What do you do immediately after spending 6 surreal yet amazing days in the jungle?.....of course...immerse yourselves in even more of Borneo’s culture. We had two days left before our visas ran out and I was determined, exhaustion or not, it would be spent staying in a traditional Longhouse with a family from the Iban tribe. After all, it was these people that were rumored to still have the skulls from the headhunting days. I wanted to see this before we finally left this island which had captured our hearts and minds.

After 2 months in Borneo and many attempts we eventually managed found a longhouse we felt happy and comfortable to visit. Captain David from the Highlands hostel in Miri had been flying over it one day and decided to pay them a visit with one of his Iban speaking friends. They agreed, if the occasion ever arose, to accept tourists into their home. We were the second tourist type visitors and the first in over a year!

Our little guides

Longhouses are traditionally built and accessed by rivers. With times becoming more modern and people owning cars many have roads leading to them but the 'road' to this one was a shambles. It took an hour to drive about 15km.

We were welcomed into one of the 36 'doors' by the chief. Along with many prominent elders, other community members and mischievous children desperate to be in on the action, we sat in a circle on the floor, exchanged pleasantries and answered their questions as to why we wanted to be there.

I wanted to see 200 year old heads hanging from ceilings, I wanted to know who had taken them, I wanted to learn about the traditional Iban way of life, their spiritual beliefs and age old rituals. They seemed happy with my polite answer ....”we don't have this type of culture in England”. It was decided which family we would stay with, we drank tea and we smiled a lot in between trying to hide our yawns. The atmosphere was friendly but we did feel a little bit like a spare part. Any ice that was there was broken when the headman asked Jez if he would like to wear a loin cloth during our stay. This wasn’t the middle of the jungle and he was in adidas shorts himself. The idea was ludicrous. He seemed relieved when the refusal came.

The children took it upon themselves to be our guides. They showed us the river where the people bathe, the school which is in the field at the back of the longhouse, the rubber plantations and the locals at work, the football field and all in all it looked like a great little community.

Dinner back at the house was disastrous. We had told the family we were vegetarian but said that we did eat fish sometimes. This was a mistake. We were served fish head soup, complete with goggling eyes. Horrid. The veggies were riddled with small dried fish, so many that you couldn’t really separate them. We really tried hard and had to eat some out of politeness. The conversation was stilted. Their English was limited and our Iban was non-existent. They decided in their wisdom to break the ice with Iban Karaoke videos. This was Hilarious. Men cleaning up after their 'lazy' wives, threatening divorce if they didn’t make more of an effort. This was more like it. A real insight into family life.

Scene of the crime

The toilets are at the back of each 'door' or family. As with the longhouse, they are on stilts and 'asian style', a bowl/basin in the ground. I was happily adjusting myself into position when the rotten wood planks below me gave way and I fell through the floor. There was nothing to grab onto and I couldn’t pull myself up. I was in agony and all the families who were at the back of their houses at the time could see my legs dangling, straddling the bowl. The only thing I could do was laugh. After mustering enough strength I dragged myself up, could hardly walk back to the kitchen for the immediate bruising and related my guilty story. The family seem to have been going to the toilet for the past god knows how long and hadn’t broken it. I felt bad, stupid and embarrassed. But in my exhausted state I just had to laugh inwardly or I would have cried...hard. Jez went looking for wood to fix the mess I had made but he was unsuccessful. Her husband was away working on the oil rigs so the toilet just stayed like that.

The only thing for it in their eyes was to break the ice with a little local tipple, rice wine. One bottle turned into two and the mother, her sister, Jez and I were plastered within the hour. 2 Iban Karaoke videos later we had the whole longhouse on the veranda watching us play pass the balloon games with the children who were entranced and loving these foreign clowns.

A rather untribal looking headman

I was instructed that as the toilet was broken I was to use the concrete shower room to go from then on. I was so drunk I went along with this, oh and the fact that I had no other choice. As I attempted to reach it, also out the back door, my foot slipped on the wooden steps from the kitchen and I found myself straddling the step as if it was a see saw. I was half under the house, again in agony but laughing hysterically. How could this be happening. The mother, in reaction to my noise found me, just hanging there in stitches and just didn’t know what to say. She pulled me up and for the next 15 minutes all you could hear were her apologies. "I’m sorry...I'm sorry.." as if it was her fault I was so unadapted to living in a longhouse and had gotten myself so utterly drunk from the rice wine. Well it was only 30p a litre and she was in a worse state then me...thankfully. Jez just looked on bemused!

Before we went to bed she asked me if I wouldn’t mind going to the toilet on the kitchen floor in the night to prevent any more accidents. I was mortified. She assured me she would scrub it in the morning.

No!!!! I did’nt!!!!

Mothers little helper

The next day, after much drunken insistence the night before, the mother took me to see some human skulls. Apparently these particular Iban don’t like people to know they still have heads because they have supposedly converted to Christianity. But lo and behold, in the back sheds of some of the residents were skulls, hanging from the beams. The magical power of the heads are supposed to bring strength and prosperity to the Longhouse. I wouldn’t have gotten rid of them either! Having heads and especially taking heads was a sign of manhood and proved how brave you were. Men who had taken heads had specific tattoos on their hands to highlight their status but unfortunately they are dying out now. There was none in this longhouse. I was fascinated. For he next 2 hours lead by one of the most bolshy of the women we were fortunate enough to meet we were lead to all the doors in our longhouse and then to another longhouse and shown all the 'artifacts' that were traditional, old old Iban stuff. Just what we wanted. We passed monkeys chained up, trained to systematically pick the lice from the owners hair, racks of rubber sheets hanging from peoples back doors, woman weaving baskets and mats from rattan. The mother followed closely behind the entire time uttering “careful, careful..”

