An interesting travel article on Sabah from the UK's Independent Online Edition:
Deep in the ancient rainforest of Borneo, Juliet Clough finds that eco-tourism is healing the ravages of decades of logging - and revealing a natural wonderland.
The sound of tortured wood still fractures my dreams. That, and the silence that followed. On a Danum Valley ridge, deep in the Borneo rainforest, I had stopped to admire a particularly fine tree, its buttress roots encrusted with ants' nests. The couple with me took photographs. According to the guide, the tree, a huge dipterocarp, would be some 150 years old.
The sound of tortured wood still fractures my dreams. That, and the silence that followed. On a Danum Valley ridge, deep in the Borneo rainforest, I had stopped to admire a particularly fine tree, its buttress roots encrusted with ants' nests. The couple with me took photographs. According to the guide, the tree, a huge dipterocarp, would be some 150 years old.
The sound of tortured wood still fractures my dreams. That, and the silence that followed. On a Danum Valley ridge, deep in the Borneo rainforest, I had stopped to admire a particularly fine tree, its buttress roots encrusted with ants' nests. The couple with me took photographs. According to the guide, the tree, a huge dipterocarp, would be some 150 years old.
The sound of tortured wood still fractures my dreams. That, and the silence that followed. On a Danum Valley ridge, deep in the Borneo rainforest, I had stopped to admire a particularly fine tree, its buttress roots encrusted with ants' nests. The couple with me took photographs. According to the guide, the tree, a huge dipterocarp, would be some 150 years old.
Moments later, the world changed; 20m down the path we froze, rooted in our tracks by the prolonged shriek of splitting timber. Some 80m overhead, the forest canopy shifted ominously as, in slow motion, a portion of sky grew wider. Uncertain about which way the tree would fall, none of us moved. The crash, when it came, snapped off trees and shook the ground under our feet. For a few seconds, the whistling, chatter and buzz of birds, monkeys and cicadas ceased.
