Orangutans Tanjung Puting- trip report Oct 2013
Thanks to Caroline, Carlos, Tineke, Rosemary, Mark, Paula and Liz for being so lovely and making this a blissful week. My internet access is limited at the mo but there’s a few photos from this trip below (click on any photo to view them larger). As always our daily orangutan encounters were spectacular, but I’ve mainly chosen a few photos of the other wildlife we saw to illustrate the biodiversity of these forests. Between us we raised another few thousand pounds for the Orangutan Foundation from this trip. Conservation rarely works without local people having a stake in what is after all their land and the Orangutan Foundation very much work with people based projects too. We also visited a village during our time in Borneo with each participant bringing a selection of gifts including tooth brushes, tooth paste, colouring books, pens, pencils and clothes. The children of the village gathered for our arrival and sang a song about orangutans to welcome us, which was very moving. But before we handed out the presents they asked if we would sing a song in return which threw us slightly ! What should we sing ? What song did we even all know ? Luckily Carlos came to the rescue with the idea of Old Macdonald had a farm and we sang three verses with pigs, chickens and cows which seemed to go down well … although it might be a tad early for us to enter X Factor I think. For information of my future orangutan holidays click here.