Hootoksi Tyabji, Shah Alam, September 2009

Sarawak is one of our favorite places in Malaysia and having been there often and enjoyed it so much, we decided it was time to explore its neighbor Sabah, the Land Below the Winds, so called because of its location just south of the typhoon-prone region around the Philippines.

Sabah and Sarawak are two of Malaysia’s largest states in the north and west of Borneo, the third largest island in the world. Politically Borneo is divided between Indonesia (Kalimantan), Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak) and Brunei.

We landed in the capital Kota Kinabalu and headed for the Jesselton Hotel which we had booked because of its location in the center of town, and its name, which is what Kota Kinabalu used to be called in days gone by. At the entrance we were ushered in by a doorman who seemed to have stepped out of a picture book from the days of the British Raj. He was dressed in white shorts, shirt and stockings with a solar topi on his head and a salute to match. It was a charming hotel and lived up to its blurb on the net: The Hotel retains the serenity of bygone days, while offering all the conveniences of a modern hotel.’

 After breakfast the next morning we were delighted to find the famous Gaya Sunday Market right on our doorstep which opens onto Gaya road! In fact, as we ate our fried eggs by a picture window, we watched wonderful scenes unfolding under makeshift tents selling everything from traditional arts and crafts, to local fruits, vegetables, pets, traditional farming tools, paintings - and the list goes on and on. There were buskers playing music, a crippled violinist, budding guitarists and families out with the elderly and the young vying for attention and buying, buying, buying! It was a great introduction to the people of the town, and we spent two nights in KK walking on the promenade, visiting villages built on stilts in the sea and soaking up the ambiance of a city that was mostly destroyed in the second world war.

We ate well by the waterfront, visited a couple of lively bars, and on day three we hired a car and drove for two hours north on meandering mountain roads to Kundasang, a hill town which is home to the Mount Kinabalu National Park. As we approached, we were treated to spectacular views of the Crocker Mountain Range which is filled with jagged peaks. The star of these is undoubtedly the granite-clad Mount Kinabalu which looks stark and foreboding and towering at 4,092 meters above sea level, the highest mountain in south-east Asia.

We had booked to stay at the Kinabalu Pines Resort which was charming and only a five minutes' drive to the Park entrance. From our room we had a stunning frontal view of Mount Kinabalu and the nights were always scented with the fragrance of the Queen of the Night, a scent that transported me to my childhood in India. The restaurant had an amazing wooden deck surrounded by tall pines, tropical plants and rainforest trees. On one of the three dawns we awoke to, I peeked outside and was utterly awed by the beauty! Mount Kinabalu was glowing and was bathed in a pink light but the sight was fleeting and the colors began to fade by the time Rob got his camera out to photograph it!

We had no intention or desire to climb the mountain (much too difficult for me!) but we did delight in its beauty from different angles and locations over the three days we spent in the area. We walked along the trail that goes up to base camp for a couple of hours and we explored Kundasang in the car and thoroughly enjoyed our drives into Mesilau Nature Reserve and through the highest and most challenging 18-hole Golf course in South East Asia -  Kundasang Mount Kinabalu Golf Course. We also drove to Ranau and soaked in the therapeutic hot springs located in the lowland rainforest in Poring which means bamboo in Kadazan, which is one of 55 major languages spoken in Sabah (with 80 dialects). We walked past some of the most gigantic clusters of bamboos I have ever seen, and we also went on the canopy walk, 157.8m long and 41m high. We hiked down a beautiful pathway to the Kipungit Waterfall where I found THE spot to rest my weary butt, a long root dangling from a tree that made the perfect swing!

Three wonderful days later we drove back to KK and took a flight to Sandakan, where a driver was waiting to take us to the Sepilok Jungle Resort. Our room was surrounded by a tropical paradise of trees, shrubs and flowering plants and pools of water. The famous Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre was but a five minutes' walk away, and we witnessed a feeding of these shy and incredibly human creatures. Orangutan, meaning “man of the forest” in Bhasa Malaysia, are only found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. These gentle and shy creatures are the largest tree climbing mammal on earth and their arms are long (some may reach 2 m in length), strong and powerful while their legs are relatively short and weak. According to World Wildlife Fund, they are a critically endangered species and there are only 38,000 in Central Borneo, 3000 in North West Borneo and approximately 7,500 in Sumatra.

