Completing a trio of blogs by friends who came to visit me in the jungle, Casper, Caroline, Laura and Titiaan share their experience.

Borneo was as distant an idea for us as it was geographically far away. A chance invitation meant that we found ourselves flying out from Bangalore, London and Boston to join Matt for three beautiful days in the jungle.

Laura and Casper watch a male orangutan

It was a leap of faith in many ways: travelling into the wild with very little expectations and little knowledge about what the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project really does. And yet, a leap into what guaranteed to be an unforgettable experience. Whatever expectations we all went in with, they were so far exceeded by the reality of our time there: it was wilder than we expected, more mysterious than we imagined, and absolutely awe-inspiring to be so close to our primate relatives.

Left to right: Laura, Caroline, Casper, Titiian

So – here are the five things we’re grateful for from our trip to visit OuTrop:

1. We are grateful to have experienced true wildness, unlike anything we had ever felt before. While the old logging railway tracks showed us that man had passed through for many years, felling trees and eventually letting them return, when we stepped off the trail, it really felt like some places we could have been – or were – the first humans to be present. It was so incredible to feel so completely in another creature’s element. We walked for hours through the land of the gibbons in order to see them. In some ways, it felt like the necessary rite of passage to truly appreciate how carefree they seemed as they effortlessly swung through the trees. We had walked through an ecosystem our bodies just weren’t designed for – mud and swamp and spiky ground plants – in order to enter their world. They had such incredible confidence that the next branch will be there, knowing which branches wouldn’t break but just bend enough to let them reach the next tree.
2. We leave grateful to have seen a live, wild, incredible orangutan, up in a tree just a few meters away! With magical just-like-mine hand-feet and feet-hands! With big eyes and huge lips! That I could see munching away on tree leaves!
3. We are grateful to have been up before the sunrise to watch the day begin, with birds and primates coming to life in the trees around us, through mist and leaves. We are grateful to have seen such intense shades of green, such diversity of trees appear as the mist cleared. We are grateful to have been in the presence of a guide passionate about birds, such that every moment felt special – something was calling or flying by or resting in a tree nearby at any moment!
4. We are grateful for the wonderful welcome we received from the OuTrop team, both in the office and in camp. All of them looked after us, and
5. We are grateful to have been pushed to think about hard questions: how the global economy is driving palm oil production, which in turn is driving deforestation; what solutions look like for local communities who don’t feel every day the ecosystem services of these jungles; what the impact on climate change would be on these forests and what the impact of these forests are on the global climate. I am particularly grateful to have seen one inspiring example of what that could look like in OuTrop’s own work. It made these questions that so often leave me depressed with a ray of hope. And, for this hope, and this experience, we will be ever grateful.