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We touched down in Kota Kinabalu and spent a night there before booking ourselves in on a tour over at Sepilok, at the other side of the island. The coach journey took several hours on a steep winding mountain road through dense jungle. These spectacular views were only slightly ruined by the noise of a group of children throwing up.
On arrival in Sepilok we headed out to the famous orangutan rehab centre for feeding time. Borneo is the only place orangutans live in the wild, and at this rehab centre we managed to see several orangutans and loads of monkey macaques sneak up on the orangutans from under the feeding platform and put a hand over the side, sneakily stealing the bananas from their feet. Suddenly the orangutans would realise whats goiung on and chase them away using any part of their body to swing from the trees. In sepilok we also had a great public bus journey like no other where loads of people were crammed in the bus and even hanging out the doors whilst the driver blasted rock music out.
After this we joined up with our tour group for a 2 day, 1 night jungle experience. This started out with us taking a remote road deep into the jungle through miles and miles of palm oil plantations. Its a sad sight to look ariound and for as far as the eye can see dense forest has been replaced with straight rows of the same tree. Anyways after a short river crossing to our jungle shack we dropped our bags and headed out on a river cruise in the hope of seeing wildlife. We then found out why the place was called a rain forest. It doesn't give it justice to say we got caught in the rai, it would be more approprite to say we were constantly riding under a large waterfall. To give you a scale of how fast it was coming down our guide was having to stop every few minutes to bail water out the boat. Unfortunately the only wildlife we saw were herons, Proboscus Monkeys ( the ones with huge noses, and no dad ill take the high road and not crack a joke at your expense), and a baby croc the size of your arm sat on a log. That was until we turned a corner in the river and the guide started madly shouting and pointing at the bank. To our surprise there were 4 or 5 Pigmy elephants having a mud bath no more than 3 metres fromthe edge of the river. These recently discovered elephants are the smallest int he world and extremely rare, only living in Borneo. It was an unbelievable sight as they performed for us, rolling in the fresh mud and roaring down their trunks. Me and Jack were sat at the front of the boat and could have reached out and touched them as the guide rammed the boat up onto the bank. Wet but satisfied we returned to camp. We were supposed to go on a night walk that evening but unfortunately everyone was so wet they decided to give us a rest.
We tried our luck the next day on a morning cruise but didnt see any wildlife at all. Later we transferred to the base of Mount Kinabalu to start our 2 day summit attempt the following morning. We joined up with 2 americans (Steve and Libin) to cut the cost of the guide, which was just as well because he turned out to useless, with us waiting for him to catch us up and giving me breaks to catch his breath. our first days climb took around 7ish hours and we climbed to 3300 metres above sea level. I got to the accomadation and was amazed at how easy i had found the climb. The other guys said at some points they didnt know how i was racing up because the effort was making them feel sick. It was pretty cold at that height but had no altitude sickness problems thankfully. That was one of the best nights sleep of my life, although the heater was way too hot for comfort and we had to get up at about 3am to set off again and climb another 700 metres.
Unlike the previous day this was much harder going as everyone left at the same time so the paths were crammed with maybe 150 people going up. The other guys in my group were finding it hard and having to stop every few minutes but luckily they let me go ahead by myself. Somehow i was managing to climb 1000s of steps and near vertical slopes which you had to use ropes for and barely be out of breath. I kept over taking people not really thinking about it then suddenly looked infront and realised the line of lights from peoples headtorches had gone. I was at the front! It took maybe 2 hours for that last push up the mountain to reach its summit at Ironically called Lows Peak (4095.2 metres above sea level). I couldn't believe id made it, and was the first one up as well, by a good 20 minutes. This made me the heighest man in South East Asia!
I was so overjoyed on the summit, but this quickly became fustrating as i realised the lock on my bag had either frozen shut in the very very cold temperatures or was broken. I spent a whole 15 minutes sat on the summit alone in absolute pitch black apart from my headlamp trying to sqeeze my camera out of a hole maybe 6cm big. Eventually i did it and was able to catch the spectacular sunrise. It made it all the more special as the rays of sun heated up our freezing bodies, especially mine as i had been up there for around 1 and a half hours without being able to walk around.
The climb back down was oddly strange and a lot longer and steeper than i remembered coming up. it also provided breathtaking views of the entire climb and also a lot of Borneo could be seen for miles! It took only 1 day to descend and as expected in this part of the world we got caught in a huge thunderstorm at precisely 2pm. Sodden and tired we found a place to stay that night but nothing could wipe that smile off my face.
We spent 1 more night in Kota Kinabalu before flying out to Singapore. Borneo and more specifically Mt Kinabalu has turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip for me, and one i will surely never forget.
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