? I remember seeing an ad for Malaysia in an airport 3 or 4 years ago with a picture of an orangutan in the jungle and thinking, "How cool would it be to see a wild orangutan?" Well, we can now say that it is very, very cool. During our river cruises we were lucky to see two different orangutans hanging out in the trees. Orangutans are solitary animals - they rarely come into contact with other orangutans except to mate or if there is a big fruiting tree that they all want a piece of. They are the only primate to build nests to sleep in - similar to bird's nests, made of sticks and leaves, except they build a new one every one or two days. So the easiest way to spot them is to look for a nest and see if there is an orangutan in it. They are pretty lazy animals - mostly you see them just sitting in their nests or foraging for food, not swinging from tree to tree as I was hoping. The first one we spotted was way up in a tree and not moving around too much, but still our first wild orangutan! The second we spotted was a big male laying in his nest. He was a little closer than the first, and with the help of binoculars you could tell he was looking right at us so you could see his big wide face plate. These first two spottings were pretty special, but neither was close enough to get a really good look, so while it was good to see them, we were ranking the elephants and proboscis monkeys as cooler wildlife experiences. That was until our last day, on a trip to the Geomantong Caves (more on that in a later post), when our guide spotted a female in the trees right next to the road, and she had a baby! We sat and watched her for about 30 minutes as she ate some leaves and started building her nest for the night. They were close enough that even without binoculars you could clearly see the tiny baby peering around it's mama trying to get a look at us. Magic.

Our first orangutan spotting - pretty hard to see

That's more like it! This is the mama, see video below for her baby

Our stay along the Kinabatangan was once-in-a-lifetime. We were lucky to see what we did, and who knows how long it will be there. It's comforting that we saw lots of babies - elephants, monkeys and even an orangutan. Obviously this area is sustainable enough that the animals can continue to live here, reproduce, and maintain a healthy population. Unfortunately the future of this region isn't so clear. The forests here aren't exactly protected, and from what I can tell there isn't much to stop the palm oil plantations from further overtaking the rainforest. If you want to read more about it, I'd recommend this article from National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/borneo/white-text. This brings me to my tree-hugger plea, skip it if you want. You may want to come here one day. It's an unforgettable experience. Even if you don't want to, maybe future generations from you family will want to. If you feel really passionate about it, you can donate money, write the Malaysian goverment, or any number of things that will be sure to help. Or, more practically, you can do just a small part to help. It's not realistic to ban or eliminate the need for palm oil, in fact that would devastate the people of Borneo, but reducing the demand would help to stop, or at least delay, the need to expand the palm plantations. Supposedly 50% of the products in your house contain palm oil - mostly soap and food. So all I'm asking is, next time you are at the store about to buy something, check and see if it has palm oil in it. If it does, try to find a similar product without palm oil. It's that simple. Probably won't cost you any extra money. I know I'd love to come back here one day.