A wild and beautiful expanse of riverine forest, coastal swamp and peat bogs bursting with wildlife, TANJUNG PUTING NATIONAL PARK is Kalimantan at its best. The park's fame rests on the efforts of Dr Birute Galdikas, who in 1971 founded Camp Leakey here as an orang-utan rehabilitation centre for animals that had been orphaned or sold as pets and needed to be taught how to forage. Tanjung Puting is also home to owa-owa, the vocal, long-armed gibbon, and to troupes of big-nosed proboscis monkeys. Along the rivers, look for monitor lizards and false ghavials, a narrow-nosed crocodile which grows to about 3m, plus scores of birds; on land, hikers need to be aware of potentially dangerous snakes.

Pangkalanbun
Before heading to Tanjung Puting national park, you must first register with the police in the dusty administrative town of PANGKALANBUN, which stands on the eastern bank of the modest Sungai Arut. Following the river's southern...
read more >>

Kumai
After registering in Pangkalanbun, you need to travel 25km east to KUMAI , whose small port and couple of streets stand across broad Sungai Kumai from the edge of Tanjung Puting national park. Transport from Pangkalanbun winds up outside the ...
read more >>

The park
On leaving Kumai, boats enter the mouth of small Sungai Sekonyer, where an avenue of trunkless nipa palms gradually cedes to patchy forest at Tanjung Harapan ranger post. An information hut here has a good rundown on the park's ecology; a few...
read more >>