To finish up the summer I headed out to Borneo for 8 weeks as part of Kayak Borneo. Before landing in Kota Kinabalu I had no idea what to expect, but what followed was two months of great food, minor mishaps and adventure. We met indigenous tribes who have occupied the highlands for ten thousand years, paddled numerous first descents and ran countless class three rapids...upstream! Check out the Kayak Borneo blog for stories. Here is a collection of my favourite photos and memories.
The Telekosang
An awesome river found by the first team. We headed there early in the trip to warm up and get a feel for the white water of Borneo.
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| Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
The Tuto
After warming up the team decided to leave Sabah (northern Malaysian Borneo) and head south west to Sarawak. After talking to helicopter pilots, consulting our seriously out of date topological maps and driving through the small country of Brunei we set of on an unconventional route to Mulu national park. Two ferries, a long boat and a scary four wheel drive ride later and we were at the top of the Tuto. With persistent heavy rain we had to move camp three times on the first night whilst dodging the jungle wildlife. The river was mostly big, big volume grade 3/4 but one rapid was so serious that it had us trapped for four hours waiting for the levels to drop. Every time we thought it was getting ok to run a tree would emerge like the sword from the lake below the drop.
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| Traveling upstream towards Mulu National Park. Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| Third time lucky. Where our camp ended up after the river rose 10 meters over night. Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| A boily horrible mess still pretty scary after two hours and a meter less water.... Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| Getting warnings of a flooded limestone gorge with a huge waterfall to sump.... Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| A Penan elder off hunting. Photo: Patrick Clissold |
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| The paddle out back to civilisation. Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
The Trusan
Aftre the Tuto we drove around quite a bit and then got a little grumpy. That was until at around 2pm one afternoon we got on the lower Trusan. In honesty it was an accident, we thought we were getting on a different river. As it turned out the lower was great. Medium volume class 4 and clearly running high! The next day we decided to explore the upper reaches and after a good bit of flat and encountering a crocodile we found an excellent gorge.
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| Fun rapids washing the stress away. Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| A tight and steep gorge on day one of the upper Trusan. Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| A butterfly at camp in the morning. Photo: Nick Bennett |
Killing time
After the Trusan we had a bit of spare time as the rest of the team was soon heading home. Jonny and I decided we would climb Mt Kinabalu, South East Asias highest peak, Patrick decided to get ill instead. When Dom arrived for the second leg we got some coaching in with the local raft guides.
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| Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| Sunrise over South East Asia Photo: Jonny Hawkins |
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| Dom teaching one of the raft guides how to roll. |
Into Indonesia
A proper jungle mission! Seven days which literally left me speechless. Two days getting to the top of the river and five days of paddling back down. A trip which involved up river boats, a bulldozer, a tractor, portaging a 50 m waterfall and countless classic rapids.
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| Kids in Tawau Photo: Nick Bennett |
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| Running rapids upstream. Photo: Nick Bennett |
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| An unconventional shuttle vehicle. Photo: Nick Bennett |
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| My kind of 4x4! Photo: Nick Bennett |
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Dozer. Photo: Sean Ziehm-Stephen
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| Getting a ride out. Photo: Nick Bennett |
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| Sunset whilst paddling the last stretch into town. Photo: Nick Bennett |
The End
After Indonesia Dom and I headed back to Sabah to go and chill on the Padas rafting run and also to claim the second decent of the upper, a super fun and quite scary section above the rafting run.
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| Playing in a RiverBugs RPM on the rafting run. Photo: RiverBugs |
Thanks to the BCU and the Lord Mayor of London for funding and to Pyranha for giving us boats. Also huge thanks to the WWF in Indonesia who were no end of help with logistics. At then end of our trip we sold our boats and the money is going to award winning conservation charity Heart of Borneo Rainforest Foundation. Both charities are enthused by the positive impact that responsible tourism can have in protecting one of the most bio-diverse and threatened parts of the planet. Offering locals an alternative to deforestation whilst still driving development.
Nick
