Man Of The (Disappearing) Forest

For most people there is one overwhelming reason to come to Borneo: wildlife. The world's third-largest island is home to large tracts of virgin, untouched rainforest bursting with biodiversity and harbouring more than a fair few endemic animals. For the budding David Attenborough* there are few places that can offer such a range of things both bright and beautiful as well as short and squat. The biggest draw is, undoubtedly, our distant cousin, the orangutan (a word derived from the Malay, meaning "man of the forest"). There are only two populations of orangutan left in the world: one here in Borneo and the other in Sumatra. Sightings in the wild occur next to never and so the next best option is to go to one of the rehabilitation centres where orphaned and abandoned orangutans are cared for before, hopefully, being released back into the wild. One such centre is located just outside Kuching and I made it the first thing I visited when I arrived.

Orangutan faces are full of expressivity, betraying how closely related they are to humans.

Octopus's Garden

Most of my travels are of the cultural (cities, museums, ruins, monuments, etc.) or outdoorsy (hiking, mountains, forests and national parks) kind. I don't really do "fun" stuff. Whilst in Sabah I decided to change that state of affairs. The seas of southeast Asia are home to some of the most pristine tropical coral reefs in the world. Snorkelling among them is my favourite thing to do whilst visiting beach destinations. But with snorkelling you are limited by your lungs to just the uppermost corals and only for as long as you can hold your breath. Obviously the glimpses you get of the myriad multi-coloured fish, urchins, invertebrates, polyps, nudibranches and other strangely-named organisms are only enough to pique your interest. To truly see the underwater world you need to go scuba diving.

All kitted up in my wetsuit, air tank and sundry other paraphernalia and about to roll back out of the boat (something I had always wanted to do). Diving is a truly incredible sensation and one I hope, for my wallet's sake, I don't get too addicted to.

Making A Molehill Out Of A Mountain (Of Costs)

As I stood on the deck of my ferry, carrying me from Zamboanga to Sandakan in East Malaysia, in the still night, watching the rippling wake reach behind us through the mirror-smooth Sulu Sea, I found it hard to believe that this is one of the most notorious stretches of water in the world. From Mindanao to Borneo there stretch several island groups -  Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi - that form the heartland of the current Muslim insurgency in the Philippines. Piracy is not unheard of around here and only two months ago a couple of European tourists were kidnapped on Tawi-Tawi whilst taking wildlife photographs. These are certainly not places to travel to thoughtlessly, although peering at the soundlessly calm expanse around me when I awoke in the middle of the night, with only a small glow on the horizon indicating a mini flotilla of sardine boats, it was hard for me to equate the view in front of me with any sort of danger. And indeed there was none to be had as we arrived in Sandakan without a hitch (except for the 9-hour wait in Zamboanga as the 300 passengers cleared the customs inspection that was manned by only two officers - although there were about a dozen soldiers milling around doing little else than motioning the queue to shuffle along every now and again).

A suburban cul-de-sac in Sandakan that reminded me of middle-class suburban neighbourhoods in the UK.

Little Islands, Little Creatures, Little Hills

The small, teardrop-shaped island of Bohol lies a little off the eastern coast of Cebu. It's one of the main beach and diving destinations in the Visayas. But I wasn't there for the beaches. Instead it was a cute little creature that lured me over. The Philippine tarsier is one of the world's smallest primates and looks like Gizmo's long lost brother. Its big, owl-like eyes and general cuteness make it a favourite of the tourists who flock to come and have their pictures taken with the little fuzzballs. Unfortunately for the shy tarsiers captivity and constant petting stresses them out big time and very few kept for public display live for more than a year. Despite the desire to pet one I knew better and visited the official tarsier sanctuary that works to protect them and satisfied myself with a few zoom shots of a couple of tarsiers dozing in the trees. It's often the way with wildlife tourism that the act of visiting a site and interacting with the animals is detrimental to their well-being. It's usually better to curb the urge to pet and get too close and content yourself with a fleeting glimpse and the knowledge that the animals are there, alive, thriving and living the way that they were meant to.

