In November, 2023 I went to Borneo for a short but spirited trip to see orangutans in the wild. The trip was the first part of a longer one to Indonesia which I will write up separately, as the orangutans deserve their own blog. For me this completed my tour of the great apes this year, as I had seen gorillas and chimpanzees in the wild in Rwanda in the summer.
I took an early morning 5:30 AM flight from Jakarta to Pangkalan Bun on the southern end of island of Kalimantan, or Borneo. (Fun fact: Borneo is the third largest island in the world, after Greenland and New Guinea). The standard way to see the orangutans is to cruise the Sekonyer River by houseboat, called klotok for the sound of the engines (“klok tok tok tok”). One spends the entire time on the boat with the exception of getting off to hike to see the orangutans. Part of the appeal of this tour is to be close to the jungle, sleeping with sounds of the jungle though protected by mosquito netting.
If you would like to see and hear the stories behind many of the photos and videos in this blog, I gave a Zoom presentation to the Photo Midwest Third Thursday talk on June 19, 2025. The presentation was recorded and is available here. It includes photos of my trip to Rwanda .to trek with gorillas and chimpanzees.
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