It’s magical when the morning sun breaks through the blue light in the rainforest’s pillar hall and lights everything in a radiant golden glow, while gibbons howl in a family concert and the resonant calls of the great argus pheasant make the forest vibrate. Borneo’s rainforests are considered among the oldest in the world, with a plant and animal life that is extraordinarily unique. The Bornean orangutan, Bornean elephant, proboscis monkey, hornbills, flying squirrels, and flying frogs are just some of the many animals that will fascinate you on this journey to the province of Sabah in northern Malaysian Borneo. Here, you will have the chance to photograph animals and plants—often up close—that you may have only dreamed of seeing before.

With many years of experience and local knowledge, we have created a program that visits Sabah’s top natural gems, beginning immediately with some of its most charismatic wildlife icons.

SEPILOK
Our first destination is Sepilok. Here you’ll find the world’s most famous orangutan rehabilitation center. It also attracts wild orangutans from the area who often come to visit. They live completely free here and can come and go as they please. Here, we’ll have good chances to photograph orangutan mothers with their young as they are trained for a life of freedom. Right next to the orangutan center is another rehabilitation center—this one for the unique sun bears that have been confiscated from illegal trade and captivity. They now enjoy a much better, more natural life here compared to what they’ve previously endured. Many of them are later released into protected rainforest once they’ve learned to fend for themselves in the wild.

Our next stop is a mangrove forest with groups of proboscis monkeys. A unique project is underway here to protect this distinctive-looking species. The proboscis monkey is, like many other animal and plant species in Borneo, endemic, meaning it is found nowhere else in the world. This location typically offers great photographic opportunities and chances for close encounters with these monkeys.
In the evening, we’ll embark on our first night walk in the rainforest to search for nocturnal animals and birds. We hope to spot creatures such as tarsiers, slow lorises, flying squirrels, frogs, and more. This is when we’ll begin practicing the exciting low-light photography techniques that we’ll use throughout the rest of the trip during other night walks.

KINABATANGAN RIVER
We’ll spend one extra morning with the orangutans in Sepilok. Before leaving the area, we’ll also photograph from the treetops via a unique canopy walkway.
Then the journey continues to the Kinabatangan River. Here, we’ll explore the river by boat over four days, searching for proboscis monkeys, orangutans, saltwater crocodiles, hornbills, several species of kingfishers and herons—and perhaps most of all, some of the family groups of Bornean elephants, a subspecies of the Asian elephant. The Bornean elephant lives and thrives in the riverside forests. To increase our chances of finding the elephants and large wild male orangutans, we’ve allocated four days here.
We’ll also take night-time boat trips and visit the area above the Gomantong Cave, which is home to over 2 million bats. This offers excellent opportunities to photograph them as they pour out of the cave in an endless stream—almost like a river in the sky—to begin their nightly hunt. These bats attract birds of prey, and if we’re lucky, we might capture the hunt on camera.

TABIN NATURE RESERVE
Next, we’ll travel by minibus to the large Tabin Nature Reserve, covering 150,000 hectares. It is known for its many visible nocturnal animals (insects, frogs, civets, and possibly even a leopard cat). Several hornbill species live in the trees around the lodge, and the hairy-nosed otter is regularly seen in the river in front of our rooms. Tabin also has a gibbon family that often stays near the lodge.

DANUM VALLEY CONSERVATION AREA
Finally, it’s time for a visit to the Danum Valley Conservation Area, the heart of a forest reserve with 1 million hectares of protected land—one of the world’s most unique rainforests. This untouched ancient dipterocarp forest is awe-inspiring in its vastness and beauty, offering a true rainforest wilderness experience.
We’ll stay at one of the world’s top nature lodges—the Borneo Rainforest Lodge—which is also where the BBC bases itself when filming in Borneo’s rainforest.
Over two days, we’ll explore the easily walkable and well-developed trail system with the help of expert trackers, looking for species such as orangutans, red leaf monkeys, tarsiers, reptiles, hornbills, and many fascinating insects and plants.
Night walks can bring sightings of owls, frogs, stick insects, sleeping birds, and a variety of small mammals.