Borneo – Orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park
Almost a year ago we woke up one morning in the middle of the Borneo jungle. Behind us lay a complicated journey with three stopovers, one overnight stay and little sleep. Now we were chugging through the rainforest for three days on a large wooden boat, a klotok, from Pangkalan Bun, completely captivated by the pristine vegetation and the animals on the riverbank.
With the orangutans
Our destination was Tanjung Puting National Park with its rehabilitation camp, from which orangutans are meant to return to the wild. When we saw the first ones, it took our breath away: they swung elegantly through the treetops and fetched their food at the feeding station in what seemed a fixed order. We were lucky to see so many, because in the rainy season, when the jungle offers enough food, few or none come to the feeding station.
Sunrise with a bitter aftertaste
An impressive time, but not everything was a dream. On the first morning in the supposedly untouched jungle I sent the drone up. The sunrise with light mist above the trees overwhelmed me – until I turned left and saw an illegal palm oil plantation. A sight we encountered again and again on Borneo, in the middle of this beautiful flora and fauna, and against which you feel powerless.
Palm oil and Borneo’s forest
This trip has left its mark. Anyone with palm oil products at home should think twice – perhaps it comes from here. The aerial shots show both: the beauty of this forest and what it is losing.
First morning in the jungle: the sun rises over the river, the forest still in mist.Light mist over the treetops – a sunrise that takes your breath away.A brown bend of river cuts through the green canopy of Tanjung Puting.Golden wisps of mist drift sideways across the forest.The river against the light and the canopy along the brown water.A boat with a green roof on the brown river, the misty forest above.Our klotok on the river and a roofed boat on the misty bank.The wooden bow of the klotok, a green deck and a coiled rope.Three days on deck, completely captivated by the forest along the bank.A red motorboat throws up spray in front of a dense wall of palms.A small blue boat under trees, their roots exposed.A klotok comes towards us on the narrow river.A proboscis monkey on its branch, its long tail hanging down.Proboscis monkeys in a bare tree, a dark long-billed bird beside them.Our klotok on the river, forest and reeds on both banks.Two treetops against the pale sky.Two wooden huts on the riverbank, dense forest behind.A motorboat with two people in front of the green reedy bank.An owl among the leaves and a gibbon on a trunk.Photos of orangutans on the wall of the rehabilitation camp.The first orangutan – and we hold our breath.Elegantly it swings through the branches high above.One eats from a stalk, another waits on the platform.At the feeding station there is a set order – the little one is eating anyway.Hanging by one arm in the green branches.Up close: an orangutan with a raised arm, looking straight ahead.Several orangutans on the platform beneath tall trees – we were lucky.Two orangutans in a bare tree, one of them hanging.A wooden house on stilts right by the river.The river narrows, two boats far ahead in the tall grass.Dark, calm water beneath dense riverside forest.Spiky leaves and driftwood on the bank.Proboscis monkeys in the treetops, a small moon above.The evening sky glows behind the silhouettes of the trees.Night on the river: palm fronds and tiny points of light in the dark.
