When the plane descends into the State of Sarawak, the largest State in Malaysia, you indeed see a very large green cover. On closer inspection though, you realize green cover is not necessarily forest cover. The cover that you see here is of a plantation palm that’s wreaking havoc in the rainforests of Malaysia: the oil palm. Being commercially viable, acres and acres of primary rainforests have been cleared in Malaysia to make way for this palm, the oil of which is exported the world over on a mammoth scale. Thus killing two trees with one axe: selling the priceless timber of trees that are many centuries old; and minting money selling the oil from the oil palms that have displaced them.
It’s precisely this mindless destruction that Bruno Manser, the well-known and pioneering rainforest activist was fighting against way back in the 1990s.
Bruno, known as the Swiss Tarzan, lived with the nomadic Penan tribe for years documenting their life. He discovered that this shy and introvert tribe loves to stay deep inside the bosom of the forest with which they have been sharing a bond for 40,000 years. Extracting sago, which is their staple food, from the wild sago trees that are abundant here. And biting into the luscious durian fruit which is a delicacy they will not trade for the fruits of ’civilisation’. Once this food source starts getting depleted, they move on only to return to this patch after a decade by which time the forest would have replenished itself. To suit this nomadic lifestyle, their abodes are make-shift huts made in a hurry, as they are meant to last just a few months.
Another thing they love to do is hunt. They are masters in making blow-pipes and poison darts, and masters in hunting with them. The poison they use is extracted from the upas tree, or Antiaris toxicaria. And the dosage of the poison is meticulously calculated on the basis of the kind of prey.
The dense forests they dwelt in for millennia were invaded by the timber mafia in the 1980s who wantonly started felling thousands and thousands of trees that were hundreds of years old. This included the termite-resistant ironwood tree that is endemic to Borneo; as well as the durian tree, the seed of which takes as many as three years to germinate.
Bruno had adopted their language, and their customs, and lived like a Penan among them. So much so that they called him Lakei Penan or the Penan Man. They trusted him completely. When the timber mafia started making further inroads into their homeland, Bruno got hundreds of Penans to construct road-blocks along the mafia’s path stopping them in their bloody tracks.
Much before Greenpeace activists thought of dramatic methods to get world attention, Bruno parachuted into the G7 Summit in 1992. He even hang-glided directly into the residence of the Chief Minister of Sarawak to seek his direct intervention.
But the government saw him as a rebel and arrested him twice. And both times he escaped and re-entered the forests of Mulu through the Indonesian border. He was last heard of in the year 2000, and then he mysteriously disappeared. It is widely believed that he was killed by the thugs of the timber mafia who saw him as a thorn in the bushes of the priceless rainforests. He was barely 46 years old then, and had a bounty of 40,000 USD on his conservationist head.
But Bruno Manser’s death did not go in vain. It woke up the government of Malaysia to the smells and sights of their pristine rainforests; and in the last two decades they declared much of the rainforests that is left unscathed as protected. So now there are 27 national parks, 5 nature reserves, 5 wildlife sanctuaries and 32 protected forests in Malaysia.
Mulu National Park
When you reach Mulu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the plane lands bang in the middle of a rainforest. On all sides, for kilometres on end, there are endless stretches of dense, primary forests. Once upon a time, the whole of Malaysia would have looked like this. What is left now are small sanctuaries with an average size of just 3,000 hectares, and two large ones that average around 35,000 hectares. And these are completely cut off from each other, floating amidst degraded forests and concrete jungles.
But Mulu still contains as many 15 different types of forest harbouring 170 species of wild orchids, 10 species of carnivorous pitcher plants, 450 ferns, 4,000 fungi, 2,000 flowering plants and 20,000 insects. With many others yet to be discovered and given a name.
Our first foray into Mulu was the lovely trek to the Deer Cave. Part of the humongous network of caves that traverse the mystical mountains of Mulu, Deer Cave has the widest cave opening in the whole wide world. The mouth of this cave is kept open at an unbelievable height of 330 feet and a width of 300 feet. Inside there are millions of bats, their unmistakeable stench pervading the dark and moist cave. The caves in Mulu are acknowledged by geologists to have an evolutionary history that dates back to 15,00,000 years.