It may not have started out like the experience we envisaged but I'm not sure we would have got to visit so many families and see so many treasures had it not been for the rice wine. It loosened everyone up and got us to a stage of familiarity and ease that would have taken weeks. At last we had stayed in an Iban longhouse albeit for short time. I was proud of my perseverance but I don’t think we could have done a second night. I really don’t know if the mother would have given us her bed!!!!

Formal goodbyes

So now we are in KL. We have no visa as it ran out today...a bit of confusion on our part. I did sneak into a que from another flight and try to get them to stamp my passport but they noticed. The Immigration office is closed for prayers for 5 hours today and we need to get to the top of the country to get a boat to Indonesia where we have booked a flight out of Sumatra on the 15th in a bid to move faster and save time. At this rate we will have no time in Sumatra, be in prison in Malaysia and spend Christmas in the hell hole city of Jakarta.

We'd made it into the jungle in just about one piece. Survived four nights Penan style either out under the trees or at Samuels settlement. Now it was time for one last effort, the return trip. We thought we knew how hard it was going to be, we thought that having done it once there were no more surprises. Yet again we were proved to be the rookie jungle novices that we most certainly are.

The last of the clear rivers

It started off badly. Claire had spent longer than she had expected engaged in tearful goodbyes in Patik A and consequently we set off a couple of hours late, still planning to get the lions share of the walking done on this first day. Claire struck off at a fast pace (it turned out Samuel was carrying most of the contents of her bag!) leaving the three of us walking behind 'dawai dawai'(slowly slowly as he would say). We somehow made it up the side of the first mountain in just under three hours, breathing hard and taking a well earned break, habitually checking for leeches, scoffing a few dried apricots and a handful of peanuts for energy. After that the day blurred into a succession of endless footsteps. Amanda held her own with stubborn pride, Claire was always round the next bend, I ambled along singing cheerful songs to keep everyones spirits up (even a few Christmas carols for the festive season) and Samuel patiently followed us from a close distance, happy to make sure we all knew where we were going and weren't in the process of dying in one of a million possible ways in the jungle. (I half expected him to rush past shouting "I'm coming Mr Frodo", but he never did)

We caught up with Claire scratching her leg. On close examination Samuel declared that she had a worm. Obviously she was horrified, till we reasoned through a game of jungle twenty questions that she'd managed to scrape past a caterpillar of the poisonous and hairy variety, which had given her a bit of an itch through her thin trousers. A bit of salt and she was right as rain.

The poisonous worm disease

Twenty minutes later, not to be outdone, Amanda started to complain of a similar itch, this time on her nakedly exposed left underarm, just where the skin is most sensitive. It seemed she'd found a 'worm' of her own. Instead of going away however this itch started to spread, all the way up her arm in a nasty red rash. Then it got onto her belly! Claire was all ready to administer treatment for an anaphalactic shock, Amanda was screaming in absolute agony for this pain she couldn't scratch. Samuel left her in no doubt of the damage a good scratch would do. After half a tub of antihistamine cream, a bag of salt and a few tablets for good measure she started to feel a little better. She still had to change her top for an 'uninfected' one and itched on and off for days after... Beware the little caterpillars!

We had lunch next to a fast flowing forest stream, cold rice and jungle fern wrapped in banana leaves, cooked by the women of both Patiks and sent with the menfolk (Samuel anyway). One hand dug into great heaps of nutritious, energy giving rice, the other flicked away the incessant leeches crawling ever closer to our stationary position.

Exhausted

We reached Long Manao after about seven hours which was pretty good going considering how late we'd set off. There was still another two hours of daylight left and Samuel estimated Long Semirang was more or less two hours walk away. We didn't have to think very hard to do the maths, better to get as much ground covered on our first day, tomorrow we were bound to be a bit stiff. The further we went now the more we could take it easy tomorrow. We trudged on, happy that dinner and a rest was finally in sight.

It started to rain soon after.

At first, just a light pattering noise on the leaves above, nothing to worry about, the sky didn't look too bad, we decided to carry on and see it through. Knowing how quickly a light shower can turn into a short but torrential downpour Amanda and I got out the waterproofs anyway... just in case, urging Claire to do the same. Samuel just followed on with a knowing look on his face and said nothing.

The sky grew steadily darker and that first pitter patter turned, as we had thought it might into a heavy shower. Quite a serious one, not something we'd been caught out in before. In our experience these things never lasted more than twenty minutes though. We confidently walked on sure in the knowledge that it would soon stop.

I realised we were in trouble about the time the path at my feet turned into a small river. The rain after our twenty minute deadline was coming down so hard I was having trouble seeing Amanda walking in front of me. Every step took me up to my ankles in flooded jungle. Subconsciously we all began to think the same thoughts, found a hidden reserve of energy and picked up the pace dramatically for the next hour and a half of continual, serious, heavy downpour. The heavens truly opened that evening. We were all soaked through, half way between one shelter and the next in a day rapidly losing its daylight. We dug deeper, pushed on, forded stream after stream, virtually running up hills then almost crawling down the other side for fear of slipping in the, muddy, waterlogged pathway.

