Land Below the Wind

Visiting Borneo realizes a dream for me. At the same time, I feel like Borneo steals the tiniest little piece of my soul. That idyllic utopian vision of the island I’ve grown up with– that wild, free, untouched jungle wilderness– is destroyed this week.

My flight into Sandakan skirts Mt. Kinabalu’s rugged, gray mass, rising from green spurs below us to disappear into low cloud hovering just below the summit. Rivers wind below us in a dizzying psychedelic, monochromatic array as they near the ocean, carving deltas into a perfect, round-edged jigsaw puzzle.

And then we descend over palm plantations. We drive through hours upon hours of palm plantations. I know I won’t see Borneo’s true virgin jungle– even after a year in the Holy Disneyland of wages, the Danum Valley would have broken my bank account– but even so, it’s disheartening.

That being said, within thirty minutes on the muddy, hot and humid Kinabatangan river, we’ve found no fewer than three orangutans high in the trees and a troupe of proboscis monkeys… minding their own business, as usual.

The river snakes 560 kilometers from its headwater in Kalimantan to the Borneo’s eastern coast, emptying into the ocean through a dizzying delta of tidal islands and tributaries nestled together like a jigsaw puzzle assembled in utopia.

A pair of orangutans is apparently a rare sighting: since they’re solitary creatures, the only time the primates really come together in the wild is when making or raising babies is involved. Their movements prove shockingly fast and nimble for such large animals, making their way through the canopy as they feed on leaves high above our heads.

The proboscis monkeys emerge near dusk. Harem groups, comprised of one big, bulbous-nosed male and many smaller, witch-nosed females, swarm trees over the river to feed. “They do not eat sweet fruit," our guide tells us. "Only the sour leaves. They have two stomachs, and they make the glucose from the sucrose. If they eat the glucose, the fruit ferments in their belly and BOOM! HiroshimaNagasaki!”

I’m not exactly sure how accurate the explanation is, but safe to say we only spy proboscis monkeys eating leaves. The monster males, who spend the majority of their time lounging amongst high branches, occasionally take a moment to chase down a favorite female and engage in copious monkey business.

In other news, on our second morning we find a little baby crocodile sunning itself on a muddy bank. Hornbills and storm storks frequent the sky and big, wild pigs with protruding noses, faces framed by long, bristly whiskers, blend into the vines just off the river. At one point, our guide nudges our boat under an overhanging branch on which a black and yellow-striped cat-eyed snake coils. Occasionally we spot small groups of silvery langurs high above, tiny orange babies clutched tight to mothers’ chests. Our second morning, a sea eagle skims our heads as it cruises low over the river.

Our guide explains how we’re amongst secondary jungle right now, somewhere between 50 and 80 years old. He shows us places where the Malaysian government has used helicopters to spread seeds of native plants, encouraging regrowth of jungle to protect and provide habitat for local species. He points out ropes strung between monster trees over tributaries, providing passage over the water for orangutans (taken advantage of by other species as well). He talks about how even through other areas of Borneo have virgin jungle, hunting has all but decimated local wildlife: for a villager, catching a single native songbird to be sold in the city nets half a year’s salary. 

On a short morning trek to a nearby oxbow lake, our guide points out vines that grow to a kilometer in length, serving as water sources when cut open for people unable to drink from the river’s muddied expanse. He cuts off the outer layer of a globular green fruit known as an elephant apple, exposing a shampoo-like substance within. And he points out fig trees: orangutans’ favorite, he tells us.

Night brings other life: civets, large Bornean-style mongoose probably most-well known as the tree cats that poop out the world’s most expensive coffee beans, forage for fruit amongst the trees surrounding our river lodge. Whip scorpions cling to tree trunks’ undulating indentations and palm-sized, translucent tree frogs wrap slender toes around slim, leafy stalks. Fluorescent Rufus-backed kingfishers, blind by night, sleep in pairs on small branches just above head height.