At precisely 5.30 in the evening, we saw the spectacular sight of waves after endless waves of wrinkle-lipped bats coming out of Deer Cave, and flying to their feeding site 25 kms away. There were, hold your breath, 30 lakh of them, give or take a few thousands. They stream out of the cave every evening in a nonstop flow that lasts for all of three hours. Only to come back the next day at the break of dawn. It is said to be the largest exodus of bats witnessed anywhere in the world and perhaps the most awesome wildlife spectacle you can ever hope to see.
To reach the next set of breathtaking caves that was replete with natural sculptures, we had to take a longboat ride along the long-winding Melinau river. It felt like cruising down the amazing Amazon with enchanted rainforests on either side of the prehistoric river. As we hiked to the Cave of the Winds, we saw an entire rockface lined with a unique vegetation: the one-leaf plant.
This cave looked more like a series of cathedrals, one leading to the other. The impact of a gigantic river that once flowed through this cave was evident from the sudden twists and turns in the passage itself. This flow and the subsequent erosion have created a veritable art gallery of natural sculptures. These were tastefully illuminated, using footlights that were concealed behind other rockforms on the ground. One of the chambers was aptly named Queen’s Chamber. It had limestone forms that looked like Corinthian pillars, thrones, ornate chairs, courtiers and chandeliers. In short all that would make up a queen’s durbar. Another interesting cave in the mountains of Mulu is Sarawak Chamber. It is so massive that it can fit in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral without a squeeze.
The nearby Clearwater Cave was even bigger in scale. Here the cave runs for 180 kms till you see light at the end of the tunnel. And for most of the stretch, 107 kms to be precise, a sub-terranean river gives it company. As on date, no man has ever traversed the entire length of this endless cave, end to end.
The last morning before our departure, we saw another strange happening: an entire grove of plantain trees with its flowers and fruits growing upwards. Our guide didn’t know the reason why. Befuddled, we moved on.
Little did we know that at the end of the two km walk we will be seeing another breathtaking sight that’ll stay with us till our last breath. Pedro the guide suddenly stopped at an innocuous wooden stairway in the middle of nowhere. It was the stairway to a green heaven. At a height of around 70 feet from the forest floor was a ropeway that extended for almost half a kilometre into the forest, giving us a hornbill’s eye view of this mysterious forest. This secure, perfectly engineered marvel was stretched across mammoth trees that were at least a few centuries old. And as we looked up from the skywalk, we realized that almost two-third of the tree was still growing into the blue sky. Which meant that each of these trees were at least 200 feet tall. Close by, Pedro showed us a few belian, betang, tapang and kasai trees that were close to 800 years old. They stood tall, surveying the entire forest.
Standing atop the skywalk I peered into the towering branches of the gigantic trees. There, I wasn’t looking for any of the 270-odd species of small birds or the 35 species of bats that are found here. I was looking for the most majestic bird of them all: the hornbill. A bird that somehow reminds me of the archaeopteryx though I haven’t seen one yet. There was a reason for this eager search. And it was that Sarawak is called Bumi Kenyalang or the Land of the Hornbills. I would have been thrilled to spot any one of the 8 species found here. And I wasn’t getting greedy and asking for the white-crowned hornbill or the helmeted hornbill or the rhinoceros hornbill. Even the most common among them would have sufficed. But neither here, nor anywhere else in the state of Sarawak, in the eight days of exploring the forests here, did we even get a glimpse of this imposing bird. Nay, we did spot one, and that was on the emblem of the Sarawak Tourism logo! Maybe I was plain unlucky, or may be the numbers have drastically dwindled due to fragmentation of forests, destruction of habitat, and the ritualistic obsession of the local tribes to collect the feathers and the beaks of hornbills to adorn their exotic headgear.
Leaving my disappointment behind, I continued my walk in that arboreal paradise. And that walk seemed like a walk in eternity. And I wished that it would never end. But then I realized, like Robert Browning much before me, that the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I had promises to keep.
