Confused and scratching at the itch on my face, I sat up violently, only to see a small gecko running along the edge of the bed in a hurry, never to be seen again. I laughed and pushed open the door, and a big black bird with no name "poofed" from the terrace into the airtight bushes. Looking up, there was no trace of it, only to hear the popping sound turn into a song of the forest. Occasional morning dew dripped from the leaves, falling on the face and falling out of the cool. The air full of negative oxygen ions is the shiver of life all night, and when you take a deep breath in the early morning at 4:48, people immediately get up.
Early morning in Borneo
Like all forest huts in fairy tales, the forest cabin I stayed in was nestled in the dense woods. The cottages are surrounded by layers of thick rainforest. With this hut as its origin, this cascading rainforest is spreading from the Kinabatangan River to the Indian Ocean, crossing the border, and then it crosses the three major powers of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, spreading out 743,330 square kilometers of this vast expanse of lushness.
A forest hut in the jungle on the banks of the Kinabadang River
Kalimantan, the world's third largest island and asia's largest island, has a perennial rainforest climate that makes the island hot and humid, which in Sanskrit means "hot island". And I prefer her other name, Borneo, which, like "Java", is throbbing with life in their pronunciation and glyphs, shrouded in mystery and strangeness. It is the only island in the world that belongs to three countries, but it is more like a secret place in the world.
Borneo morning fog, different moments of different colors
I almost flew into the Borneo rainforest, and I was received by the guide Buen Buen, who was as dark and thin as most tropical races, not strong, but with the agility unique to the natives of the rainforest, and the black eyes in the deep hollow eye sockets were shining, even in the jungle in the dark, he could quickly identify the flashing animals, I think more with the help of the light in these eyes. "I grew up on the banks of the Kinabadang River." The first sentence of clumsy self-introduction replaced the name with the place of origin, and in his eyes there was no name more proud than Borneo, and it was no wonder that there was always such a light in those eyesight, like the sunlight filtered by the rainforest. Stupid is the translated name I gave him privately, this name is so unfair to him, he is not stupid, he is simply very clever. Possessing a wealth of and systematic biological knowledge and ability to survive in the wild, he was one of the BBC film team's lead guides in Borneo and found rare animals endemic to Borneo, such as pygmy elephants, orangutans and proboscis monkeys along the Kinabatang River.
My guide and I were stupid and photographed in The Mantong Cave in Borneo
"Put it on, and then you're going." At 6 a.m., Clumsy appeared on time at the door of the humble restaurant on the riverbank, and he handed me a pair of tall rubber rain boots. Borneo is rainy all year round, and July is the dry season for the rainforest, but in the afternoon and midnight, heavy rains still arrive as scheduled. The forest after the rain is muddy, and the rain boots are the best tool for hiking, in addition to the thin mud, it is necessary to stop the fire ant, and the bite of the fire ant is as painful as being burned by a soldering iron, and in the Borneo rainforest, these miniature demons may come out of any crevice.
Fire ants, biting people as painful as fire
There are no four seasons in the tropical rainforest climate, only dry and rainy seasons. Borneo has a tropical rainforest climate and is rainy throughout the year, with July and August being the wettest month
I put on my rain boots and followed clumsily into the rainforest. Saying that it is "drilling in", in fact, we are originally in the rain forest, but the bushes above our heads are getting denser and denser. If you take a helicopter to overlook Borneo, the huge rainforest converges into a bottomless thick green, the KinabatangAn River is like a water snake meandering, and the evaporation of the rainforest vapor is shrouded in the sky, which is difficult to see;
Overlooking Borneo (part of Sandakan), the Kinabatangan River is the first longest river in Sabah and the third longest river in Malaysia, winding through tropical jungle
Hiking in the rainforest, people lose all sense of space, all they can see is the dense canopy of the rainforest, tropical vines and trees are intertwined into insurmountable barricades, and they are "ignorant of the true face of Brahma, only in this forest". It seems that no matter what the perspective, the whole picture of this 14 million-year-old, the world's oldest rainforest cannot be seen clearly. This 700,000 square kilometers of secret land is the habitat of 15,000 species of flowers, 3,000 species of trees, 221 species of terrestrial mammals, 420 species of birds and tens of thousands of insects, which is the most ecologically rich place on the earth, she has thousands of forms and appearances, only by opening up the layers of dense forest, it is possible to see the tip of the iceberg of her face.