I spend a single day in the village of Sepilok after returning from the river, exploring some surprisingly impressive wildlife conservation centers. Opposed to the “rehabilitation centers” I encountered in Thailand, more geared toward allowing thousands of tourists with even more cameras to get as close as possible mostly without touching to penned-in wildlife, Sabah’s local orangutan and sun bear centers focus rather on minimizing human-animal exposure while still providing some education to the public. The centers themselves are located several minutes’ walk into the jungle off the access road. Public access is limited to four hours each day. Bags are locked up (food and water attract the monkeys), hands sanitized before entry, and viewing platforms, for the most part, separate humans from the animals by rooms with floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Staff who come into contact with the animals wear gloves and face masks. Orangutan feeding and play areas have no fences, leaving the apes free to come and go from the jungle as they wish– even the young ones.

We wander the orangutan sanctuary through the morning, watching drama unfold in the “kindergarten playground” as younger apes socialize, munch on fruit, and gain agility through a jungle gym of platforms interconnected by ropes, tires, and other random bits and pieces. They steal fruit from each other. They play tug-of-war with their bodies. (There may be just a teeny bit of shameless biting involved.) One particularly hapless ape falls off a rope and proceeds to throw the tantrum of the century, mashing its banana through the dirt, spinning in circles on its back, digging holes and hurling balls of dirt back to the earth and summersaulting across the ground to steal more fruit.

On a feeding platform further into the jungle, a ranger stands watch while orangutans help themselves to a basket brimming with bananas and watermelon slices. Hoardes of aggressive short-tailed macaques take advantage of the free food, racing in to reach up from beneath the platform, snatching fruit before the ranger chases them off. Also, a single black super-ninja squirrel helps itself to scraps while a mother orangutan immerses her head into the basket. Her baby releases her chest to grab its own small bunch of fruit, which it proceeds to cram into its mouth as it hangs by its feet from an overhead rope.

The Sun Bear Conservation Center greets us with the smallest of the world’s bears digging for grubs amongst downed logs. Also: a silver-tailed racer (read: giant, theoretically harmless, bright yellow and black tree snake) making its happy way though the branches above our heads. Also: an orangutan who swings through, climbs down onto the walkway and chases a group of tourists down the stairs. Also: several sun bears snooze the afternoon away amongst the trees. One rouses itself to root through the top of a snag before beginning its long climb downward. Shortly thereafter the predator demonstrates what happens when kinetic energy combines with lazy sun bears, rapidly transforming into the world’s cutest drop bear.

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A day and a half later, Mt. Kinabalu greets us with low cloud and relentless rain.

We wander the national park’s botanic garden through a soft foggy haze, exploring a creation blended so seamlessly into the montane jungle I wouldn’t know the difference save for the garden’s boundary fence and name placards. Orchids greet us from every corner. Clusters of hot pink blossoms hang from high shrubs. Ferns uncoil over our heads. Purple and blue berries burst near our knees. And pitcher plants abound. While some of the near-mythical carnivorous organisms hang in light green pairs from delicate vines above our heads, others rise in deep mottled red and green from the soil.

Late in the afternoon, our taxi driver turns down the end of a bumpy pitted road to a palm plantation. A local lady leads us along a decrepit muddy brick path in her back garden to a small tarp strung sheltering a small patch of leaf litter. There from the ground rises a rafflesia flower, five days old, deep red petals curled in under its perfectly round bowl of a body. For all they’re the world’s biggest flower (also supposedly stinkiest, as they attract insects that feed on carrion), the rafflesia are notoriously hard to find: they bloom only six days at a time, with almost no warning.

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Mt. Kinabalu shows a marked shortage of mountain guides the day we climb due to the combined effects of Independence Day (the villages may have gotten a wee bit drunk last night) and an unholy amount of rainfall this year: landslides this morning wiped out at least two guides’ houses.