The nocturnal tarsiers have suffered greatly due to habitat loss and the mistaken belief amongst local tribes that they were evil creatures that ate their crops (they prey solely on insects). Nowadays habitat loss is still a big threat as is the demand for tarsiers as pets or display animals.

Climb Any Mountain

For a couple of reasons (which I shall go into later) I am staying in Taiwan until the 7th of February. Having done a loop of the island already I needed something to fill my time constructively, as I am not one to be able to sit on a beach for days on end. Luckily Taiwan has its mountains that I had mentioned previously, and this was the perfect opportunity to see them up close and personal. In Taiwan, however, going into the mountains is not simply a question of turning up at a trailhead and setting off at random. Perhaps it is a way of ensuring safety by knowing who is on the mountain should anything unfortunate happen, perhaps it is an environmentally-friendly way of limiting the human impact on a fragile ecosystem, or perhaps it is just the Taiwanese love of officialdom, but anyone heading to the higher mountains needs to get a permit. Sometimes two. The process is Byzantine, requires numerous forms to be filled out in triplicate, and, for the more popular trails (such as Yu Shan - Jade mountain), needs to be done several months in advance. Luckily through my host in Taipei I was able to find a group of people who were heading off on a 5-day hike and was able to join up with them.

View of the snowy peaks of Yu Shan (Jade Mountain), Taiwan's highest mountain.

Formosa

Ask most people of what they associate with Taiwan and they will likely say the words "Made in". And it is true that Taiwan produces a lot of things, most notably hi-tech equipment, microchips and bicycles (more on that in a bit). As for the island's other notable points,apart from along-running political mésentente with China, you would be hard pressed to find any that are well known beyond its shores. Like its other East Asian peers, such as South Korea and Japan, it is densely populated, yet it also has large tracts of unspoilt, mountain areas. The island can be neatly divided into eastern and western halves, with most of the cities, industries and agriculture concentrated in the frenetic west. There is then a long mountain chain that runs the entire length of the island from north to south, reaching a peak of almost 4000m at Jade Mountain, whilst the east coast remains relatively sparsely populated and devoid of much economic activity apart from agriculture, fishing and tourism. It is here on the east coast (and in the central mountains) that nature lovers and outdoors enthusiasts can slake their thirst.

The entrance to the Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's most popular attraction. Unfortunately it's impossible to give you a picture of the narrowest, steepest parts of the gorge as my lens just doesn't have the wide angle necessary to catch the vastness at such close quarters.

Chinese Landscapes

I remember, as a child, seeing traditional Chinese landscape paintings. I remember thinking to myself that they didn't look real: they were permanently misty and the mountains looked like caricatures, sort of ideal mountains that a child would draw, but far more "mountainy" than any real mountain. They didn't look like anything I had ever seen in Europe and so I simply dismissed them as fantastical make-believe landscapes ... how wrong I was.

Yangshuo's iconic karst scenery and idyllic rivers make it one of China's most popular tourist destinations, and for good reason.

Jeju See That?

Wherever I went in South Korea people never neglected to recommend that I should visit Jeju. "Very pretty." "Sandy beaches." "Delicious oranges." "Good weather." Indeed, Jeju island is South Korea's Hawaii. As well as being the main holiday destination for locals it is also a volcanic island and is home to south Korea's highest peak, Hallasan, a dormant volcano. In fact the whole island is basically the mountain, whose main cone rises up in the very centre of the island and can be seen from everywhere (theoretically at least, although the peak is usually shrouded in mist). What makes it unique though, at least for geology geeks, is the numerous so-called "parasitic cones" (oreum in the native dialect) of which there are over 350 scattered around the island. Many are easily overlooked, but others form clusters of craters that pop unexpectedly out of the surrounding farmland and look distinctly otherworldly. Add to this some funky, hexagonal basalt blocks that spill into the sea and lava tubes that look like dragons' lairs and you have all the ingredients for a volcanic geologist's wet dream.

View of some oreum peeking out of the mist on the way up Hallasan.