Leeches became a problem. They came in unbelievable numbers with the rain. I stopped touching my stick to the ground after finding the fifth bloodsucker that had somehow crawled up it and attached itself to my hand, they were all over my feet, somehow inside my socks smelling the still wet blood of my fall. Amanda found them under her top, Claire kept having to scream for help because they'd latched onto her neck and face, the only part of her body not protected by her big green poncho.

Oh dear!

We soldiered on for another hour. Thankfully the stars were bright that night and there was a big moon otherwise we would have been out in the dark before we managed to find shelter. Taking heart in the knowledge that we were nearly there we put on a final burst of speed, the rain abated finally with less than ten minutes to walk, we all felt home free, on the other side of a steam was Long Semirang, fire, warmth, dinner, rest.

It was the stream that stopped us dead. The rain had swelled its diminutive size till it was a river, rushing over big boulders that hadn't been there on the way in. Muddy brown water raged by with a deafening, angry roar, jungle debris, branches and leaves swept past at impossible speeds. If anything brought the fact home that this was no adventure trek this was it. That this river had to be forded or we would get no shelter, no fire, so no drinking water and no food, possibly for a few days while this torrent raged on, getting worse if the rain continued to fall.

Samuel went first taking his bag along and returning to help me. I felt the current gripping my legs as soon as I stepped into the flow. Then I was up to my chest and the only thing stopping me from being dragged away was a foot lodged under a rock and my stick stuck into another. Slowly we edged towards the other shore, step by step. Then Samuel went back for Claire, then for Amanda.

I think we were all hit with the realisation that it could have gone badly that night, a days trek from a 'civilisation' that had no road links to the outside world and one clinic working on a generator for power. Pulling ourselves together quickly we used the very last of the evenings light to find Long Semirang, nothing more than a wooden platform with a tin roof. We had made it through one day at least.

The place was already stacked with dry firewood, something the Penan keep in all their shelters so a fire was quick and easy. Claire and Amanda set to straight away, stripping slowly by torchlight looking for leeches (while mine and Samuels attention was gentlemanly turned to the cooking duties). It took about half an hour and a lot of salt to get rid of them all. Amanda took the prize for the most horrifying places to find a leach; one had managed to get under her bra! Another was found burying into her belly button! She also had the biggest leech of all of us attached to her back, Claire wouldn't let her see it it was so enormous.

I am proud to say that when it was my turn to strip I took first prize for sheer numbers. On my bloody sock I counted nine for one foot alone. eight for the other. Three had got into my shoes and wormed their way through to skin, several on my arms, belly, legs. A good few dozen in all. Samuel bled for longest, I didn't see any of Claire's, I was being too gentlemanly...

I spent about an hour rounding up leeches after the great purge was complete, chopping them to pieces with my knife to make sure they wouldn't come back to haunt us in the night. The edge of the platform was dripping with our own blood by the time I'd finished.

Our next problem was water. With a healthy fire going we should have been boiling up a big pot of river water for drinking the following day. The river however was a muddy torrent, undrinkable without fractional distillation, not something easily done with bamboo and coconut shells. We ate the remainder of the rice (our noodles needing water to cook), and went to bed hoping to find a dryer morning when we woke up.

Perhaps not surprisingly we all slept pretty well that night. Claire found a dead leech next to her head in the morning (apparently natural causes, it wasn't me anyway), which she attributed to divine protection. The sky was blue and the waters were seemingly receding, though still much to clogged with mud to drink. Samuel knew of a less contaminated tributary about an hour further on so we saved what little we had left for the trek, hoisted our bags for one final day of walking and set off.

Onwards and upwards, follow the logging road!

Surprisingly we were in excellent spirits on that last day of walking. We really had done most of the distance the day before leaving a leisurely stroll before Bario. We quickly hit the logging road and used its strangely wide, flat expanse to get some distance done. Soon we were cooking noodles over a fire, clean water bubbling from a little stream nearby, big pan ready to go for the days drinking water and even a few sachets of tea on the go. From nowhere a young guy appeared to say hello. His name was Eragon, a guide who'd heard someone else had nabbed the tourists. He'd come out to find out who that someone was. On the way he'd managed to hunt, kill and butcher two mouse deer and a full grown deer. I tried to lift his pack later but couldn't, it must have weighed about the same as me! We gave him some noodles and a cup of tea. He shared some of his deer meat with those of us who admitted to our omnivorous natures.(It was still dripping with blood and warm so I surreptitiously hid it in my snickers wrapper)

Being watched

We carried on. After we'd eaten breakfast and cooled our newly boiled stream water enough to bottle it we tackled what we knew was the last big hill before Bario. At its peak was the view we'd stopped to admire of the Kelabit Highlands on the way in. An hour later we stopped to rest at the same waterfall we'd had lunch at on our first day. Amanda was bitten for the second time by a bee. They seemed to be buzzing all over the place since the rain had ended. A long, slow, steep climb later and we were standing once more in our clearing. Apparently the people of Bario cleared the trees here on purpose, right on the top of the hill, their absence forms a large gap in the forest, a U shape on the horizon. They did it to commemorate the Millennium along with a big party. Harris told me later that the government donated two hundred ringet to the town for the festivities. It sounds generous till you realise that's all of about twenty seven quid, for over a thousand people! I suppose it's the thought that counts.

