Olga the orang-utan

So off I went again for my fourth visit to the Kinabatangan River basin and I am certainly not complaining! Each time is different and the unknown and unpredictable appearances of the animals can make it sometimes quite boring and then other times really exciting and exhilarating.Tanya and I  were the only people with our guide and we were walking through the jungle towards the oxbow lake when suddenly Rosdi (our guide) starting pointing frantically and there on the ground eating wild ginger was an adult female orang utan. She looked at us and then started to climb up the tree where we spent the next 30 minutes or so together - us staring and trying to take photographs and Olga (any other ideas for a name?) looking at us and trying to persuade us to go away by throwing leaves and branches at us. Then she tried the urinating and defecating on us and then finally she gave up and stared and we stared back admiring her beauty. It was the longest and most intimate experience I have had yet with a wild orang-utan and will certainly stay in my memory forever. Please forgive us Olga for our intrusion of your morning and I know that there are some humans that might do you harm but we were only being nosey!

 As Tanya said the lovely thing about the experience was how excited our guide was too. Rosdi is a Sungai {river} person who has lived in this area all his life and he told us about how he spent three years on  a research proect a few years ago to follow individual orang-utans through the forest and take notes on their behaviour and habits. They became his friends after they realised that he meant no harm and he continues to be in awe of their intelligence. He told us that the orang utans use plants and herbs for medicinal use and that the wild ginger that Olga was eating would have been to help an aching limb.

The very conspicuous photographers

Katha and Tanya at the top of Mount Kinabalu

  Tanya will be leaving Sabah on Thursday on her way to KL via Singapore. She and Katha climbed to the top of Mount Kinabalu but were surrounded by clouds and couldn't see anything. They suffered  the next day or two but Tanya says her memory is fading already about the pain they went through! I will miss her when she leaves but it won't be too long until we meet up again in France.