Borneo has been on my bucket list since I was a little girl.

Stories of jungle people, head hunters and exploratory expeditions up wild rivers filled with crocodiles called to my soul.

The misty mountains that surround Kuching are painted with an impressionist’s palate of every shade of grey-green against a smoky blue sky. Black rain clouds pile up against the jagged hilltops and spill over in great thunderous crashes and heavy streaks of steel coloured monsoon rain. Equatorial rains have an intensity that isn’t often found in broader latitudes; it almost feels as if the storms are doing their best to wash invaders away and beat back all but the most hardy from crossing the waistband of the world.

We set out in search of the Semenggoh Wildlife Sanctuary in the hope of seeing our first wild orang utans.

Some fun facts for those who know as little about these beautiful creatures as we did when we got here:

(the last ones we saw were behind glass in a zoo in Stuttgart, Germany!)

• Orang Utan comes from two Malay words that literally translated means “forest people”
• They live only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra (in Indonesia)
• They are the largest primates, and can be up to five feet tall with an arm span of 8 ft
• They are an endangered species, with only 20- 27,000 left in the wild
• They have a low birth rate, each female can have a single baby, about once every 7 or 8 years
• Orang utans eat primarily fruit and range over a large territory to find enough each day
• They can live a long time, some are known to have live over 50 years

Our friend Ann, from Denmark, had met us on our way out and delivered the disappointing news that she had seen no Orang on her morning visit to the center, so we were prepared for some nice jungle walks with, or without, primates in attendance.

“We’re always so lucky!” Ezra declared as we hurried toward the visitor center. The ranger who checked us in told us to be quick, that there was a mother-infant pair that had come down for a visit.

In fact, we were so lucky that we got to see two separate mother-baby pairs in two different parts of the park. There were crocodiles too,  and beautiful flowers and a fantastic, mist enshrouded jungle for backdrop, but the cinnamon haired cousins were by far the highlight of our visit.

I can’t adequately explain the difference between seeing animals in the wild, over seeing them in a zoo, but perhaps you too know the difference. 

Pictures tell it better than words:

Here is some video we took for you: