On the Headhunter’s Trail in Borneo

Borneo is an island in Southeast Asia shared by Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Even though Indonesia occupies about 2/3 of the island much of the Indonesian side is still quite remote with very few tourists. The Malaysian side of Borneo offers many more attractions and the majority of the visitors to Borneo go there. I traveled to Borneo, Malaysia a few years ago for a scuba diving adventure and had wanted to venture into the rainforest so that is what I decided to do this time around.

Map of Borneo

I flew to Bario, a small village near the Malaysian / Indonesian border. At the airport there was a separate check-in line for those flying to “rural” villages. Here I was weighed with all of my belongings and then allowed to board a tiny 20-seater plane that had cardboard “fans” in the seat pockets since there was no air circulation and believe me, it was HOT on the plane.

20-seater plane I flew into the jungle

My original plan was to try and do a 4 day/3 night trek into the jungle with a guide. Once I was in Bario I found that it was not as easy as I had anticipated to arrange such a trek and in the end had to settle for a 2 day/1 night trek with a French couple and a guide.

To get to our starting point we drove on a very muddy and steep road, the truck sliding sideways most of the time. After driving for 2 hours we finally arrived to the village of Pa’ Dalih where we stayed for 1 night before beginning our trek. We stayed in a traditional longhouse shared by 6 families. A longhouse is a communal house built on stilts with one long roof and separate rooms for each family. Dinner was tiny fish from the rice paddies, sautéed local ferns, hearts of palm, and of course rice.

Inside the longhouse at Pa' Dalih

In the morning we began our trek on the Headhunter’s Trail. This trail was used by the local villagers to trek into Indonesia where they would attack their enemies and bring back their heads. The practice of headhunting ended around the time of WWII but then again resurfaced for a period of time in the late 1990’s. Even though the villagers no longer display the heads like they use to I was told that if you ask they will show you the heads.

After a few hours of trekking we came to a small house in the middle of nowhere. Inside was a small fire pit and on a metal rack on top of the fire pit was some kind of smoked meat. It turned out to be local “barking deer” and for lunch our guide heated up some of this meat and we ate it along with the rice wrapped in a banana leaf our host had given us before we left the longhouse in the morning. At first it was hard to eat the deer since the head and feet were nearby but once I got over that it was actually quite tasty.

Lunch:  barking deer meat

During our trek I was surprised and very happy to see that there were hardly any mosquitoes but in their place there were plenty of leeches. I had been warned about the leeches and was told to wear long socks pulled over long pants and to tuck my shirt into my pants to make it hard for leeches to find skin to bite. As soon as we stepped into the rainforest the leeches were all over our shoes, climbing up our legs, trying to find a piece of skin they could feed from. When leeches bite you it’s not so easy to get them off. It takes quite a bit of effort to pull them off once they have sunk their teeth into you, and if you do pull them off you will probably end up with their teeth still stuck in your skin. The best way to get them off is with salt or matches or you can just wait for them to get their fill of your blood and fall off. Once they do let go, you bleed quite a bit for several hours afterwards. Yuck!

To see all the pictures click here:  Borneo Trek