The downhill was done in less than an hour and we were back on the outer edge of the jungle that had sheltered us (in its own way) for the last five days. I turned and hurled my stick back to the trees, let it stay where it came from. Samuels 'town shelter' was only a few minutes from the forest, which was a good thing, as soon as we were under it's plastic roof the heavens opened again. This time for only an hour or so.

And so, feeling very much like four hobbits returning to the Shire we were back. Back to electric lights, showers (though cold), indoor toilets (with actual walls and slugs!), hot food without smoke, shops and mattresses. We said a fond farewell to Samuel (AKA Samwise Gamgee) and stopped off at the shop for a round or two of congratulatory beers which we opened as soon as we got back to Nancy's homestay.

Well we did say we wanted to get up and close with the people on this island. Maybe we should have been careful what we'd wished for. But funnily enough, though my feet were in absolute tatters, though Amanda was a physical and mental wreck, though we have still not fully recovered from this trek it was all worth every minute. The pain, the slips and falls, the blood and tears, the sago and jungle fern, all of it was worth it. I know for a fact that we will both look back on the last few days when we are too old to get out of the bath without help and remember with a lump in our throats what were some of the most extraordinary days of our lives. It really was that special an experience, one I'm pretty sure we will never get to repeat.

A huge sigh of relief

Nancy made up a feast for the returning heroes, by which time we were all a little tipsy and a lot tired. My shower, though cold was like absolute heaven, the bed a feather cloud, a nearby inside toilet luxury beyond imagination. I slept the dreamy sleep of complete exhaustion that night knowing we'd be getting up early to catch a plane back to Miri and the Highlands Hostel.

I was still cleaning leeches out of my shoes after breakfast the following morning

That final slog down the gigantic tree roots that became my steps finally ended and in front of us was a little slice of heaven. We had eventually reached Patik. A cluster of wooden huts in emerald green grass perched on the edge of a clear river. We had walked for a total of 19 hours since Bario, relied on jungle bamboo for water, crossed a dozen rivers which may only have been one, slept in the open jungle, dodged snakes and leeches and bees, negotiated treacherous mountain ridges and at last ........we had arrived......alive!

Patik

Claire had sent a letter with Samuel which reached us as we entered the forest:

....."He didn't let on how hard the trek is, its pretty full on. It took me 18 hours over 2 days...there are some very scary bits, (big drops with narrow paths) There is a big f.off mountain at the very end. VERY VERY SLIPPERY. BE WARNED SO PLEASE TAKE CARE. There are leeches, a ton of them. Give up, walk through the mud. Only bring essentials and lots of light weight food for the people. If you have time could you hunt down some head lice shampoo, another couple of kilos of sugar, candles for the night, brufen for sore legs, some Valium for the roosters, a box of 200 cigarettes to cope with the leeches, a bottle of wine........come with a sense of adventure and an ability to laugh at how totally unadapted to jungle/nomadic life we are!.... GO SLOWLY..look forward to seeing you guys"

There were many a minute that I sat alone on a river bank re-reading this letter wishing I had read it properly before we set off. Of course I had the alcohol, a bottle of rice wine Nancy had given me for a laugh to surprise Claire, who had already been there 3 days and sounded like she needed it. This however what not what I needed to have focussed on. Every mountain we climbed up towards the end I was thinking, 'Is this it?', 'Is this the one she meant'? I drove myself mad wondering if the ridge Jez had just nearly died on was the dangerous one she had meant, or maybe we had more to come, 'Are we home free yet'?. During the impossibly hard bits I willed myself on believing that we were on a mission to go an rescue Claire and that there was a bigger reason for us meeting and embarking upon this adventure, our journeys were linked. All I could see was her sat on the edge of the river bank as darkness fell awaiting our arrival, open arms, kettle on, tears of happiness and gratitude.

What actually happened was that we were welcomed by Samuel, his wife, his sister and their 5 children. There was hot tea, smiles and pleasantries but Claire was no-where to be seen.

The simple life

The Penan of Patik are strikingly beautiful, endearingly shy and gentle, traditionally resourceful, gracious, generous, warm, and friendly. It would be wrong to say that we felt immediately at home though. We did have a few words up our sleeve but they were seriously limited and didn't stretch to conversation over the wild boar. Jeremy and I like to think we are good with people but after 19 hours tramping and a night in the jungle we were stinking, sweaty smelly, hungry, thirsty and exhausted. Mix all this with a serious language barrier and no personal space what-so-ever we struggled. We struggled to keep our dignity while washing in the river overlooked by the whole community. As darkness fell, the sky's opened and the mozzies descended and a safe toilet patch was harder to locate. All the children and our guides decided to sleep in the same room as us and talked and laughed and squeeled till the early hours, the roosters woke us at 3am, 4am, 4.30 am and so on until we reluctantly vacated our sleeping bags at 8, climbed out from our mozzie net, and felt mightily uncomfortable as they tried to feed us yet more food. We had brought 6 kilos of sugar and 6 kilos of salt, pepper and various food flavorings, 4 kilos of rice, tea, coffee, milk powder (which they looked at strangely), a few more odds and ends AND our own food. Over breakfast we made sure we presented this to Samuels wife to ensure that she knew we were grateful for her hosting us and that we wanted to pay our way with items that they relish but have to trek to Bario to get. In the humid light of day, our biggest concern apart from the unnecessary guilt I felt at not having brought enough food to go around the whole community (I should have read the letter properly) was to find Claire, if only to let her know that we were safe.

