I always love seeing the lush green forest, and river. And i think Tanjung Puting National Park is a very lovely place to visit. Not just to getaway from my mundane environment but also to understand more of the flora, fauna, wildlife and environment.

It is thrilling to enter this park, as it is one of the so called lung of the earth. Cruising through the Sikonyer river, passing nipah trees, pandan trees and some vegetation can be seen from the river. In the afternoon, those proboscis monkey or locally known as bekantan can be seen enjoying afternoon from tree branches. Not only that, macaque sometimes busy eating nipah’s fruit and birds roaming.

Orangutan which attract mainly visitors to come can be seen at feeding area. Usually the tour will include visiting the 3 feeding area, at Tanjung Harapan, Pondok Tangguy and Camp Leaky. Those orangutan can be seen there are semi wild, which once was rehabilitated and then released to the jungle. As the orang utan from rehabilitation is different and automatically could not compete with wild orangutan, feeding is still ongoing.  Beside this will make any disease that maybe will be spreaded through contact from semi-wild to the wild ones. 

The feeding station just located about 1 KM from the camp located at the river bank, which can be reached by about 30-45 minutes walk.  It is such a privilege watching this big apes in their habitat  from close distance. They swing from branch to another and especially when seeing how attached the young orangutan is very clingy to their mother.

The very informative station of Camp Leaky is very interesting. That it can take a while for me to read carefully to learn and understand more about orangutan,  other wildlife, the forest, the research. Camp Leaky was established in 1971 by Dr Birute Galdikas and her former spouse Rod Brindamour and it was named after legendary paleo-anthropologist, Louis Leaky, the mentor and inspiration for Dr. Galdikas.

Other memorable experience at Tanjung Puting National Park was the night we dock the boat nearby nipah tree was were full of fireflies. The whole night was magical with the twinkling bugs. I could not remember when was the last time i saw fireflies, maybe twenty years ago.  According to the guide, few years back, the fireflies was along the river every night. And now, only they are only in some Nipah trees, due to firest and the carbon of the fire affect the fireflies.

Sekonyer River was clear black in color all along. Now the down stream is brown, and it is said to be the effect of mining activities. But upstream is still well preserved. I love the color of the river, so clear and black. The black color was due to the acid from the leaves of the jungle.