Sumatra - Holding Hands with Orang-utans

Arriving in Bukit Lawang, the main access point for the Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia, feels a little like finding yourself in the middle of an Indiana Jones film set. The fast-flowing riverside setting flanked with bamboo houses on stilts.....the ramshackle bridges which make crossing the river quite an adventure.....lush jungle crowding in from every angle......it's all here. Luckily, the snapping crocodiles are replaced with naked local children frolicking in the river but still.....the setting makes me feel rather intrepid (even if I can grab a pizza for dinner).

People tend to come here for a single purpose – the orang-utans. And if you want to see an orang-utan in the wild there are only two places on the entire planet where you can do that – Sumatra and Borneo. The dense rainforest here is also home to Sumatran tiger, rhinoceros and elephant although sightings of these animals are rarer than hens' teeth.

A huge rehabilitation programme operates in Bukit Lawang which teaches the once-captive apes how to forage for food, build nests and other survival essentials before returning them back to the jungle; something it has now done more than 200 times. Part of the process is the provision of feeding platforms where semi-independent orang-utans can come and grab a bite to eat if they haven't quite mastered doing it all on their own yet.

These feeding platforms, which are open to the public twice daily, are a 20 minute stroll from the village but what I really wanted to do was get into the jungle proper and see the wild orang-utans.The humidity of the jungle saw each of us in the group drenched within an hour of setting out on our overnight jungle trek. Had I known that this trekking involved negotiating sheer ups and downs with stomach lurching drops made treacherous by rain and hanging onto tree roots and vines (to aid climbing or to dangle from at times), while being assailed by leeches and mosquitoes then I may have had second thoughts. Maybe......at least until I saw my first orang-utan. Nonchalantly lounging in the swing-like seat of a draped liana, this huge male was none too impressed by our presence and let us know by urinating on us as we watched open-mouthed from below. Further orang-utan encounters were to punctuate our day along with sightings of macaques and gibbons and frequent stops for water.

We arrived at our riverside jungle camp hot, tired and happy, pausing just long enough to sling our gear before making for the river to cool down. Within minutes a female orang-utan was making her way up the rock strewn beach, her tiny baby clinging tightly to her chest. This apparently was Jackie. Jackie had been in the jungle wilds for 12 years now but was struggling to rehabilitate back into an environment she had barely known before she was taken as a pet when tiny. As a result she still sought human companionship and easy food whenever the opportunity arose.

Camera flashes exploded as excited group members had their pictures taken cheek by jowl with an orang-utan. Strangely, I found myself moving well away from the huddle, feeling uncomfortable and sad. Here was an animal struggling to find her place in her natural environment and I wasn't sure we were helping. But Jackie – it turned out – wanted to include me. Suddenly heaving her bulk up from where she had settled, she gently pushed and jostled her way through the press of people surrounding her and made a bee-line for me. The action was so deliberate and so obviously premeditated that mine wasn’t the only gasp which escaped when Jackie calmly but decidedly took each of my wrists in each of her hands and plonked herself down in front of me. Baby, with red spiked hair standing comically on end, imitated his mum’s study of me before getting bored and turning his attention to balancing a small stone on his nose instead. My knees were shaking so badly I fell rather than sat on a rock behind me as extreme fear and ecstasy jostled for prime position inside me. Up this close these animals are huge. 

At dawn, as the only one yet awake in camp, I watched what felt like a just-for-me show from Jackie and baby in the trees. Mum had made herself a makeshift umbrella from a large leaf to shelter her head from the rain. Baby imitated the gesture but picked a leaf so small that it wasn’t quite doing the trick. This, along with the baby’s clumsy acrobatics, was both highly comical and heart-rendingly beautiful.

Other camp members began to stir, breakfast got under way but even here things would not be straightforward. The meal was cut somewhat short by a raiding troupe of monkeys who made off with the butter; a metre long monitor lizard watched the proceedings and gibbons whooped their approval from across the river.

I guess that's what you get when you breakfast in the jungle.

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