Lost in nature

Another hour, more rivers, some hills and gorgeous rice paddies later, (no rest for the wicked) we arrived at Patik B the following morning. This was a much bigger settlement with many more families. Again we were welcomed with open arms, literally, and there was Claire. She may as well have been in the middle of building her own wooden hut she was so at home. If we thought Patik A had it good, this place was their heaven. We spent a glorious day watching and being taught traditional weaving, attempting to make bracelets and rings, the children loved having new play mates and showed us all their toys, slides made from planks of wood resting gainist the sides of their house, the simplest things made them happy. They took us on an expedition to find the shell of a British plane that had crashed in the 1940's, Rose fed us a slap up meal and we learnt more and more about the wonderful people that are the Penan.

Feeling at home

We also learnt about how their lives are disrupted and invaded through no fault of their own. Rose and her community handed us a guest book that showed apart from the flying doctors, they get regular visits from the timber company. Members of this company try their hardest to offer the people 'projects' in the form of pipes to carry water from the river direct to their homes, generators, etc in return for cutting down the surrounding forest. Rose said " I tell them, give us the projects but you will not chop down the trees"

Innocent and vulnerable

Patik like most Penan rely on hunting and fishing and the forest. There are no shops for days. Samuel, Rose and their families make long journeys into the jungle to collect food, medicine, fern and sago palm and hunt wild boar and deer. If the forest around them is destroyed their physical and spiritual well being will be destroyed too. Their lives are inextricably linked to the forest and without it a part of them would die. In the past many Penan communities have been tricked into giving up sections of forest, when you have money, education and power its easy to use scare tactics and bribery but so far this community have stood firm. Rose worries for her family and the future of the tribe. She said to me "Its already too hot" as she pointed the the jungle around. "They are destroying out home"

And what do you say to that!

After spending time in the company of such naturally lovely people its heartbreaking to consider how the logging affects them in reality. Is it so hard to put people and ancient traditions and ways of life over money.

An egalatarian society



Back at Patik A, Jez wowed the boys with his dodgeball tactics. They had never seen someone use the trick of pretending to thrown a ball and then aiming it in a completely direction. They were rolling around in the mud in pleats of laughter. I played with the baby until it weed on me, they don't have nappies in the jungle! We had a mess around with Julian's blow pipe, and were mesmorised at the skill it takes to make the traditional Penan baskets. I taught the children how to play games with the skipping rope we had brought them using Jeremy as the 'example'. Jez fed me a lovely big spoon full of sago at dinner, not letting on that it tasted like moldy glue...I nearly gagged there and then. How they eat it I have no idea. The jungle fern is delicious and Jez adored the wild Boar which they marinade for a month in red wine but we were strong enough to politely ask if we could cook our own porridge for breakfast. We had long slog ahead of us and had to be energized with something other than rice.

It was sad to leave, we had been welcomed not only into an extended family but another culture and shown a world that many of us would find it hard to contemplate. The serenity and peace and simplicity of Penan life is dreamlike but the logging of their jungle is constantly threatening that state and forcing their culture to introduce learn and adapt to alien methods of opposition.

We left with heavy hearts.

Amanda and I had been trekking before We were in fact pretty confident of our ability to walk from A to B, even if there was an obstacle in between. Climbing is ok, we've done a few mountains in our time. Humidity; check, we weren't new to South East Asia by any means, jungle, no problem, we managed to get out of bed for the nature walk in the Kinabatangan river. On that bright morning in Bario of our first days trek we felt ready and able to take on whatever was ahead. The bags didn't even seem that heavy containing as they did just a change of clothes and enough food for the trip...

Off into the unknown!

We had absolutely no idea. None whatsoever, not even in our wildest imaginations did we realise just what we were letting ourselves in for. These were some of the of the most challenging, difficult, painfull, fun and rewarding seven days I have lived so far.

Julian, our guide turned up on time, blowpipe in hand, along with his little brother who, it seemed was coming too. Neither of them spoke a word of English but Amanda and I had done our homework and had made notes on such useful phrases as 'where is the toilet', 'stop', 'thankyou' and 'ouch, there's a leech on my bottom'. Then another guide turned up sent by Claire in Patik. Aparantly our man in Miri had heard we were having some trouble getting there and had managed to send a message, Samuel was the answer. Julians face dropped (Samuel was the 'real' guide and he thought he was about to be done out of his first job), but a deals a deal, we went with our original choice, thanked everyone for coming and set off. Samuel would be joining us in Patik anyway later on (that's where he lived), he could take us back with Claire.

We tucked our trousers into our socks, slapped on a layer of insect repellant, checked our rubber shoes, shouldered our bags and walked steadfastly into the trees. This was real jungle we were heading into, at 160 million years it's the oldest on Earth. Within minutes the canopy had closed the sky off overhead, behind I couldn't see the open spaces of the highlands, every direction looked distinctly, exactly the same. Julian and lil'bro (never mastered his name) struck off along the path and Amanda and I followed steadily uphill, steeper and steeper for hours. Amanda managed to misstep a stepping stone within five minutes and immediately was up to her knees in the first stream we tried to cross, she took it quite well considering. This was the start of our trek, we began to wonder how it would end.

