Mt Kinabalu

We take our lives in our hands and head off in a shared mini-van early Thursday morning for the two hour drive to Mt Kinabalu. The traffic is awful and the road steep and windy with many trucks but the views, even through the mist and low-lying clouds, are still sensational. This huge mountain, with its jagged teeth of granite is a big draw card for most tourists who long to climb to the top of its 4095m peak. I think they are all mad and convince Hugh that we would be much happier walking around the many trails at the Park Headquarters and more to the point see many more birds.

So we have a lovely morning and luckily do see many of the Bornean endemics that our bird book describes including a pretty pale blue Flycatcher and a bright scarlet sunbird, called Temminck’s1 Sunbird. We also see the famous black and green Rajah Brooke’s2 birdwing butterfly and this lovely lavender and blue butterfly pictured which remains unidentified (by us at any rate) as yet. It unusually stood still long enough to be photographed.

It is very cool up here on the mountain and feels strange but pleasant to be walking through rainforest without any humidity. We walk trails that go along some mountain streams and marvel at all the ferns, mosses and lichens that cover the trees. It is only after lunch that the cloud clears a little and we are able to see the mountain up close and I am extremely glad we decided not to climb it!

1Who was this Temminck? – a man, like “Whitehead” and “Horsefield”, who named so many birds in the region. He was Dutch aristocrat and zoologist with an inadequate Wikipedia entry even smaller than my husband’s– see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coenraad_Jacob_Temminck.

2While stuck in various airport lounges I took the time to read “White Rajah”. This is a relatively amusing book about Sir James Brooke, a man of wealth and position, who took it upon himself to build the empire in the region by attacking pirates (some of whom may have been innocent bystanders) and taking a fancy to young native boys. Hugh thinks that homosexuality is surely the reason why the British Empire was great – it was the driving force behind men being away from their wives on boats in the ocean, with other men, and very little to do.