Borneo’s Hidden Eden Danum Valley showcases the best of Borneo’s biodiversity, including the world’s highest concentration of wild orangutang, finds Sam Bedford.
Sabah’s Danum Valley is like nowhere else on earth. More than 15,000 species of plants thrive in this steamy environment. In some parts, weird bug-eating pitcher plants hang between the trees. Orchids add pinks, reds and yellows to the constant barrage of green in others.
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Almost 300 types of birds live in the forest canopy, including the recently discovered black-feathered spectacled flowerpecker. Throw in herds of Asia’s smallest elephants (pygmy elephants), long-nosed potbellied proboscis monkeys, Horsfield’s tarsiers, mousedeer, and elusive clouded leopards and you’ll quickly understand why this 130-millionyear- old rainforest – a conservancy the same size as Singapore, bursts with life.
Danum Valley became protected in 1995 and at its heart is the Danum Valley Field Centre, a scientific base for researchers that also operates as an ecotourism outpost for one of Malaysia’s most important conservation facilities.
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I’ve ventured into this remote yet breathtaking ecosystem for a three-day hiking visit with a local guide, Denny, with the hope of spying some of the rainforest’s residents, which include black sun bears, sambar deer, clouded leopards and gibbons.
Getting to Danum Valley takes time and preparation, and most visitors book through established tour agencies to ease the logistics. You’ll first need to fly to Kota Kinabalu before heading to Lahad Datu in East Sabah. From here, it’s a two hour drive in a 4×4 along logging roads.
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However, this is an adventure in itself, with serendipitous encounters with wildlife possible as you draw closer. On the way in, I saw a herd of pygmy elephants on the road and hornbills soaring above the trees. Keep your eyes peeled, and you might too.
I meet Denny on the first day over a breakfast of fried noodles and eggs. Denny, a Sabah local in his 30s, has spent most of his life studying Borneo’s ancient jungles. After a quick safety briefing (think poisonous snakes and tarantulas the size of a tennis ball), we head out into a jungle that has, for the most part, been spared the intrusions of man.
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Our trail begins in a small opening across the Danum River. A nail-biting walk over a rickety rope bridge and we’re at the threshold. Vines and pointy leaves form an unpassable blanket of green between the towering lowland dipterocarp trees on each side of the path. The saturated air suddenly feels heavier on the dark, muddy track as we delve into the foreboding forest. Sweet jungle aromas waft by in faint waves while the insect cacophony reaches deafening levels.
Denny instantly taps into an encyclopaedic knowledge of the jungle and his superhuman ability to identify distant sounds. The neverending hoo hoo hooing are the Bornean gibbons. We always hear the black primate’s echoing howls, but never see them. Two hours into the trek and a line of red ants, each the size of a large grape, capture my attention. The supersized insects march like a well-trained military unit over every obstacle, including my walking boots. Fifteen minutes later, and the line of ants continues to march by.
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Not everything goes to plan in the jungle. An entire ocean’s worth of water plummets from the sky within five seconds, I stumble, trip and fall more times than I care to remember, and nightmarish encounters with blood-sucking leeches still make me shudder. It’s best to visit Danum Valley between May and September, the drier months, and to avoid the months between November and February when the Valley receives the most rain.
Suddenly I’m drawn to the colossal size of the trees around us. Denny proudly explains the world’s tallest tropical tree, at 94 metres, grows in Danum Valley. He also points out the red leaf monkeys camouflaged above and asks if I want a closer look.
More than three-quarters of jungle wildlife lives in the treetops. Canopy walks, rope-bridges passing from one tree to the next 30 metres above the ground, are the best way to explore this vertiginous ecosystem. However, they’re not for the faint-hearted. Aluminium ladders attached to tree trunks with rattan vines are the only way up and down. One misplaced step on the narrow rungs and a fall is imminent.
A heart-stopping minute later I’m standing in a treehouse-like hut which provides a spectacular vantage point. Denny soon spots three lime green imperial pigeon on a branch below and a rhinoceros hornbill’s nest.
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The following day we hike an hour to Danum Valley’s pagan burial sites. Before mainstream religion (Christianity and Islam), Borneo’s hundreds of ethnic groups were animists. The semi-nomadic Orang Sungai (River People) thrived in Danum Valley’s jungles centuries ago. Mysterious wooden coffins with intricate carvings still lie inside crevices in the vertical rock face, next to ceramic spirit jars.
Three days of mud, sweat and leeches later and I’m exhausted beyond belief. However, nothing beats staying inside one of the world’s oldest and most important rainforests, and the memories of eating breakfast at Danum Valley Field Centre as an orangutan nursed her baby in a tree less than 20 metres away will stay with me forever.
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