Borneo's king flower, the largest flower in the world, has a beautiful flower but a foul smell
Nepenthes borneo traps insects by secreting scents, and when the insects slip to the bottom, they secrete liquid to drown the insects and break them down and absorb them
I was followed by stupidity, completely lost in this green maze, and from time to time nervously patted my head and back with my hands, always feeling that something had crawled on my body. Clumsily and confidently walking forward, this man was like some kind of high-order creature in Borneo, from a horse between the cracks of the trees to a long-tailed macaque in the canopy, which could not escape his keen eyes. The sun gradually lifted into the air, and the sunlight stuck between the tiny crevices in the canopy, unable to touch the ground, only flickering overhead. The whole jungle suddenly awakened like an elf, full of flashes of light, and these elven lights also awakened thousands of life hidden in it.
Sunlight filters through the shining light and shadow formed by the rainforest
Under the guidance of stupidity, on closer inspection, almost every inch of the jungle is throbbing with life. Picking up a branch to pick up the grass, a large patch of red immediately scattered and faded into oily green, fixed on a closer look at a large group of fire ants scattered and escaped, the escape route passed my rain boots, I kicked and stomped my feet like a tap dance; I was afraid to lean back against a large tree, but unexpectedly a snake was coiled on the branches of the head, and the coral red and black skin released a vicious beauty. "Striped kukri, non-venomous." Stupid looked at me and laughed, Borneo has set up too many organs for those who want to explore its mysteries, and trying to pass the level is a great test of physical strength and psychology.
The eight-line small-headed snake has brilliant colors and is actually a non-venomous snake
Also laughing at me was the southern pig-tailed macque in the canopy, a fat monkey who was a master of coconut picking and was therefore also called a coconut monkey, standing on the trunk of the tree and looking down, with an almost sarcastic expression on his face.
Southern guinea-tailed macaque in the canopy
I stomped on the gnomes like huge round dung mounds mixed with mud, mosquitoes like a moving cloud, and on the dark clouds there were constantly large birds with machete-like beaks skimming by – the Borneo hornbill, which is also the national bird of Malaysia.
Malaysia's national bird, the hornbillon
From the ground to the trunks of trees to the sky, life is everywhere. No wonder people can't see her true face, her face exists in this variety of life, she can't stand any kind of deduction, interpreting the philosophy of one flower and one world. Life depicts her unparalleled vitality with its multitude of creatures, bringing the whole jungle to life. Stop and listen quietly, the insect wings, the birds chirping, the sound of various mammals mixed into a pulse-like beating sound, the way to open Borneo may be better than listening than snooping, once you understand this sound, it means that Borneo has revealed its heart to you - she is the pulse of the earth.
Borneo is full of amazing animals, pictured: the red squirrel, with a leather wing leading edge that can glide
Horned frogs, with the color of dead leaves, are masters of camouflage
The shrew, with wing membranes from the neck to the tail, can glide up to 60 meters and is the largest gliding mammal
Clumsy walked along inspecting the ground and the trees, his glowing eyes always discerning something in the messy marks. He suddenly trotted up, turned and waved for me to follow. As he ran, he glanced up at the treetops, not looking at the road beneath his feet, but deftly straddling the piles of dung and misplaced roots on the ground. I stepped on his footprints and struggled to keep up, when suddenly he raised his hand to signal me to stop, and he raised his finger and slowly pointed to a tree. I half-squinted, but I saw nothing, only that the light coming out of his eyes had never been so bright. He gently pulled me to his place and gently shook his fingers. I raised my camera to point it at the spot he was pointing, and momentarily opened my mouth wide, afraid to make a sound.
In my slightly shaky shot, a big cat is creeping in the treetops. In the dense foliage, it is difficult for me to judge its body length, but I can clearly see that the big cat's gray fur is dotted with black irregular patches, and the huge claws characteristic of felines are supporting the branches. It was lying lazily in the tree, as if it were also looking at us, and like it was snoozing. I grabbed the clumsy arm, and I felt him tremble with excitement.
This is a clouded leopard!