Several sweat filled hours later we were at the top of our first mountain. A clearing in the trees behind suddenly revealed just how high we'd climbed. Bario and the highlands were spread below us in a glorious verdent patchwork, wet rice paddies reflecting the morning sunlight like jewels on a green velvet cushion. We could pick out the house of Nancy and Harris, the almost certainly empty shops, the Kelabit longhouses and dusty roads. After ten minutes rest we sighed, turned our backs on our last glimpse of home comforts (such that they were) and trudged on.

The evil blood suckers

I found my first leech soon after. It was almost funny to see the little guy gamely worming its way up my leg, looking for an opening. I flicked it away with my knife and thought no more of it. We stopped for lunch at the top of a tumbling waterfall and, picking at rice and the occasional dried apricot Amanda suddenly spotted one on her arm, sucking away merrily. The screams would have been heard in space! After that it was a free for all. Not twenty minutes went by without some leech sighting, either straining from the forest floor for our veins, hanging and dropping from the trees around us, on our bags, our clothes, or, if we were slow, sucking happily at some part of our anatomy.

We got used to them after a while.

Up and down, splashing through streams, jumping across boulders, climbing over fallen trees, battling the undergrowth and generally being two white folk out of their element. Julian was completely at home, walking steadily at a pace we both tried to copy, completely at ease in the forest. At times he helped Amanda over a tricky patch, mostly he watched for snakes, of which our first was a huge, six foot long black cobra. Very dangerous indeed. The whole forest around it seemed to have gone a deathly quiet. We stopped to let it get out of the path and slither away. The other snakes we saw were mere worms by comparison, though you wouldn't like to bump into any on a dark night.

My 'adidas kampong' (rubber shoes) seemed designed precisely for jungle trekking, amazing through mud, leaves, water and sand. Wet rocks were another thing however. My first slip was the doozy, sliding down a particularly big boulder scraping by ankle all the way into a fast flowing stream. My socks were in shreds, and I was bleeding for the next five days, a complete leech magnet. On top of that the 'wound' (it was only small really) became infected (duh... jungle) and Claire, our resident nurse became seriously worried about me losing a foot, quoting several nasty diseases with long latin names. I am happy to report however that after getting back to civilisation, following a couple of hours of agony with a pair of sterilised tweezers, a bottle of iodine and a short course of antibiotics everything is just fine.

A bit disorientated

Eight hours into our walk we found one of several shelters along the way called 'Long Semirang', where Penan sometimes stayed the night. We had an hour of sun left and so decided to carry on and try to reach 'Long Manao' and spend the night there. We should have known it wasn't going to happen. As the light began to seriously fade (there are no sunsets in the jungle, most of the time you can't see more than ten feet in any direction) we found ourselves still a good hour away from a place to stay. Amanda and I were worried but Julian just pointed into the jungle confidently. Our hastily made Penan phrasebook didn't include 'where the hell are we supposed to be sleeping tonight', so we followed off the path.

After a couple of minutes we understood. A Penan had obviously been caught short here before and, brandishing his trusty machete he'd built himself a little house. More a stick platform with a plastic sheet for a roof actually but it had a dirt hearth, dry wood ready for a fire, a shelf, space for four to sleep 'comfortably' and mercifully few leeches. (By 'comfortably' I mean of course not in the jungle in the rain with mozzies buzzing about your head, leeches eating you alive and gangrene setting in on your backside). This is when we discovered that our guides had bought nothing to eat.

Obviously we had bought lots of food, but for the village we were going to visit. The 6 kilos of sugar and six kilos of salt, packets of pepper and various flavourings were meant to be a gift to help keep them alive, this jungle not being what it was. We gave them some rice, unpacked the pasta, boiled up some soup and even managed a cup of hot tea. Now all we had to do was find the toilet!

Our home for the night

That night we both slept badly. You would too if you had to lie down on a platform of sticks with three other shifting people hoping that itchy feeling running down your back wasn't alive. Somehow we did sleep though and were up bright and early cooking porridge and spooning off water from the rice pot (because it was the liquid least likely to give us cholera or dysentry and we had to drink something.) The end of day two in the jungle would see us climbing another massive mountain, fording several rivers (though I think it was actually one extremely winding river several times) and finally arriving in Patik. It was hell beginning to end. Our legs had somehow seized up, the humidity got overpowering and the heat was unbearable, coupled with the fact that we had to wear trousers because of the leeches and poisonous undergrowth we were sweltering. Amanda really felt the burn on this part of the trek. We hadn't eaten nearly enough for energy, trying as we were to save some rice and other things for the village whilst feeding two hungry guides, and we only had a couple of litres of 'fresh' water. It's not that we were unprepared exactly, more that we had less of an idea just what we were preparing for. On the normal guided trips in the area the tourists are helped through a few hours walking a day, fed, sheltered in a nice place and generally looked after by their guides. We were on no such trip, our guides lived in the jungle and as far as they were concerned they were just there to show us the way and make sure we didn't die too unnecessarily. Everything else was down to us. Luckily half way up a wickedly steep climb hat seemed to last forever Julian dashed off into the undergrowth followed more sedately by the rest of us (his brother was also getting tired by this point. He'd found a grove of bamboo, the kind that appeared to act as a repository for fresh, cool rain water. He slashed open a couple of stems and got out a couple of straws (that were attached to the milk we used for the mornings porridge but that we thought had been burned) to better get to the precious liquid. It tasted much better than the rice water we were rapidly running out of.