Helicopters And Shamans

As I've mentioned before meeting different people, from all walks of life, backgrounds and cultures is one of the most enriching aspects of travelling. A while back my mother sent me the contact details of a nephew of one of her friends who she said lives in Mongolia. It turns out that Hamid doesn't just simply live in Mongolia (actually only part-time, during the summer), but he has studied their culture extensively and films documentaries about Mongolia and its people and even runs a camp out in the far north of the country. Here was an encounter I really didn't want to pass up.

Gers, forests and mountains in the evening light.

Wide Open Country

Mongolia is a widescreen country. Some claim it is the highest country by average elevation in the world, but since there is no comparative list on Wikipedia I cannot say for certain. Nevertheless most of the country is at 1000m or more and formed of extremely wide valleys separated by seemingly low mountains, though the heights are deceptive due to the distances. You can easily see for 30km or more. The high visibility combined with the altitude means that you are not only closer to the clouds, but you can also see them coming half a day or more in advance, inching towards you like continental plates, and with the same inexorability. All of this adds up to a landscape that is widescreen in the extreme: the vistas are squeezed by the valleys below and clouds above and only allowed to expand sideways. This leads to problems for the amateur photographer who is unable to capture the details, which are inevitably far away, without losing the grandeur of the expanse, and vice versa. My camera's 4:3 aspect ratio fails miserably to capture the awe that I am seeing so I am resorting ever more often to taking sweeping panorama shots to try and get a small idea of the sheer immensity. It'll have to do, but nothing beats seeing it in the flesh.

Cloudscape in northern Mongolia (close to what are, allegedly, the northernmost sand dunes in the world).

The Big Apple

Apart from the general sightseeing I did have an important task to do in Almaty: get my Mongolian visa. (I know what you're thinking, "oh no, not another visa anecdote"; and I'm sorry to bring it up - although I will be brief. But visa acquisition forms a large part of a traveller's daily preoccupation - where do I get it? what documents do I need? how long does it take? do I need to do it via an agency? etc, etc - because, very simply, without overcoming these hurdles you can't do any travelling. And the whole visa system in this part of the world in particular is so arbitrary and capricious. It's a universal rule that if you get two travellers sitting down and talking together, within an hour they will be swapping visa stories. Nevertheless I shouldn't complain, as getting into the EU or United States with a passport from Central Asia for simple tourism purposes is nigh on impossible. But back to the story...) So I made my way to the embassy, which is very inconveniently located in the southwest corner of town in a random residential area down a very nondescript little alley, on Monday morning, only to find a little, handwritten sign tacked to the gate saying that the embassy would be closed until Thursday. I was not impressed.

My view of Almaty, with the ever-present Tian Shan mountains behind decked in an approaching thunderstorm. One of my first pics with my new camera - obviously I need to learn how to use it properly.

Kul

Kyrgyzstan is a land of mountains, but also of lakes (and also of horses, but I'll touch on that later). To get a true taste of the country, both metaphorically and literally, you need to leave the towns and cities - Bishkek feels like a relaxed, provincial eastern European town - and head for the hills, where the nomadic Kyrgyz soul resides. The first place I made for was Issyk Kul lake (a bit of a tautology as kul means lake in Kyrgyz). Talk to any Kyrgyz person and they will tell you that you haven't seen Kyrgyzstan until you've seen Issyk Kul, which is seen as the jewel in the country's crown. It is indeed a special lake. Although Kyrgyzstan is a small country, smaller even than Britain, the lake is one of the biggest in the world (10th by volume, and 7th deepest). For the landlocked Kyrgyz it is their beach destination and is suitably equipped with hotels, deckchairs, parasols and all other beachy paraphernalia. Even the water is salty. However, due to it's high altitude - 1600m - it's not particularly warm despite its name (which translates as "Hot Lake"), as a brief dip unequivocally demonstrated. (The name refers to the fact that, because of its depth and high salinity, the lake never freezes, even in the depths of winter.) This means that the "beach" season is very short, outside of which there's barely a soul to be seen. Not that I was particularly interested in taking a dip, the surrounding landscape is far more interesting to me. The lake is surrounded on all sides by tall mountains and in the east, on a clear day you can spot the challenging 7000m peak of Khan Tengri on the tri-border with China and Kazakhstan, lording it over the other lesser mountains of the surrounding Tian Shan range - not that I ever saw it as at this time of the year the mountains are almost constantly shrouded in a blanket of cloud, at least at the higher elevations.

