drawn close by noise, humidity and orangutans, Tanjung Puting National Park, Kalimantan

Written at Rimba Lodge on  Sunday 5th June about that day.

I slept my first full eight hours since arriving in Indonesia last night. But only because I had spongy earplugs, rather than the sound of the jungle filling my ears. Emma summed it up as we sat watching orangutans munching through pile after pile of bananas earlier:

“I was thinking last night on the boat, it’s like the forest is whispering to you. Like it’s vibrating with life”.

She’s so right. Even the light is alive. Before I woke up at dawn and found myself getting up to take a wide landscape photo, I watched the sun’s dappling dance above me on the underside of the kapal biasa’s (the Lonely Planet tells us it’s this kind of boat) underbelly whilst two fat damp drops of dew formed above my mosquito net.

Scribed in yellow on the red sign at Pondok Tanggui’s feeding station it says ‘SILENCE PLEASE – Respect the Orangatan’:

but it’s a notice directed only to the homosapians who can read it. Sound swoops, swirls and whirs around us. The crickets drill staccato and as loud as road workmen, slicing through the still air above our heads, while the circadas’ rhythmic bike-spoke-click-click-click fills every millisecond of resting air. Wasps buzz too close to our ears and I suppose that even the sounds we can’t hear are noisy. An army of neat termites stamp stamp on hair-thin-feet up a long-vine on a long highway between the blue roped feeding station and an upturned tree trunk stub.

I’m sure they’re wishing each other “Salamat Pagi” (good morning) with an unspoken undercurrent of ‘hope we don’t all get scooped and slurped up by an orange hairy hand and wide rubbery lips later’.

The odd blue butterfly, bright as Emma’s t-shirt flaps and circles back towards the munching of wide sugar cane stalks. Otherwise the humans (orang) of the forest (utan) are quiet too, meditative in their eating, with an occasional flurry of branch cracks, leaf rustles, powerful movement and unbridled energy.

To get here you walk maybe quarter of a mile down a long metre and half wide gang planked jetty (avoiding the precarious half ones), then wind down a root-knotted path to the three metre high platform, crossed with strong iron-wood posts designed to take an impressive amount of orangutan weight.

The dominant male has huge fleshy side burns (cheek pads) and eyes that say ‘Don’t mess with me….Or my bananas’ but he has a philanthropic side and allows the smaller younger males and the females with their clinging babies to join him and – cautiously – eat around him, so long as his grace allows.

When he leaves they joyfully stuff their faces with whatever is left or he’s discarded. Apparently it would be a different story if Tom – the dominant male (Husni’s face lights up “the king!”) were here: he scares all of them away, eats, chases the female, mates, eats, maybe mates again, is tired so eats and then leaves..until the next time. The perfect life perhaps for a single virile man in the prime of his life.

The female on the other hand, keeps her baby with her for around the first 6/7 years until it has learn to fend for itself. In the wild they’d probably have babies every 8 years, but here where they are semi-wild (and only come for food when there is none to be found in the treetops) they may have them every 4-5 years. I ask Husni why, and it’s all down to opportunity! They don’t cross each others’ paths so often out in the jungle. (This may be the first time I’ve used that expression in it’s birthplace).

The mothers are so very tender: Mandy cups her baby’s head to her chest with the tenderest long fingers; whilst continuing to teeth-scrape the remnants of banana flesh from three skins at once).

The baby ‘Mr’ (no official name yet) and his surprised eyes and bald-middle-head lolls about with pouty lips, rolling onto his back, sugar-cane dummy in one hand and his toes in the other.

It’s a scene which would be easily replayed with a human cast. Moni (I love how the monkey’s are named all with the same first letter so you know which male-line they descend from) is as clumsy as you expect a 5/6 year old to be and falls unhurt off the platform teasing laughter from all of us watching, then hangs at a juvenile tree sapling a couple of meters from her mum and brother.

