This is a guest blog from longtime traveler Jack Hochfeld, who has joined us on many unforgettable journeys, from the frozen shores of Svalbard to the steamy rainforests of Borneo. With his sharp eye for detail and lyrical storytelling, Jack brings Borneo to life—capturing not only the rare and remarkable wildlife, but also the mud, the heat, the laughter, and the sheer wildness of the place. His reflections offer a rich, personal window into one of the world’s most biodiverse corners.
Borneo: Heat, Humidity, Mud and Glorious Wildlife
We arrived early for our flight, missed the boarding call, raced for the gate, and the aircraft door closed behind us. The fuel tank was overfilled, the overflow tanks needed to be drained; we began taxiing, then returned to a gate (when one became available) to repair a fault in the braking system. We were about to depart again when the ground power tripped and needed to be reset; it tripped again, and the aircraft systems shut down. We disembarked, re-boarded, and finally had an uneventful but six-hour delayed flight to Singapore. After disembarking, we collected our luggage and headed back through immigration to our departure gate for Kuala Lumpur and Borneo. We missed our overnight hotel stay in Singapore.
Borneo lays south of China, just off the equator, with Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand to the northwest, Singapore to the west, Indonesia to the west and south, and the Philippines to the northeast. As the third-largest island in the world, Borneo was divided over several decades in the twentieth century between Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.
I associated Borneo with the Allies’ disastrous loss of the island during WWII, shortly after Pearl Harbor. The defence—or more accurately, the non-defence—was split between Dutch and British colonial forces. Borneo was overrun by the Japanese and later liberated in 1945 by Australian forces, overcoming stiff resistance in harsh terrain of swamps, jungles and mountains. One could only imagine how difficult and brutal the conditions must have been.
A Living Museum of Biodiversity
The rainforests of northeastern Borneo have existed continuously for over 2.5 million years, evolving into some of the most ecologically biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. A stable climate and isolation during ice ages preserved ancient lineages of plants and animals, many endemic to the region. Almost half of all endemic birds and 65% of the island’s endemic mammals are found at Kinabalu. This deep evolutionary history make the forests of Borneo not just a conservation priority but a living museum of life on Earth.
Extraordinary Wildlife
The wildlife and biodiversity are extraordinary — over 15,000 species of flowering plants, more than 600 bird species and over 220 mammals: pygmy elephants, pygmy civets, pygmy squirrels; giant squirrels, giant Atlas moths, giant centipedes, giant island flying foxes; flying squirrels, flying frogs and flying snakes. Orang meant people, utan meant forest — people of the forest.
Gibbons, small tailless apes with long arms, looked almost human. They swung through the canopy, rarely coming to the ground. They are monogamous—rare among primates—and formed lifelong partnerships. The great apes all descended from the gibbon lineage.
The tarsier is tiny, the world’s smallest monkey, with huge fixed eyes that required it to turn its entire head like an owl to change perspective—a miniature nag-apie. The mouse deer was the world’s tiniest deer. We saw him a few times but I didn’t manage a photo.
The corpse plant—the largest flowering plant in the world—wasn’t on our routing, but the forests still dazzled. Birds are spectacular, though not always easy to spot in the thick canopy: hornbills fit the same ecological niche as toucans but weren’t related—a classic case of convergent evolution. Storm’s Stork, one of the rarest and most endangered storks globally, with perhaps 200 individuals remaining, made a miraculous appearance. We saw four in one go—2% of the world’s population.
Sun bears, the smallest bears in the world, were another highlight. Their claws and teeth were so strong and sharp that they could tear into ironwood—a feat that would destroy drill bits and saws.
Layers of Forest and Habitat
The lowland forest landscape was dominated by giant dipterocarp trees, straight-trunked titans that formed the upper canopy. We visited lowland tropical rainforest, transitional coastal, peat and montane forests—each with its own distinct wildlife, atmosphere and feel. These forests were green, lush and thick, but quite different from the sprawling rainforests of the Amazon or Central America—more vertical, layered and dense.
Over 150 species of fig trees exist in Borneo, making it one of the richest regions in the world for fig diversity. These trees fruit multiple times a year, asynchronously, offering food even when other trees don’t. They support countless animals: apes, hornbills, fruit bats and insects. The elephant ear fig bears clusters of large yellow fruit (5–10 cm in diameter) directly on the trunk or lower branches.
Nipa palms were unique in preferring coastal and estuarine environments, thriving in brackish waters where rivers met the sea.
