The Headhunter's Trail

The morning after the visit to the Deer and Lang Caves a smiling Larry guided us upriver by canoe to yet more caves and a Penan village.  The Penan were originally nomadic, but are now largely settled in villages.  In the Penan village in Mulu National Park they make some income by selling their craft work and other souvenirs to the passing travellers.  I bought this mat.

After lunch by the river we were taken by boat to the start of our trek.  Here Larry left us in the hands of Hafiz, who works for him, for the nine kilometre walk to Camp 5 where we were to spend the night.  It's a gentle trail through rainforest and most of the way it chucked it down so that the hundred or so trekkers in various parties arrived at the camp soaked to the skin.

That night we all slept as best we could in the damp dormitories of Camp 5, while a large bat circled around the rafters catching insects.  Next morning I, Hafiz and my Dutch companions set off the "Headhunter's Trail", an eleven kilometre trek to a portage point where we would get a boat downriver and out of the National Park.

For me it felt like a farewell to rainforest, as I've no idea if I will ever return to Borneo.  The weather was fine and the trail was clear although very waterlogged in places.  I picked up a leach or two, no great problem except they inject you with an anti-coagulant so it takes the small wound hours to stop bleeding and scab over properly.

At the end of the trail we were met by Larry's father, who was to transport us downriver to the family longhouse.  This took a couple of hours even though the river was in flood from all the heavy rain of the previous days.  At times we felt like an unguided missile shooting rapids at a good ten knots with water splashing over the sides of the narrow canoe.

Eventually, we left the rainforest and dropped down to more mixed jungle and farmland, with the odd longhouse at the river's edge.  Some displaying simple wooden statues like the one opposite.  There was very little cloud and as the journey dragged on I could feel myself getting increasingly sunburnt, but at least we could sit down in the boat after our trek.  It's an odd thing but rainforest trekking often doesn't feel especially arduous and yet it seems to take much longer to cover distances.  The eleven kilometres of the "Headhunter's Trail" for example took a good four hours, when logic would suggest it should be a little over two.  Funny, mysterious stuff rainforest, like wandering through a great, damp, green cathedral, where the gargoyles are constantly out of sight, making weird noises off.  I'm glad I've spent time there and I will miss it.

Finally we reached Larry's longhouse, where his dad explained to us that we would be staying in the old building (opposite), which is being replaced by a smarter concrete version with aircon et al.  That evening we had supper in the new building, including a birthday chocolate cake for me, which I and the Dutch family hungrily wolfed down.

Next morning Larry arrived to drive us the one and a half hours to Limbang, where the Dutch family got a bus to Kota Kinabalu and I hung with Larry for a few hours before going to the airport to catch my plane back to Miri, where Sue was waiting for me.