Cupped in the palm of an island arc between the Malay peninsula and Sulawesi, Kalimantan comprises the southern, Indonesian two-thirds of the vast island of Borneo, whose northern reaches are split between the independent sultanate of Brunei and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. Borneo has conjured up sensational images in the outside world ever since Europeans first visited in the sixteenth century and found coastal city-states governed by wealthy sultans and a jungle-cloaked land inhabited by the infamous head-hunting Dayak.

Dayak is an umbrella name for all of Borneo's indigenous peoples, who arrived here from mainland Southeast Asia around 2500 years ago and have since divided into scores of interrelated groups. In Dayak religions, evil is kept at bay by attracting the presence of helpful spirits, or scared away by protective tattoos, carved spirit posts ( patong), and lavish funerals. Shamans also intercede with spirits on behalf of the living, but, formerly, the most powerful way to ensure good luck was by head-hunting, which forced the victim's soul into the service of its captor. Although these days you'll often find ostensibly Christian communities whose inhabitants dress in shorts and T-shirts, the Dayak are still feared for their jungle skills, abilities with magic, and the way they violently take the law into their own hands if provoked - in 1997, West Kalimantan's Dayak exacted fearsome revenge against Maduran transmigrants, reviving the practice of head-hunting, and killing an estimated 300 to 2000. There's a resurgence in the more acceptable side of tradition, too: communal houses, once banned by the government, are being restored, and public festivals like the annual Erau Festival , a massive assembly of Kalimantan's eastern Dayak groups on Sungai Mahakam, provide an assurance that Dayak culture is still very much alive, if being redefined.

Modern Kalimantan has a tough time living up to its romantic tradition, however. In all Kalimantan's 500,000-square-kilometre spread, there are few obvious destinations, and even the provincial capitals of Pontianak, Palangkaraya and Samarinda offer little aside from their services. The exception is Banjarmasin , which has unusual floating markets, extraordinary street performers and interesting gem mines nearby. However, despite increasingly rapacious logging and catastrophic forest fires, sizeable tracts of the forested interior remain, sporting ancient longhouses . With few roads, Kalimantan's waterways are the interior's highways, and cruising up the mighty Sungai Mahakam is one of the world's great river journeys. Kalimantan's other big draw is Tanjung Puting national park , whose orang-utans and proboscis monkeys alone justify the journey here.

Kalimantan is well connected to the outside world, with flights from Brunei to Balikpapan, and boats from Tewah in Sabah to northeastern Pulau Nunukan. From elsewhere in Indonesia, there are direct flights from Java, with a half-dozen Pelni vessels stopping off in Kalimantan on their Java-Sulawesi-Maluku runs.

Crossed by the equator, Kalimantan has no real seasons . April through to September is the optimum time for a visit: at the height of the rains (Jan-March) you'll find towns isolated by flooding, and planes grounded for weeks on end, while the driest months (Aug-Oct) see boats stranded by low river levels. With only fragmentary infrastructure, Kalimantan's costs are higher than in most of the rest of the country, especially for transport in remote areas. Accommodation is pricey, too: even simple country losmen charge US$3 a night, and it's rare in cities to find anything under US$7. West and Central Kalimantan operate on Western time, but the south and eastern provinces run on Eastern time.