9 March 2014

Gliding on the Kinabatangan river in Borneo

Light rain was constantly whipping my face. Once more, my China-bought rain cape was making its wonders, protecting me and my photography gear. We were about a dozen on that simple boat, on the lookout for animals on the sides of Kinabatangan river, in the middle of the rainforest in Borneo. The wide muddy-coloured river was uninviting – after all, crocodiles were roaming even if I didn't get to see them.

The grey clouds didn't offer much chance for the sunlight to shine on the rainforest, making it harder to spot the animals often located high up in the trees and even more difficult to take any good-quality pictures. To give you a sense of what that river safari looked like, here’s a brief eight-times accelerated video montage:

Fair enough the montage is not as amazing as that GoPro ad I love – and which music usually wakes me up in the morning – but what do you want!

The boat guide was unsurprisingly a keen observer. Without him, I’d never have been able to spot half of the animals I eventually saw. Each of the three two-hour rides would grant me with good opportunities to shoot different animal species with my camera: pygmy elephants, kingfishers, proboscis monkeys, but also lizards, purple and white herons, orang-utans and many silver monkeys.

I couldn’t however help but associate together the last two pictures below: the ominous smoke-puffing chimneys above the palm tree plantations that I noticed as I was leaving the ever-shrinking rainforest and going back to “civilisation” versus that sad monkey seemingly waving back at me...