She surveys the ground beneath the platform for hitherto unseen banana/sugar cane windfalls and then climbs back up to rest her arm across her mum’s shoulders.

It’s a hard scene to tear your eyes from but we stay as long as we can, beaten only by the world’s cutest retired couple who we’ve seen a few times now at various parts of the tour. We wonder about their story and whether they always do trips like this: they’re well prepared: he’s in his khaki hat and trousers and she has socks protecting her ankles, a blue light shirt and hair tied back in a bun. We say later about how brilliant it would be to be like them one day: still going on life-changing trips, maybe with some special man who we’ve chose to spend our life with. For the moment we’re feeling pretty lucky that we were both here, together and available to do something like this, having a shared experience as friends. A few have asked if we are sisters or cousins and we figure that’s understandable because you must rarely get women our age holidaying together.

The front of the boat cuts it’s blue nosed triangle through the river surface. Giant feathery ferns fan out from the rivers edge, mostly green fresh and new but with the tips here and there are singed with brittle yellow. Behind them stalky trees, perfect for monkey climbing, reach on their tip toes from floor to perfectly puffed up clouds.

We chug along loving this half hour pause before lunch. L’is does her magic with crouched with knees bent at a shin height cooker and her meals are like little miracles, with at least four different dishes for lunch and dinner.

You can’t help but appreciate the restaurant quality but the last time I was this full was when my long lost Italian relatives stuffed me and my sisters full of an eight course meal when we were ‘growing’.  Even I am outfaced by the amount and we wonder how much guests usually eat if they think this amount is expected. We start to miss being hungry and try to offer to also fast for Ramadan but such a thing is probably unheard of and not understood. We resolve to only eat breakfast and dinner in Bromo.

We also wonder why the crews on the other boats are sitting up on deck and chatting to their guests whereas ours – other than Husni who pops up every so often to tell us the plan or exchange some English with Bahasa – stay below deck. It feels a bit odd to be waited on. Don’t get me wrong, amazing to have your mosquito net put up and your dishes taken away and drinks or cold flannels presented to you when you return from a walk in the dense jungle heat, but just not something we are used to. Or expected. In the end we conclude that it might be an innate shyness, a lack of communication skills (I mean this as much on our part as theirs) so it’s less awkward to stay below deck, or just that we are two women with no male chaperone. Probably most unusual.

As I write it’s 10 past 2 and I’m sat in the bobbing ‘Shop’ – part of the jetty complex that is Rimba Eco-Lodge. Emma has gone back to the room and I suspect is enjoying a bit of air conditioning. Either that or she’s been eaten by a crocodile.
We keep joking but a crocodile encounter is not entirely impossible here. The sign in the rooms says about not feeding the monkeys under any circumstances, not swimming – cue crocodile picture – and making sure you don’t leave any items within the long grasp of a primate hand or foot.

The boat is returning for us at half past so we can visit the village with note books and pencils for the school kids which Husni encouraged us to buy yesterday, and then we have a (romantic!) dinner amongst the fire flies (lucky Emma!).

I’m probably coping less well than her though with the cloying heat and the still still air. We can’t work out if it’s sweat (we don’t smell) or that the air is so damp that droplets sticks to your skin, but it’s almost unbearable without some kind of improvised fan (we were using the Jojamag I picked up at Bamboo Bamboo; at the feeding station earlier a fallen leaf did the trick).

My brain vain is throbbing and my head feels like it’s stuffed in and around with cotton wool. When we walked back to the boat from the feeding platform earlier I had a weird sensation – which could be my hot head or just the jungle – like this verdant world was breathing and expanding in and out at the same time as me. It’s all around you and I’m not sure whether I, or it, is in control. The heat and the damp flows in and out of every pore, like it’s entwining itself through the very middle of you. I suspect that once the jungle has breathed itself into you, it never leaves you. I am looking forward to the heat steaming back out from my core but hope that some of the jungle’s peaceful energy stays wrapped in and around me.