Malaysian Borneo

After living in western Malaysia for several months, I really wanted to see eastern Malaysia, its jungles and mountains, its diverse native peoples, its wildlife. I had read Redmond O'Hanlon's excellent book Into the Heart of Borneo (1985), and while I'm no amateur naturalist like O'Hanlon, I wanted to go up rivers in a longboat and stay in a longhouse and see the hornbill flying. However, I became frustrated while trying to create an itinerary on my own, so I started searching the Web for a travel package that wasn't overly sanitized. That's how I found Intrepid Travel, an Australian company, and I booked their Sarawak and Sabah trips back-to-back.

Above is Mount Kinabalu as seen from a Dusun village where we spent the night. Our group's guides on the mountain live here, in Kiau Nulu. At the obligatory rice wine party, I was talking with a young Dusun man named Jeff who said someday he might like to travel, maybe to western Malaysia, maybe farther. I asked if he thought he would have dreams about the mountain if he traveled away from it.

"We always dream of the mountain," he said.