Watching five of them being fed at the Centre was so much fun and we didn’t dare hope to see any in the wild, but later we Lady Luck was with us and we did!

We were lucky to discover Ringo Star, a taxi owner/driver who made it possible for us to drive to the Kinabatangan River in the hope of spotting some of Borneo's famed but endangered wildlife. His charge for driving nearly two hours each way and another 2 and a half hours in a boat was less than half what was being quoted by the established tour operators, so please ask for him if you plan to make the trip. He can usually be found near the main gate of the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, ask the cabbies parked there. If he's not there, ask for Mahmod bin Jimadi who also runs his own cab (with in-car Sabahan wildlife DVDs which provide valuable background information on the animals) and either will drive you for a very reasonable price.

We drove two hours by taxi and then rented a boat along Sabah’s longest river (560 Kms), Sungei Kinabatangan. Our boatman was an absolute pro and spotted creatures we would never have seen on our own. Folks we spoke to who had been on the river before us said the trip was expensive and often not much in the way of wildlife was seen. People stay overnight by the river so that they have a chance to go up and down it several times during the day. We did not have the time for that but decided we would be happy just cruising along it and would enjoy an animal or two but would not be disappointed if we didn’t see more than a snake or a crocodile.

Here is a list of what we saw in the order we saw them. Iguana, crocodile, yellow striped tree snake (coiled way up high on the branch of a tree), long water snake with a red stripe along one side of it that slithered away faster than a cheetah might run or so we thought! We saw several hornbills, four orangutan, 18 pygmy elephants, a family of proboscis monkeys, eagles and Macaques!

I cannot describe our joy at being able to see all this wildlife from up close and we sat in our boat with the engine turned off and watched and photographed and were so thankful for our good fortune! The pygmy elephants, feeding and drinking from the river just a few feet away from us, were the highlight. There were several babies in the group, but one was a mere two weeks old, and was still tottering around and falling about trying to find the comfort of its mother’s teat.

According to WWF, Pygmy elephants are found only on the northeast tip of the island of Borneo, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah. The region's climate favors dense tropical vegetation and biodiversity unrivaled by most of the world's forests. Sabah's forests are mostly evergreen rainforests, and local vegetation includes bamboo, camphor, ebony, sandalwood, teak, palm and mangrove forests.

Borneo pygmy elephants are smaller than other Asian elephants, with larger ears, rounder bellies and longer tails. They also are less aggressive than other elephants, leading to the theory held by many for years that they were tamer than other elephants because they were simply from a domesticated herd gone feral. Once believed to be remnants of a domesticated herd given to the Sultan of Sulu in the 17th century, pygmy elephants were determined by WWF and Columbia University researchers in 2003 to be genetically different from other Asian elephants - and are likely to be declared a new subspecies.

We had the good fortune to see proboscis monkeys at the Bako National Park in Sarawak, and this time we heard their strange honking sound before we saw them. They are only found along the coastal areas of Borneo and in the Mentawai Islands west of Sumatra. The male has an enormous pendulous nose and a pot belly, the female’s nose is smaller, and her markings are not quite as beautiful. They live in trees in groups of 11-32 in single male harems and intruders are scared away and fought off. Their Malaysian name is Manyet Belanda or Dutchman Monkey, and they were called so during the colonial period because they resembled European men who had were also hairy, big-nosed and had pot bellies!

We flew back from Sandakan to Kota Kinabalu and then on to KL and we thought of Tony Fernandes and his dream of making it affordable for “everyone to fly” Thanks to Air Asia we will be able to continue to fly, explore and enjoy all the diverse and wonderful places in and around the region that we have yet to discover.