After another nine hours of slog Samuel and his wife rounded the corner behind us, whistling cheerfully and walking at about a hundred miles an hour. The good news was that we were only half an hour from Patik, the astounding news was that they'd walked in about nine hours what had taken us two days. These Penan really are bred for jungle life.

Thank the jungle for bamboo

Soon enough we reached the bottom of the last hill, forded the final stream and arrived in Patik, though we soon learned that this was Patik 'B'. The original Patik (where Claire was staying) was another forty minutes walk away. We decided we'd gone far enough and stopped here for the night. As the dying light turned the world a pale green through the leaves Amanda and I took ourselves away to the river with a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap. The water was icy cold but I have never felt so in need of a bath in all my life. We had made it, Claire wasn't far away. Behind us were a loose collection of four or five wooden houses where Samuel and his wifes family had decided to live, though most of his wifes family were still nomadic and didn't build anything but the most temporary of dwellings. We were made to feel at home, given our very own candle and cooked a meal of rice, jungle fern and wild boar meat. With this was a large bowl of sago, the staple food of the Penan, derived from the pulpy centre of a fast dissapearing tree. I was eager to try it and dived right in... it tastes exactly like semi-solid glue. No flavour, no texture, quite nutritious I am, told, but too much like wallpaper paste to be appetizing. We soon felt our eyelids drooping and our heads nodding as most of the settlement came round to have a look at the newcomers, as you would imagine, visitors to this neck of the woods are fairly scarce.

Julian and his little brother were already asleep by the time we managed to sneak away and crawl into our bags. We were both gone in seconds, which was a very good job considering the erratic rooster that woke us at half three the following morning.

Looking around and remembering where we were, we slowly roused our stiff and aching bodies out of bed, were treated to more rice and jungle fern for breakfast (which seems to be about the only meal eaten out here) and set off, this time with Samuel as our guide to Patik village. This was where Claire and the rest of the Penan were living and where we could finally finish our long journey into the jungle. All we needed to worry about now was the walk back out.

Picture a beautiful wide green valley, mountains standing sentinel on all sides, wild jungles threatening its borders, green fields and wooden stilt houses, the occasional water buffalo stumbling through the mud and rice paddies as far as the eye can see. Well this is where we were headed, the Kelabit Highlands around the interior town of Bario. If the indigenous people of Borneo wouldn't come to us then by God we would go to them. Bario seemed perfect, unspoilt and better still there was as yet no road to the place... there was nowhere for them to run!

The Kelabit highlands



And so we were back in Miri, reclining once more in our favourite hostel of all time, the Highlands Hotel. Nothing had changed, Joanne still followed us about with a dustpan and brush, Captain David (the owner and pilot for the Bario flight) still dropped in now and then and drove Amanda to the supermarket out of town for cheese, we all still convened at Wheelers bar for a beer at around seven and the DVD wheel still rotated constantly with sporadic bursts of BBC News 24 and MTV. This was our home away from home in Borneo, tea and coffee on tap (without the uncomfortablesness of wondering how much we had to pay for it at the end) a microwave for baked potatoes, cheese and baked beans and loads of nice people sat about on sofas to get to know. In fact, by this second time round we'd recommended the place to so many people that when we arrived we found it was already full of folk we already knew! Saves a lot of time on small talk.

We'd given up on Bario when we were here before because we had been unable to book a flight for three days in a row. Flight companies were rowing about the route and had closed them all down in a huff. We had however kept in touch with a girl we'd met called Claire who had flown a few days before and knew they were back on. I hadn't been that interested in going before, content to stay on a sofa and watch yet more DVD's, Amanda was planning to go with Claire. But now she was already there, I'd now seen Lord of the Rings Trilogy and we were both raring to have a proper adventure.

Lush



We'd met a guy who seems to spend most of the year in Miri working against the logging companies with the Penan, a nomadic tribe that still live in what's left of the rainforest. His activities and identity are a bit hush hush to be honest, many of the people who are effective against the activities of the loggers, the forestry department and the ministry for the environment (which all pretty much amount to the same few people) end up either dead, missing or in jail. Through him Claire had managed to get enough information and contacts to organise a Penan guide into the jungle to a semi permanent village called Patik. She had left on foot a few days before and we were determined to catch her up. That night we spent several hours in the supermarket buying pasta, tuna and noodles for our journey, salt and sugar by the kilo as accommodation 'offerings' for the village we hoped to stay in and rice for the guide (should we find one!) The next day we were on a plane, one bag full of dry clothes, another full of food. We had a vague idea of where we were going but knew it would take a little charm and a lot of luck. This was one of those all or nothing situations, we could feel a seriously big adventure coming up, we just didn't have any idea yet how we were supposed to make it happen.

Kelabit lady

The flight into the interior was in itself a revelation. Miles and miles of geometric irrigation channels supporting huge palm oil plantations stretching from one horizon to the other. It wasn't eating into the jungle, it had completely devoured it. Ninety percent of Sarawak's primary rain forest has gone forever, the animals, plants and people it supported are either extinct, nearly extinct, stuck in zoos or herded into government built long houses where they scratch a living out of the mud-pit they used to call home. The only forests left have been left alone only because they occupy difficult terrain, mountains, valleys and serious floodland. The company CEO's obviously decided to strip the easy trees first, reap as much profit as possible as quickly as they could, then, if the rest of the world were still doing nothing about their (illegal) activities, take the rest apart at their leisure. This they were now doing, we could see straight away the 'logging road' they were building to get to Bario. It split, circled and sprawled its way round valleys, up mountains, doubling back on itself and generally taking the long way everywhere, twice. This may seem a little like a waste of resources, but it's a prime example of how the companies think, the more twisty-turny their road is through the jungle, the longer it is. The longer the road is the more trees they have to chop down for it. The more trees they chop down the more profit they make. So the road that could have been fifty miles long twists so much it ends up 150 miles long. Genius really.