A "popular" beach on Issyk Kul, framed by a spur of the Tian Shan mountains.

Wakhan Do It

Tajikistan is a poor country. It has the 7th lowest GDP of any non-African country, has no industry to speak of (one large aluminium smelting plant, though the ore has to be imported from abroad), few mineral resources worth mentioning (a handful of gold and silver mines) and only 7% of the country is arable land (whereas 50% is comprised of mountains). Its long and porous border with Afghanistan that the government cannot possibly effectively control makes it an important conduit for drugs. The evidence of the drugs trade can easily be seen if you take a ride north from Dushanbe along the Varzob valley where tasteless modern mansions line the river, the vast majority, according to my Tajik friends, built using drug money (the rest from government corruption). The only export Tajikistan has in any quantities is cheap labour for Russian construction sites.

As you can see from the map, mountains are the one thing Tajikistan has in abundance.

Fanatic

A slight disaster: the last post I wrote regarding arriving to Dushanbe did not get published properly. Furthermore the drafts were also lost. I have contacted Blogger and will hopefully retrieve the post and put it up again, in the meantime, rather than write it anew I will carry on from where it finished.

Having put in my application for the Kyrgyz visa I had a week to kill before I could set off along the Pamir highway. My destination was the town of Panjikent in the Zerafshan valley and the Fan mountains to the south. The Fan are an outlying spur of the Pamir-Alay range and with peaks reaching up to 'only' 5500m, and as such are a more accessible and amateur-friendly range than the giant Pamirs to the east. Getting to Panjikent required a little backtracking towards Istarafshan, but only crossing one pass, before getting off in the valley hoping to catch some onward transportation along the wild and narrow Zerafshan valley. My onward transport happened to be an old man in his battered Moskvich who picked me up and took me all the way. The road was in a poor state, but at least the views were compensation, with the scenery reminding me of a small version of the Karakorum Highway, with only 200m drops rather than 600m (although, at the end of the day, both are lethal should you try to test them out).

Along with pot-holes and dodgy drivers, herds of sheep are also a natural obstacle to be  negotiated on Tajikistan's roads.

Kaluts And Castles

The past few days have been a demonstration of the diversity, both natural and human, that is to be found in Iran. I had been to Kerman before, but I hadn't really strayed from the main northwest-southeast axis, and this time I wanted to correct that. My first goal was to visit the kaluts in the Lut desert to the north. The kaluts are the largest expanse of yardangs in the world (For those who aren't aware, including me, as I had to look this up too, yardangs are sand and rock formations that are caused by unidirectional prevailing winds in deserts, which create long ridges that can be tens of metres high and hundreds long. For more info click here.). To get an idea of the vastness of the area covered by the kaluts check these co-ordinates on Google Earth, and then zoom out to see what looks like the traces of a god's combing of the desert. From Kerman the road passes through a spur of the Zagros mountains which rise up to over 4000m. So despite the southerly latitude (it's at the same level as Cairo) there was still plenty of fresh snow around. The day we went was the 22nd of Bahman (11th of Feb), the anniversary of the Revolution, and a public holiday. The road was packed with cars crammed full of people and a fair number, for some strange reason, had inflated inner tubes from truck tyres lashed to their roofs. The purpose became clear as we reached the col and saw the road swarming with soldiers. The road had been turned into an impromptu car park as local Kermanis took advantage of the double blessing of a holiday and snow to head to the mountains for fun and frolics in the snow - the inner tubes are used as sleds. The soldiers were there to try and keep some semblance of order to the traffic, an almost impossible task with Iranian drivers even at the best of times. Less than an hour later we were at a road junction in the desert with a sign indicating a dirt track to the "hottest place on earth". I would have dearly liked to go there but unfortunately you need a guide and a 4WD - sadly our trusty Pride wasn't going to cut the mustard. Instead we carried on to the kaluts, which straddle the road for kilometres on either side forming an eery landscape of protruding rocks and nature's sandcastles.