I feel utterly run down as we start up the trail, courtesy of what appears to be a sinus infection I’ve now been attempting to kick for close to two weeks. Also, the last time I tried to climb a mountain, the altitude ate me alive. This time, armed with all the good stuff, I’m still slow.

My guide, Aling, proves a gem. “You are not so slow,” he tells me. “You have a good pace. All my Chinese customers are slower.”

Oh, good.

As we walk, Aling tells me about the ramifications of the 2015 earthquake. 20 dead, 30 injured, three guest houses collapsed, and good luck getting a technical climbing permit these days. He explains the year-long process of becoming a climbing guide. Somewhere along the way, he discovers my interest in ecology. Aling spends the next half hour detailing the park’s endemic pitcher plants and orchids, and promises to show me “the biggest” when we descend tomorrow.

Aling cares so deeply for the park, which is kept absolutely immaculate. He explains where we can pee and poop (in the toilets. Only the toilets.), where we can dispose of trash (in the bins), and calls a group of wandering climbers back to the trail (more than one meter off track and rescue isn’t your mountain guide’s problem!). He tells us how every piece of sewage and trash is piped or carried off the mountain; how every piece of food and equipment is carried in by porters: Mt. Kinabalu's weather is too tempermental to utilize helicopters.

The track climbs steadily through changing vegetation zones: we pass from dense, shaded jungle filled with vines and broad leaves to shrubby, damp, whispy montane forest, where a brilliant red and chartreuse pitcher plant greets us from slender tendrils. Nepenthes villosa is endemic to Kinabalu, Aling tells me, and grows only above elevations of 2,800 meters.

Kinabalu’s tall upper reaches tower over our rest house, situated just below the timberline at 3,300 meters. Bright white blocks shine from the mountain’s sheer slopes where a block the size of a high rise dislodged from the base of a tall spire in the 2015 earthquake, shattering into house-sized pieces as it tumbled downward toward the rest houses.

Thunderheads and a dark, persistent rain arrive in the evening: as the mountain’s upper reaches consist entirely of granite slab, too much water results in track closure to the summit.

The weather moves on during the night, and we wake at 1:30 am the sky is clear. We climb. We climb and climb and climb some more through oxygen-starved air. We climb under clear skies, and I feel granite under my hands again. At some point Cassiopeia appears ahead of me, and I follow the half-forgotten constellation upward. In a strange way, it feels like coming home.

I summit just before dawn breaks on my last full day of vacation, in time to watch the sun rise over the mountain’s craggy spires and low valleys to the east. Kinabalu’s shadow descends over Kota Kinabalu as the city’s lights disappear to the west.

As I take a moment to rest, lungs half-starved of air, I feel the sweet, glorious taste of redemption: a month ago, Rinjani sent me packing after a night of violent altitude sickness at 8,500 ft. Today, even in my slightly decrepit state, I’ve proven to myself I can still do this shit.

Thank god for antibiotics and Diamox.

Then we start the long, slow, painful descent downward.

About a third of the way through our descent from the rest houses, Ailing motions for us to set down our backpacks. We follow him down a small side trail to where a deep red pitcher rests on the ground, rising from trailing tendrils in a bowl the size of my lower leg. “This is a hybrid,” he tells us, between N. Rajah, the largest pitcher plant in the world, and N. Villosa, which we found yesterday higher up the mountain. It, too, is found only around Mt. Kinabalu.

Some hour or so after we leave the pitcher plants behind, a low, deep rumble reverberates around the mountain. When I look up I notice trees and ferns shaking.

“Landslide?” I ask.

Aling shakes his head. “Earthquake.”

By the time we arrive to the gate in the early afternoon, I’m absolutely shattered.

We drive back to Kota Kinabalu, where I fall into bed and sleep for 12 hours straight. Then I pull myself together, down more coffee than is probably rightfully healthy, mail a few postcards (not exactly an easy task on a holiday weekend), find my way to my last Southeast Asian airport and switch my brain from “Vacation” to “Work.”

Chapter close.