The more you see in Borneo, the more you want to find the people who are responsible for the cultural and natural genocide that's going on there and lynch them.

The pretty bits



Anyway, The word 'Bario', roughly translated means 'wet and windy' in the language of the Kelabit tribes that inhabit the area (part of the 'Orang Ulu' or Upriver people) which makes it sound reassuringly like home. It is a town of no more than 1000 people spread thinly around a wide, green valley filled like a dinner bowl with its world renowned rice paddies, dotted with the occasional water buffalo or cattle egret. The surrounding mountains are all jungle clad (for the time being) in rich shades of yet more greens. The effect is utterly breathtaking. I felt like we'd arrived back in time to a mystical lost world. The houses are still mostly built in the traditional way and the people still seem to be holding onto their cultural identity though not their religion, a wave of Christian evangelists in the 60's saw to that. Many do still believe however that if you laugh at an animal you will get turned to stone, but that's just common sense. Older women sport hugely elongated ears, weighed down with big dangly brass earings and complicated tattoos on their hands. The more tattoos a woman has, so the tradition goes, the braver they are, therefore the better wife they'll make. Many of the local families live in the same types of longhouses their ancestors built hundreds of years before. Bario still relies a great deal on hunting and farming for the peoples daily needs. If they don't grow it or shoot it they generally have to have it flown in, we saw all of seven shops in the town centre, all selling exactly the same noodles and rice, all with no customers at all. The skies above us were frequently ominously dark and cloudy, but it was actually nice and bright most of the time, even hot, with only a couple of hours of torrential rain from exactly 5pm to 7pm... you could set your watch by it.

Longhouse living



The Kelabits are a seriously proud people, and with reason. During World War Two a British army officer named Tom Harrison parachuted into Bario with a group of British, Aussie and Kiwi SAS troops. They set about creating an army of Kelabit volunteers that waged a guerrilla war, totally destroying the Japanese occupation of Sarawak. They are some of the most empowered, educated and successful of all of Borneo's ethnic people and carry themselves accordingly. One of them, Harris met us off the plane and drove us to his homestay ready and able to see to our every need. Our man in Miri had seemingly advised him ahead of time that we were coming.

Our mission for the day was to find a guide to Patik. Nancy, Harris' wife kindly offered to find us a suitable Kelabit guide who knew the area and could speak some Penan, but we were going after the real thing. We'd heard that Penan people who came to town normally stayed in temporary shelters on the edge of the forest, our man in Miri had even provided a couple of names as a starting point. We jumped in Harris' jeep and set off to find our guide.

Nailing down members of a nomadic jungle race who only come out of the trees when they absolutely have to, then finding one who you feel you can trust on first impressions (most of them), who speaks a little English (almost none) is exactly as hard as it sounds. Obviously there are no registered Penan guides in some hostel tour book, we would have to do this the hard way. After fording a river and climbing through buffalo poo infested forest we found the shelters of several women who had come to Bario to get their children immunised at the local clinic. They might have been willing to take us, and we might have gone except that their idea of guiding was much different than ours. Harris translated that if we didn't get to Patik in one day (very hard trekking) we'd be expected to just lie down in the forest and sleep till the next morning. Visions of rain, leeches and mozzies clouded my manners. We found a family that could take us if we could wait a few days, but we didn't have the time, the flight back to Miri was already booked. Our first day of guide hunting ended with no joy. We arranged for Harris to show us around the highlands the next day and Amanda, having been briefed by Captain David in Miri demanded to be cooked the towns famous pineapple curry. Nancy (Harris' wife) professed to a distinct lack of pineapples to which Amanda replied that if she couldn't find one she'd be happy to have David fly one out on his next run. As if by magic a pineapple appeared, having just grown in her back garden.

26 heads hunted!



Our whistle stop tour of Bario was interspersed with many quick stops at hopeful Penan looking shelters and side trips to places Harris knew some Penan sometimes stayed. We wandered through a rice paddy during a bout of proper tourism and found a huge monolith carved with the image of a famous, long dead Kelabit tribesman. His ears were enormous and below his feet were notches representing the amount of enemy heads he'd taken, there were more than thirty!

Our best bet for a guide ended up being a lad called Julian who was camping out with his brother and sister in a small house in the village. We tracked down his mother for her permission, she told us it was up to him, but to please take the younger one, he could use the money for school. We stuck with Julian (who had agreed to be our guide), older seemed a little safer.

Preparing for take-off



And so we were set, guide ready, food packed, dry clothes wrapped in three plastic bags (just in case) and insect repellent at the ready. Nancy cooked us up a big feast that night and we thanked Harris profusely for everything that he's done to help us. Without his language skills, his local knowledge and (frankly) his jeep we would never have found a guide in time. We went to bed excited and apprehensive about the morning. We'd heard that the trek to Patik wasn't particularly easy... we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for