Opening page: An orang-utan in Tanjung Puting National Park. Opposite, clockwise from top left: A houseboat on the Sekonyer River; A mother and baby orang-utan; Street food stalls in Yogyakarta; A farmer in Borobudur; Temples at Prambanan; A craftsman adding wax to batik cloth; Wooden statues for sale at Solo market.
the feeding stations where rehabilitated apes drop in for the daily banana handouts that supplement the 400 or so foodstuffs on their wild jungle menu. At Camp Leakey our klotok joined a small flotilla tied up beside the wooden dock. Carnivorous pitcher plants hung their insect-trap chamber pots from the riverside tangle and a metre-long monitor lizard slipped into the dark, peaty waters. We followed our guide along a forest trail, peering into the silk-lined holes of tarantulas, stepping over the immense buttress
resplendent with his fleshy face flanges, seemed to demand the most personal space: I watched as he inserted six bananas into his mouth – one at a time – then swung back skywards. Wild pigs rooted below for leftovers and kaleidoscopic butterflies alighted on the crushed fruit. Orang-utans are critically threatened by the loss of their forests to mushrooming palm oil plantations. The following day we visited Pondok Kerja Pesalat Reforestation Project, where each of us planted a small indigenous tree. My spindly, metre-high bekasai
Tourists enjoy guaranteed sightings at the feeding stations where rehabilitated apes drop in for the daily banana handouts roots of giant hardwoods and listening to the distant keening of gibbons. As we neared the feeding platform, a rustling in the canopy and glimpse of orange in the leafy shadows revealed that orang-utans were heading the same way. Up in their arboreal element, the apes had a surprising balletic grace. One airborne figure swung through empty space fully 30 metres up, sinking groundward on a slender branch before reaching casually for the next handhold, which bore him effortlessly aloft again. We watched from a bench as the apes converged. Soon there were six on the platform, all feeding quietly. One big male,
would grow into a mighty hardwood, I was assured, but it took a leap of faith to imagine the great apes swinging through its towering canopy a century hence. The next major feeding session took place two days and a short flight later in the town of Solo, on the island of Java, south of Borneo. This was an altogether messier affair. My companions and I sat around a large table in the colonial back room of the Goela Klapa restaurant, while waitresses ferried in mounds of the delicious local fare. Soon our woven bamboo plates were groaning with nasi liwet (coconut rice with green papaya, chicken and egg), March // 2015
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