The annotated budak

Hold on tight

Brahminy kite with rat, Kinabatangan River, Sabah.

Tell me what you see when you ride together with me. Do you hold on tight for fear of falling or a ferocious longing for what comes after? Would you bear with me through this flight through dark woods and bright worlds of wonder? What if I should dive for carrion from sallow streams and swoop down to riffle dead pools that run deep with lost causes? Will this passion still take wing amid storms of discontention or will the trail run aground in a fitful muddle of sweet melancholy and sour cream?

Skip this

Banded Angle (Odontoptilum pygela), Oxbow lake by the Kinabatangan, Sabah.

'Tis a mystery
why beauties flock to suck from
poos of a puddle

Home swift home

Small airports are rather more interesting than large faceless ones. There are fewer hurdles between the gates and the runway is a mere strip of gray in a field fenced by zinc roofs and swaying palms. Arrive too early and the terminal is a ghost town draped in coastal mist. A metallic din fills the air, which can be traced to grids of waterlogged grass that flank the building. Hoping perhaps for a final fling before the sun bears down on their skinny dips, Bornean frogs sing from puddles that pockmark an unmanicured lawn. They share these holes with African snails that risk a morning crush with ill-advised ventures beyond the green.

Bugs too heavy with dew for lift-off are sitting ducks in the shrubbery. Signs of flashing interest in the fauna of Sandakan's airport are met with bemusement by the security team, who also tolerate a quick survey of glossy swiftlets that have colonised the darker corners of the check-in terminal. Inedible nests of plant fibre bound by avian spit line the underside of low ceilings. The sickle-winged occupants twitter and threaten their neighbours with weak pecks, paying little heed to the stares of passing bipeds. Their guano litters the floor and demands a daily dose of strong solvents. But like their larger kin that throng the eaves of five-foot ways, these unsanctioned flyers appear to enjoy the tolerance of a town that is still learning to thrive by saving space for nature than by sacrificing it.

Scene from above

Floating in steely silence and hitched like Siamese twins, cargo ships in close proximity were a curious sight at the mouth of a Johor river. Are these merely vessels in transit or the ghouls of a ghastlier cause?

A more welcome sight before touchdown is the growing coat of green that is reclaiming an island of granite hollows and provides a refuge for the quarries of predators past. There are fewer hunters today, but the hooved inhabitants of a second-hand forest now face the traps of tinier minds and find themselves wedged between a coast of cleared forests and an isle where no opportunity is lost to natural wonder.

Borneo in brief

A manoeuvrable flat-bottomed sampan and keen-armed helmsman are the ideal companions for a spartan cruise down the Kinabatangan. An overly fidgety boat mate is not. Once a waterway that ran clear and dark, the lower reaches of North Borneo’s longest river are today a fragmented confluence of silty tributaries lost to loggers and a futile flight from fossil fuel. At parts, the palms threaten to rob the riverbank. But the vagaries of erosive floodplains probably help to halt this advance which falters before a narrow hedge of elephant grass.

Where the sawmills and refineries still fear to tread, the riparian forest is the state’s foremost stronghold for endemic primates. Restless troops of proboscis monkeys haunt the broken canopy and catapult pot-bellied torsos into the air with the abandon of winged apes. On rare occasions, they descend on all fours to ford an unleapable gap. But for the most part, the pale-breeched colubines groom and grumble beyond the reach of riverine hunters. Invisible barriers of biogeographical fertility restrict these monkeys to lowland swamps and mature mangal, but clearly no law of nature hinders the master of each harem from displaying the thin tools of his trade.

On trunks too tall for sapient minds, wild-haired jungle folk squat and swing in their lonesome search for fruit and fornication. Like their tailed kin, these uncultured brutes are rude things that grasp neither the value of shame nor the machinations of wiser men. Weaker boughs support the weight of loose-armed leaf-eaters, whose birdlike songs ring in the early hours when a shallow mist shrouds the sullen river. Here too roam gangs of macaques who still live by their wits and tempt fate with longtailed parties on the murky waterfront.

Flashes of non-mammalian colour interrupt the grey mud as great egrets and stork-billed kingfishers erupt in protest against floating platforms of bodies in burst mode. Less fearful fowl pay scant attention to small vessels, swooping over the watery expanse in swift waves of broad wings. But lest all eyes stick skyward, the river retains a remnant of the heavy armour that once kept careless minds at bay or issued a gripping lesson of grim finality. It pays to look down and out, for the shores of this river run dry with the blood of a billion beasts that lived and died to feed the soul of a forest at the edge of eternity.

Rainbow robber

He sure is pretty. But this squawker is no angel from the blue. Little did we suspect that a mid-morning meal could draw such a spectrum of danger in this lory which beguiled with a display of primary colours. Driven to distraction, my duck could only gargle and gawk when the zygodactyled brigand swooped down and made off with a stick of fine sugar.

With no remorse, the pilfering fowl sat on a nearby tree and smeared his face silly with crystals of sweet satisfaction. It's a relief that creatures of such monstrous beauty have so far failed to carve a niche for themselves on local tables where thievery thrives only at corporate proportions and the only thing you can steal is a kiss over a beer of warm pretences.