Gunung Mulu and the bat exodus...

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Gunung Mulu National park, a UNESCO heritage site, is the largest national park in Malaysian Borneo and is famous for it's enormous cave network and variety of animal, insect and plant life. It's also very difficult to get to and from Sabah it's nearly impossible overland. So one very short prop plane journey later and we were arriving into the tiny air strip that serves the park and were checking into the hostel that would be home for the next few days. It was a really beautiful big room with huge windows and with an abundance of exotic insects hiding where you would most expect them!

The National Park is mainly primary rainforest and, because it gets so much rain, the forest floor is very swampy. There is an extensive network of boardwalks and cement trails around the headquarters that connect the hostel with the various caves and points of interest (like a small area flourishing with pitcher plants), so day trekking does not require too much in terms of special gear or repellent... you're usually safe from the leeches! Flying into the the park was amazing and afforded us incredible views of the limestone mountains (and of the Pinnacles) and of the vast expanse of jungle that the park encompasses. But Gunung Mulu's biggest attractions lie beneath the forest floor. Over 200kms of cave passages have been discovered so far and this figure is thought to represent only 30% of that which actually exists!

This was the Borneo I had been looking for.

We settled in before heading out to visit two of the caves (Deer Cave and Lang's Cave) and to watch the bat exodus. Deer Cave (named after a specias of deer that once lived there) is the world's largest cave passage and is home to nearly 5,000,000 bats, all of whom exit the cave each evening as dusk falls in search of food. This event is called the bat exodus and is a pretty impressive sight. The bats don't just fly out, they fly out in dozens of huge groups swirling and dipping through the air, trying to avoid the bat hawks that join them in their own hunt for food. The cave also houses a mountain of guano that glitters in the dark from the billion cockroaches that feed there. There are glow worms littering the floor that stain your hands with glow-in the-dark goo when touched and giant red earwigs that can give a nasty bite. Lang's cave is a lot smaller and incredible beautiful, with cave formations that rival that greatest sculptures.

The following morning we trekked to two other caves an hour from the Park's HQ, Clearwater Cave and Wind Cave. The journey revealed plenty of pit vipers and tree snakes and was a good day out in itself. Clearwater cave is the longest cave in the world and at present is recorded as 200km in length; all that will change when the professionals return for further investigation. It houses a large river (that gives it it's name) and is very impressive. The four caves we visited definitely made me wish I had signed up for some adventure caving but I guess that will have to wait until next time! After exploring Clearwater cave for a time we all went out to where the underground river meets the real world and went for a swim in it's very cold and very clean waters. I took a long boat ride back down river to the HQ and it was interesting to see the different people that live along the river banks, especially the fishermen... We saw a small group of men, tattooed from head to toe with tribal designs, wearing loin cloths and wielding spears and snorkeling masks wading in the water in search of cat fish!

That night we went on a night safari and were introduced to some of S.E.Asia's largest insects by our guide. We saw some huge stick insects that were a good 15" long, several tarantulas that live in rat holes in the roots of trees (they eat the rats before moving in!), a lot of different coloured fireflies, some leaf insects that you would hardly notice they are so well camouflaged- despite the fact that they are the size of big mice and some flat worms that are striped like zebras but are toxic to the touch and could kill a small child on contact! It's a dangerous world out there for the unsuspecting!... It's also very noisy. The jungle orchestra of crickets, frogs, lizards, cicadas and bats was in full swing.

So after a few days in the jungle and several treks we started to plan our route out of the wilderness. We had two choices- fly to Miri or take a series of boat rides out to the coast and bus it from there. The boats would have been the more scenic option but turned out just too expensive so back we went to the airstrip. As we took off in our little, half empty plane we got one last look out over the Borneon rainforest and I felt really lucky to have have spent those days in Mulu. The National Park doesn't see a lot of tourists and I'm glad we made the trip.

Next Stop: Kutching (via a dozen other towns of little interest!)...

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