Logging and the Reality of Conservation
The government seemed committed to protecting what remained of the natural environment, but vast areas had been logged, cleared and converted into palm oil plantations. These plantations were pretty in their own way but clearly not natural. They hosted some wildlife that fed off the palm fruits. We drove through miles of plantations to reach the reserves. At the edge, the contrast was stark: one side of the road dense forest, the other side neat rows of oil palm. It made me wonder how deep the natural forest truly extended.
One proposed conservation model planted indigenous trees, grasses and forest patches within plantations—offering wildlife refuge and corridor continuity without robbing farmers of their livelihood. Scaling back plantations and reforesting, though appealing, didn’t seem realistic. Rope bridges had been strung across roads and rivers, letting isolated canopy wildlife move and access food.
Into the Heat, the Humidity — and the Mud
The heat and humidity were relentless. The forest air was still and heavy. There was no breeze, no breath. Walking generated internal heat and the illusion of a breeze. After rain, the temperature dropped but humidity soared. Clouds built in the late afternoon, but rain often came without warning. The sky could be blue while moisture seemed to be squeezed and condensed straight from the air. It was cooler on the water and, during the final leg of our journey in the highlands at Mount Kinabalu, refreshingly mild. I now understood why the British had sought refuge in the hills.
There was rain and more rain, heat, humidity and more humidity, and of course—mud. We dripped with sweat when walking, and still dripped when sitting in hides. Our clothes were saturated; my headlamp showed drops of moisture evaporating off my skin.
The mud was thick and gloopy. The road had recently been repaired, but we didn’t get more than 500 metres into a night drive before sinking axle-deep. The rescue team arrived with something like tooth floss for a rope. Our guide walked back to the lodge and returned with gumboots so we could hike out. On a night walk through the same area, he sank knee-deep in mud and immediately touched a live electric fence—after warning us not to all week.
At one point I reversed to take another route; my gumboots were sucked in and mud leaked over the tops. I was grateful I’d extended my tripod legs to save the camera from landing in the sludge.
Local Life and Lingering Histories
I’d packed long trousers and long-sleeved shirts to guard against bugs, but the insects were fewer than expected. I eventually reverted to shorts and lighter hiking gear. The heat proved a greater challenge than the insects.
A local SIM card cost $5 a month—smarter than Telstra’s $10 a day.
We met at a shelter—a pondok. In 1800s Cape Town, the same word referred to reed huts used by Malay and other enslaved peoples in colonial gardens. It appeared often in court records and was later absorbed into Afrikaans and South African English. The Afrikaans word for banana—piesang—also came from the Malay pisang, a small linguistic echo of history in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.
The Caves and the Call of Birds
We visited Gomantong Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Thousands of echo-locating swiftlets nested there in perpetual darkness. The cave was also home to centipedes, cockroaches and millions of bats. We hiked up 552 stairs hoping to witness the evening bat exodus, but they declined to exit before dark. Still, we watched the swifts return to nest. Abandoned nests, built from feathers, plant matter and saliva, were harvested for bird’s nest soup. Our guide had spent three months filming the BBC Planet Earth series in these very caves.
We heard a white-headed broadbill. I searched for a bird with a broad beak and a white head. It turned out to be luminous lime green—with no white head. It was Whitehead’s broadbill, named after a 19th-century naturalist.
The gibbon’s call carried for miles in long looping phrases, rising and falling—something between an oriole and a green-spotted pigeon. The orangutan was less melodic, more guttural. The leopard cat mewed softly from the undergrowth. Bird calls were often more common than sightings, but helped us locate them in the dense canopy.
There were eight species of hornbills, each with a distinct call—croaking barks, awk-awks, or piercing squawks. Their wingbeats created a loud whump-whump through the air. The rhinoceros hornbill’s ivory-colored bill was topped with a fiery-orange casque known as red ivory.
Boats, Dolphins and Squirrels
We lingered by the fishing boats to spot the Irrawaddy dolphin. These blunt-nosed, round-headed creatures lived in freshwater and surfaced with a soft puff to collect scraps from the catch.
I tried to photograph a pygmy squirrel—tiny and irresistibly cute. Every time I got him in the viewfinder, he scampered to the far side of the tree. I moved around, he darted back. We played a ridiculous game of squirrel chase that had my fellow travelers in tears of laughter.
Mount Kinabalu and Wallace's Legacy
Mount Kinabalu was Borneo’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site. When it wasn’t wrapped in cloud, its 4,095-meter peak dominated the skyline. Hikers tackled the 9.8 km trail over two days—up and down.
Darwin had hesitated to publish his theory for 18 years, fearing backlash from the church. Wallace, working independently across the Malay Archipelago—including Borneo—reached the same conclusion and wrote to Darwin. This prompted Darwin’s advisors to urge immediate publication. Numerous species in Borneo were named in Wallace’s honor.
