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Published: September 29th 2010
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Cities don’t hold much of an attraction for me unless they boast history or culture. Kota Kinabalu has neither. But although it’s modern and perhaps a little soulless it’s still a pleasant enough stop-over after a long flight. I managed to catch up on sleep, visited the night markets and food stalls and admired the sunset from the marina. And after a couple of days I was ready to move on. Next stop: Mulu NP and its famous caves.
I remember the first time my friend Peter took me caving in the Yorkshire Dales. After a strenuous walk across the moors he suddenly pointed to what I had assumed was the entrance to a rabbit warren. “Here we are” he grinned and before I even had a chance to utter a doubting response Pete had already disappeared through the hole in the ground...Caving in the Dales often means crawling through narrow spaces in cumbersome over-alls, getting covered in mud and worse than anything having to endure the freezing cold. Add to that the risk of getting trapped underground by flash floods you might wonder why I even bothered to pursue this activity. The answer is simple: caves hold a deep
fascination for me. Their profound silence is filled with mystery and their impenetrable darkness hides the strangeness of unearthly creatures and the beauty of ancient formations. They tell a story that is nearly as old as earth itself.
So standing at the vast entrance of one of the world’s biggest caves was a truly special moment for me. Suddenly I felt tiny, a miniature me entering a giant’s realm. At twice the height of Big Ben the scale of Deer Cave's main chamber is at once breathtaking and humbling. The cave is home to millions of bats and the guano on the ground is several metres deep and crawling with scavengers. The cave floor is also the stage for one of nature’s more gruesome dramas: baby bats which have fallen to the ground frantically trying to climb back up to safety, away from the preying insects. But there is no escape.
In the evening we were sitting at the foot of the cave entrance, waiting for another of nature’s great spectacles - the nightly exodus of the bats. And shortly after sunset we witnessed ribbon after ribbon of tiny black dots rising from the mist, merging into larger
formations and eventually disappearing into the jungle.
Next on my list were Lang’s-, Wind- and Clearwater Cave. Their chambers are not as vast and impressive as Deer Cave, but their formations are beautiful, some shaped like corals or large curtains, others reminiscent of intricately carved pillars in ancient temples. And after a few hours spent walking around in the stifling heat of the caves we were rewarded with a swim in the crystal clear waters of the stream that emerges from one of the caverns.
The following afternoon I took a boat to the Penan village a scenic 40 minute ride upstream. The Penan are actually nomads, but over the past few years the Malaysian government has been trying to get them to settle in longhouses, officially as a sign of progress, according to the Penan though because the government wanted to claim the forest for other uses. There has been a lot of resistance to this move in the past, but meanwhile most of the Penan have settled, although with mixed success. This particular village has about 200 inhabitants, and each family occupies two rooms in the longhouse, a kitchen/living room on the ground floor and a
bedroom above.To my great shame I have to admit that in spite of buying a phrase book and intending to teach myself Malay I never got past the first page; so the “conversation” with the settlers was limited to a mixture of gestures and smiles; and I never found out how they felt about their somehow forced-upon new lifestyle.
A couple of hours later, just as I was about to leave the settlement, the heavens opened. So I sat with the villagers under the roof of the longhouse, waiting for the storm to cease. And as I was listening to the rain splashing onto the ground outside and the people around me talking quietly to each other I felt at peace for the first time in many months. My old life with all its difficulties seemed far away and unreal. Travelling had started to work its magic....
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