Tanjung Puting National Park

Tanjung Puting covers about four thousand square kilometres of peat swamp, heath and lowland forest on the southern coast of Kalimantan, and the way to see it is by klotok - a wooden riverboat that becomes your accommodation, chugging up the Sekonyer with mattresses laid on the roof deck and meals cooked aboard, tying up at night in the forest. Camp Leakey, established in 1971 by Biruté Galdikas, is the longest-running orangutan research station in the world and is on the itinerary along with two other feeding platforms where rehabilitated and semi-wild orangutans come in. Proboscis monkeys, gibbons and hornbills line the river. The park's pressures are real: illegal gold mining has polluted parts of the Sekonyer, and oil palm presses on the boundaries.

Highlights

• Sleeping on a klotok - the riverboat as transport and accommodation.
• Camp Leakey - the longest-running orangutan research station in the world.
• Feeding platforms - rehabilitated and semi-wild orangutans coming in.
• Proboscis monkeys on the river - the Borneo endemic along the banks at dusk.

When to go

June to September. Three days.

Before you go

Orangutans at feeding platforms are semi-wild and habituated - this is not chance wildlife watching. Mining pollution has discoloured stretches of the Sekonyer. Klotok charters are the main cost.

Nearby

Kumai is the port; Pangkalan Bun has the airport.

Key facts