The People and the Photographer
As it turned out, the wild man of Borneo was American.
Final Thoughts
Borneo tested the limits of comfort, patience, and camera gear — yet gave back far more than it took. Beneath the dripping humidity and sinking mud lay a world few will ever witness so intimately: ancient rainforests humming with life, creatures that defied scale and expectation, and a rhythm of wildness that made time stretch and contract.
This journey through Borneo wasn’t about checking species off a list. It was about being still, being muddy, being curious — and letting the wild speak.
🌎 Explore All Our Asia Trips
Borneo
May 3 to 17, 2024
Primates of the Ancient Forest
Borneo is one of the last wild frontiers, where towering trees, dense jungle, and meandering rivers are home to some of the planet’s most elusive and fascinating creatures. On this journey, travelers were transported deep into the island’s heart, exploring a world where orangutans swing from the treetops, pygmy elephants bathe along the riverbanks, and the calls of gibbons echo through the ancient rainforest. From the moment they arrived, participants were immersed in Borneo’s rich biodiversity, embarking on river safaris, jungle treks, and canopy walks, witnessing the raw beauty and incredible wildlife of this tropical paradise.
Highlights
- Observed wild orangutans along with those undergoing rehabilitation, all within their natural habitat at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre
- Explored the Kinabatangan River on wildlife cruises, spotting proboscis monkeys, pygmy elephants, and rare bird species
- Witnessed the dramatic bat exodus from the Gomantong Caves, a breathtaking spectacle of over a million bats taking flight
- Discovered Borneo’s untouched rainforest in Danum Valley, home to orangutans, clouded leopards, and pristine jungle
“Great guides, amazing places, and maximum time in the field have always resulted in fantastic experiences. Our travel philosophy is ‘Do it once and do it right.’ Cheesemans’ trips fit the bill perfectly. The guides are always knowledgeable, and they are intent on providing wonderful wildlife experiences while respecting the wildlife and the natural environment. This trip was no exception.” -Michelle Berens
May 3 to 17, 2024
Home to one of the oldest rainforests on Earth, Borneo offers travelers a chance to immerse themselves in pristine ecosystems teeming with rare wildlife. From towering treetops to the lush riverbanks, this 15-day journey led by expert guide Charlie Ryan gave participants a firsthand look at the island’s iconic species, including orangutans, pygmy elephants, and gibbons.
May 3-4: Journey to Borneo
Travelers departed their home countries, making their way to Sandakan, Sabah, the gateway to the wildlife-rich jungles of Borneo. After a long journey, they arrived in the ancient rainforest of Southeast Asia, ready for an adventure like no other.
May 5: Arrival in Sandakan and Welcome to Sepilok
Upon arrival in Sandakan, participants were transferred to the tranquil Sepilok Nature Resort, nestled in the Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve. After settling in, they gathered for a warm welcome dinner with trip leader Charlie Ryan, who introduced the group to Borneo’s incredible biodiversity. After dinner, some chose to embark on an optional night walk, where they had their first encounters with nocturnal wildlife like giant red flying squirrels and Malay civets.
“Patrick and Charlie were both awesome. It was clear they were well respected by our guides from the lodges as well. Our lodge guides were also always friendly and helpful.” -Michelle Berens
May 6: Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre
The group began their journey into the Sepilok Forest Reserve, where they explored the canopy walkways high above the forest floor. This was the perfect vantage point to spot birds such as Asian fairy bluebirds and black-and-red broadbills. A highlight of the day was visiting the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, where participants observed rescued orangutans as they fed and interacted in their natural habitat. The afternoon and evening were filled with jungle treks, where more wildlife sightings included the elusive western tarsier and red leaf monkeys.
May 7-9: Kinabatangan River and Wildlife Sanctuary
The adventure continued with a transfer to the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, home to Borneo’s most diverse ecosystems. Travelers embarked on river cruises along the Kinabatangan River, one of the best places to spot rare wildlife. Dawn and dusk cruises offered the chance to see proboscis monkeys, pygmy elephants, and hornbills in their natural settings. On land, jungle treks through the sanctuary yielded sightings of Bornean gibbons, silvered langurs, and even a slow loris during an evening walk. A visit to the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre was a unique opportunity to learn about the world’s smallest bear species.
Another unforgettable moment was the afternoon visit to the Gomantong Caves, where travelers witnessed the dramatic wrinkle-lipped freetail bat exodus—millions of bats swirling into the evening sky as they left the cave to feed.
