Borneo: Wildlife and Wildernes

The craftspeople of Kuching are the guardians of ancient artisanal skills, and riverfront Carpenter Street is filled with deft hands carving wood, weaving mats, sculpting clay or stitching beads in stalls and studios. Just out of town, a remote Annah Rais community is centered around a traditional bamboo longhouse, where friendly local families invite visitors for tea. Sailing the Sarawak is a great way to tap into the area’s history and witness local life on the riverbanks. 

Kinabalu National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site set in the leafy foothills surrounding Mount Kinabalu, the highest peak between the Himalaya and New Guinea. The national park’s thriving botanical gardens are best seen with a local naturalist, but you’ll need little help spotting Rafflesia, the world's largest flower, which can grow to more than 3ft in width. 

The small town of Sepilok is home to the Rainforest Discovery Centre, which has a spectacular 678-yard-long canopy walkway perched 92ft up in the rainforest tree line. It’s also home to Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, where afternoon feeding of these long-limbed animals is a highlight. The center’s boardwalk also provides close-up encounters. 

Lodges here are designed with elephant passes built into their boardwalks; fellow guests may include proboscis monkeys, orangutans and gray gibbons. At the crescent-shaped Kelenanap Oxbow Lake, crocodiles, snakes and lizards thrive among the flora and fauna, whilst hornbills and kingfishers skim the surface. A river cruise with a naturalist guide is an immersive, inspiring way to connect with one of Borneo’s most interesting ecosystems. 

The Danum Valley’s Sugpan tribe believed that the higher you’re buried, the closer you are to heaven, and Sabah’s lowland rainforest is rife with stories of spirits and ancient burial sites like Coffin Cliff. Leopards, orangutans, slow lorises and the critically endangered Bornean pygmy elephant call this sacred space home, too, and its many walking trails lead the way to waterfalls, rivers and pools in between thickets of the world’s tallest tropical tree. 

A ten-minute boat ride from Kota Kinabalu, Pulau Gaya is an island resort within Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, a marine park of coral reef, mangrove forest, cliffs and caves. The mostly car-free island and a 1,300ft-long beach of white sand makes it a great place to go off-grid and decompress. Look up to see red giant flying squirrels glide through the air or look down to spot the enormous elephant foot yam flower.