The otherworldly landscape of the kaluts.

Hiking And Chance Meetings

The Poles, living in a land that is mostly flat (Poland, essentially, means "Land of Fields"), appreciate mountains. The highest (reaching 2500m) and most popular, are the Tatras. In the far southeast corner of the country, poking into Ukraine like a cheeky finger, lie the Bieszczady mountains which hold a special place in the affections of the Poles for being the wildest, most inaccessible part of the country, home to bears, wolves, bison, deer and lynx among others. The sparsely-populated area is now a favoured retreat of artists and artisans, but up until the end of WW II it was the home of the Boyks and Lemks, two Ukrainian-speaking minorities that were forcibly removed by the Polish authorities at the end of the war following a Ukrainian-separatist struggle in the area.

The bare ridges (poloniny) of the Bieszczady mountains.

Short And Wide, Long And Narrow

From Ventspils I continued south through Courland passing the towns of Kuldiga and Liepaja on my way to Klaipeda in Lithuania. The former is a rather unremarkable, little provincial town were it not for its rumba. No, it is not the Baltic capital of raunchy Latin dancing - rumba is the Latvian word for waterfall. With a maximum height of only 2m it may not be particularly high - even for a country as topographically challenged as Latvia, but what it lacks in height it makes up for in girth, claiming the title of Europe's widest waterfall at 250m (and I have it from several reliable sources that girth, apparently, is everything). Kuldiga was also home to Jakob Kettler, duke of Courland, who in the 17th century not only managed to maintain the region's autonomy between the rival forces of Sweden, Russia and Prussia, but also got in on the colonial boom of the time, acquiring the island of Tobago in the Caribbean and and island at the mouth of the Gambia, making Courland probably the smallest colonial state ever. Liepaja, on the other hand, was strategically important for the Russians (both Tsarist and Soviet) who built a huge naval base, called Karosta, there. In Soviet times particularly the town almost doubled in size and yet, paradoxically, became a closed town, with non-residents requiring permits to visit family there. Today the naval base and its residential areas are a virtual ghost town, with half the buildings abandoned, empty, stripped, and returning slowly to the earth. To get an idea of what the world would look like after the Apocalypse Karosta does a pretty good job.

One of the many Tsarist barracks buildings left abandoned and boarded up in Karosta. Notice the trees growing through the roof.

Bearing Hike

Before coming to Finland there had been a small mystery that had been confusing me: why do you not see many Finns abroad? During all my travels I have met many people from neighbouring countries like Sweden, Norway and the Baltics, even from small countries like Slovenia and Singapore, but never (as far as I can recall) any Finns. The conundrum became a lot clearer when I went to Oulanka National Park: the Finns stay in their own country pottering around, savouring their exquisite countryside with its lakes and forests and grilling sausages over an open fire.

The pristine pine forest of Oulanka national park. And away from the main trail not a sound to be heard but the singing of birds, sighing of the wind and buzzing of mosquitoes.

Something Fishy In Norway

Norway is a big country. Or at least it is a long country. Many Norwegians I have met have regaled me with the factoid that if Norway were flipped over, using its southern point as the axis, the northern end would hit Barcelona ... or Rome, or Morocco, or some other impressively distant southern point. The accuracy isn't too important, but suffice to say it's a long way to the top. A lot of my time spent since Trondheim has been in the pursuit of bridging the gap to the north. Such is the size of the country that in Norway (and Sweden) when people talk of distances they talk in miles (mil), but not our paltry 1.6km miles, no, Scandinavian miles are each 10km long; so beware if a Norwegian tells you that something is only a few miles away, it may be further than you think!

I spent quite some time hitching in the north of Norway. It's quite a boring way to pass the day and so any amusement, howeverlame, is always welcome. Like the sign in Mo-i Rana.