“Been on many trips with this ecotour business, and they always exceed expectations.” -Glenn Ciegler
May 10-11: Tabin Wildlife Reserve
Traveling deeper into Borneo’s wilderness, the group arrived at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, known for its high biodiversity. Exploring this vast area by 4×4 vehicles, participants encountered wild banteng (Bornean cattle), and enjoyed morning treks to the mud volcano, where many animals come to bathe in the nutrient-rich mud. With 220 species of birds recorded here, this was a birder’s paradise. Night drives revealed elusive nocturnal animals, including marbled cats and leopard cats.
A special experience awaited the group with a lecture from the executive director of the Borneo Rhino Alliance, who shared insights into the efforts to save the critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros.
May 12-14: Danum Valley Conservation Area
The journey continued to the breathtaking Danum Valley, a pristine area of rainforest spanning 400 square miles. Known as one of the richest areas for wildlife on the island, participants spent their days exploring the jungle trails and canopy walkways. The group marveled at the incredible birdlife, including species like the Blue-headed Pitta and Scarlet-rumped Trogon. There were also unforgettable sightings of orangutans, Bornean pygmy elephants, and the endemic maroon langur.
Evenings in Danum were spent on night walks, where the forest came alive with creatures like clouded leopards and colugo gliders. The adventurous members of the group also hiked to a nearby waterfall, soaking in the tranquility of this remote wilderness.
May 15: Kota Kinabalu
On the final morning in Danum, travelers trekked the forest one last time in search of wildlife before flying to Kota Kinabalu. After settling in at the Hyatt Centric, the group gathered for a celebratory dinner, reminiscing about the wildlife wonders they had experienced over the last two weeks.
May 16: Departure or Extension to Mount Kinabalu
Some participants opted to continue their adventure with the Mount Kinabalu extension, a journey through the tropical mountain forests of Kinabalu National Park, while others prepared for their return flights home, filled with memories of Borneo’s magical forests and fascinating wildlife.
May 17: Arrival Home
With Borneo in their hearts, travelers arrived home with stories to share and a newfound appreciation for the wild beauty of one of the world’s oldest rainforests.
Mount Kinabalu Extension:
May 16–19, 2024
A Birdwatcher’s Dream
The Mount Kinabalu extension provided a stunning conclusion to the Borneo May 2024 adventure, offering participants an incredible opportunity to explore one of Southeast Asia’s most biodiverse regions. Nestled in the heart of Kinabalu National Park, this 3-day extension treated travelers to breathtaking mountain views, rich rainforests, and an abundance of bird species. With the guidance of expert leader Charlie Ryan, the group encountered some of Borneo’s rarest endemic birds while hiking through a variety of lush habitats. Each day unfolded new surprises, creating a memorable experience for birdwatchers and nature lovers alike.
Highlights
- Kinabalu National Park Exploration: The group enjoyed sightings of dozens of species out of the total possible 326 bird species, including 18 endemics, within this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Diverse Habitats: Participants trekked through rainforests and alpine scrub, encountering over 5,000 plant species and a wealth of wildlife along the way.
- Expert Leadership: Charlie Ryan’s local knowledge of Borneo’s ecology enriched the group’s experience, with up-close encounters with some of the island’s rarest bird species.
May 16–17: Scenic Drive and Birding
On the morning of May 16, the group departed for Kinabalu National Park, enjoying a scenic drive to the foothills of Mount Kinabalu. Upon arrival, participants settled into hillside bungalows and embarked on their first birding excursion. They quickly began spotting notable species, including the Mountain Blackbird and Bornean Treepie, against the backdrop of the towering mountain.
The following day, the group explored the park’s extensive trails, walking through various ecosystems that ranged from dense tropical forests to cooler alpine zones. A highlight was spotting Whitehead’s trio—the Trogon, Spiderhunter, and Broadbill—each a rare endemic found only in Borneo. The park’s rich biodiversity, combined with Charlie Ryan’s expert guidance, ensured that everyone left with fantastic birding memories.
May 18: Last Birding Morning and Departure
On their final morning, participants ventured out early for a last birdwatching session in Kinabalu National Park. They were greeted by mist-shrouded trails and the songs of Bornean endemics, creating a tranquil and fitting end to the extension. After a final lunch, the group made their way back to Kota Kinabalu for their return flights, reflecting on the unforgettable wildlife and scenic beauty of Mount Kinabalu.
Want to Explore Borneo’s Wilds for Yourself?
Inspired by the incredible wildlife of Borneo? Don’t miss the chance to join our next adventure.. From orangutans to pygmy elephants, this trip offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth.