Royalty in Sabah
“Welcome to the leech kingdom!” our guide Denny bellows across the downpour. His mirthful smile belies the sobering weather; the rain dripping from his peaked cap doing little to dampen his inimitable spirits. We seek Danum Valley’s most elusive resident, the solitary orangutan. But for the first two days, we’d fought the leech’s lingering sting.
Our lordly leech hosts reverse royal custom, bowing towards us in homage. There’s no evading their unsettling presence, our movements followed like a portrait’s gaze across a room. Filmy blind faces implore the warmth of our sweaty bodies, begging for a blood-soaked kiss.
In sluggish strides we squelch through mudslides the colour of burnt chocolate, playing hide-and-seek with Sabah’s largest primate. Yet the odds are stacked against us, with only nine male orangutans roaming this 400 square kilometre jungle.
The heady primordial scent of crushed leaves and drenched earth tinges the humid air as we scour the lost Edenic world.
Denny points through the cloying mist to a nondescript mound of branches. The orangutan’s impenetrable castle, fortified by trees standing their timeless sentry. Suddenly the nest snaps and sways, the leaves rippling like stones skipped across a sleeping pond.
Robed in noble burgundy, the orangutan surfaces without fanfare. Dexterous hands like soft leather gloves grasp at wild ginger as the ape considers his ragged companions. Deep-set bold eyes send a wordless challenge beneath striking plated face and a shock of ginger hair. “This is my forest,” he seemed to say, “My kingdom”. With liquid ease the orangutan soars overhead, forging a branched procession through the trees.
We gape in his wake and scramble through the thicket to catch up, but he’s already gone, seated on a gnarled rotting log. With one hand clasping a low-hanging vine, he gazes wistfully into the fog like a pensioner awaiting the bus. The forest’s true-born king, forever guarding his kingdom of leeches.