I had an urge to cry. The forces of nature are often the momentum of shaking the earth, but occasionally they turn into another subtle stirring that opens the knot of tears. Perhaps in the face of the beauty of nature, people's limited expression is too pale and boring, and they can only talk about their state of mind with tears. Sunda Clouded Leopard, Borneo's most mysterious and rare animal. When the BBC team led a group of explorers to sleep in Borneo for 6 weeks without finding animals, they were actually encountered by a tourist, which was the tears of a violent creature. I still remember the frustrated look on Steve Backshall's face as he flipped through the results of the camera. The Sunda clouded leopard is found only in the lowland rainforests below 1500 m above sea level in Borneo and Sumatra, with a total number of adult individuals not exceeding 10,000. In my Malaysian state of Sabah, there are about 1500-3200 clouded leopards, of which only 275-585 are in protected areas, which means that an average of 100 square kilometers of clouded leopards appear in this rainforest. And this solitary animal is haunted, snoozing in the trees during the day and coming down at night to forage for food. In Borneo, where the world has the highest rate of rainforest degradation, clouded leopards are in a dwindling number of rainforests, which has led to fewer and fewer clouded leopards becoming less and less difficult to find, and in 2015, the Sunda clouded leopard was listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. The male clouded leopard got up slightly, glanced at the two uninvited guests standing under the tree with a silly face, and continued to immerse themselves in its comfortable sleep. We slowly stepped back to avoid disturbing it. Instead of rushing back, Clumsy arranged for me to go to a nearby camp, where he and another guide walked into the dense forest and did not return until sunset.
"Come with me!" Clumsy and another guide held a flashlight, and joined in another group of people from the camp. I followed Clumsy back to where I saw the clouded leopard during the day. Despite the darkness and indistinguishability around me, the smell and inexplicable atmosphere convinced me that this was my lucky spot during the day. I was caught in a group of people, following the traveling companions in front of me in the dark. Clumsy raised his flashlight and lit up a tree trunk. There is another clouded leopard on the trunk!
This clouded leopard is noticeably smaller than the daytime one, and it is a female clouded leopard. As an independent species isolated from other clouded leopards, the Sunda clouded leopard has obvious differences in genetic sequence from other clouded leopards in Southeast Asia, and the most significant shape of this gene difference is reflected in the body size and pattern. Sunda clouded leopards are smaller than other clouded leopards, weighing between 12-26 kilograms, and they have a darker pattern, which gives Sunda clouded leopards excellent camouflage in the dark.
When night falls, the clouded leopard changes its laziness during the day and transforms into a well-built predator. It stared at us alertly, grinning open to reveal its strangely long canine teeth. The Sunda clouded leopard has 5 cm long canine teeth, making it the cat with the highest proportion of canine tooth skulls of any cat, making it the deadliest weapon of this impenetrablely evolved population in nature.
The ratio of canine teeth to skull of the clouded leopard is the largest among cats
It wandered through the forest like a ghost, leaping from the treetops, jumping to the ground, and then suddenly disappearing, and when it found it again, it had sneaked up to another tree, coming and going silently. All of us, including our guide, were stunned, and I think the same expression must have been the same when the biologist Georges Cuvier received a picture of a clouded leopard from the French biologist Pierre Medard Diard from Java to the National Museum of Nature in France. In honor of Daiyard's discovery, Cuvier named the Sunda clouded leopard Dai's clouded leopard. Regrettably, the Sunda clouded leopard on the island of Java has become extinct, while the rate of degradation of borneo's rainforest has dropped from 75% in the mid-1980s to 52% in 2005, and Indonesia's plan to relocate its capital to Borneo will further exacerbate the survival of the clouded leopard.
After the beautiful clouded leopard made a cat-like cry at us (the clouded leopard's hyoid bone hardened and could not make a majestic roar like a leopard), it disappeared into the night and never reappeared. It is like an illusion, flashing in this magical land, skimming my memory lightly, in the darkness, I try to recall its appearance, but I find that there is no deep imprint in the memory, but for all those in the world who expect to witness its traces, these precious tens of seconds are already a million years.
Returning to camp from the Jungle of Borneo in the darkness of the night, I never had a nervous slap on my head again—even if any creature climbed on top of me, I could face it calmly. The strange thing is that in the dark night, I can see more clearly what Borneo looks like, in this magical secret place, every inch of land is life, these lives, no matter how big or small, are connected to a blood vein between Borneo, and the shroud of the night just highlights the shape and sound of this blood vein beating, which is the natural sound of all things, and the pulse of the earth.
The starry sky of Borneo