The Kelabit Highlands

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Next up in Borneo were the remote Kelabit highlands, a more off the beaten path destination. This is a tiny indigenous community (only 7000 people in the world speak Kelabit) deep in the jungles of Borneo. To get there we took a 1 hour flight on a small airplane, a bumpy 12 seater to be precise, to the Kelabit "capital" of Bario.

At the Bario airstrip we were greeted by a few homestay owners, and we decided to go with a nice woman named Nancy. Since there are very few restaurants in town, actually we're not sure there are any at all, staying in Bario means accommodation at someone's house + home cooked meals. Bario really reminded us of cottage country north of Toronto, the houses are all built of wood and are cozy on the inside, and the fresh cool highland air gave the area a crispness you didn't find at lower altitudes. That said cottage country in Canada isn't surrounded by primary rainforest!

Our first day in Bario we explored the surrounding area and visited some of the longhouses in town. To visit a longhouse here we just knocked on the door and introduced ourselves. We were always greeted like long lost grandchildren with huge smiles, invited inside, and given endless cups of coffee until our hands were shaking from the caffeine. The longhouses area a great example of communal living, whole extended families of hundreds of people live together in one massive superstructure with few walls. Anytime the family grows they just add another extension to the house. While Bario has some big longhouses most of them today are half empty, the elders live there while many younger people have left Bario to get work in Malaysia's bigger cities. Many of the elders were born in a different era and have extensive tattoos and streched earlobes, although many have now cut the earlobes off to look more "modern".

On our second day in the Kelabit highlands we decided to leave Bario and head to another village called Pa' Lungan. Getting to Pa' Lungan involved a 5 hour slog through leech infested mud (Paul got 1 leech, Katherine escaped them), which was very slippery due to heavy rain the night before. This is the only way to get there, as the locals themselves either walk or bring heavier supplies in with water buffaloes. Halfway through the hike to Pa' Lungan we thought we had embarked on one of our crazier journeys, until we were humbled by encountering a local returning to Pa' Lungan after already having hiked to Bario that morning to sell some boar meat he'd bagged the day before. You'd figure in a place this remote locals could be forgiven for not being highly educated, but he spoke perfect english and had even been to England on vacation a couple of years before!

After finally arriving in Pa' Lungan, completely exhausted, we were surprised to find that there were already about 8 other tourists in the village of 50 people, since we'd seen none in Bario. We stayed the night there with the family of Petrus. In Pa' Lungan they pretty much live off the land, since getting other things in is quite a chore, although they do have a karaoke machine and dvd player which they use 3 hours a night when the generator is turned on. Petrus and his clan also had a couple of baby eagles which they were raising, having cut down their tree a week earlier. They had no idea how to raise an eagle but were learning on the fly. Petrus also went hunting with a  couple of the other tourists, and they came back a   few hours later with a mouse deer, which we promptly ate for breakfast the next morning. The next day we hiked back to Bario and our adventure there was done!

Now we have to mention the Kelabit people, who have to be the friendliest we've encountered on our journeys. Everyone is so kind and happy to have visitors, and they are all delighted to strike up a conversation with you. The sad part is that the Kelabit highlands are currently threatened by logging, which has already chewed through most of Borneo. Although the Kelabits are actively fighting it, the powers that be  have scheduled the area to be logged within three years. If that happens the way of life we saw in Pa' Lungan will disappear, as they need the forest to survive. So we're not sure if the place we visited will even exist in the same manner in the next few years, which is very sad indeed. Hopefully the government will realize the tourist potential in the area and preserve the rainforest for future generations