Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo

You don't find many current travel writers heading off to the tropical rain forest of Borneo. I'm still not really sure why Hansen headed there. He seemed to like this place, despite deadly snakes, really inadequate toilet facilities, awful food (he mentions eating rotten fish many times), and scary tribal people. Maybe you gotta be there.

Edit: 29/12/16 - Best Travel Non-Fiction read of 2016.

Eric Hansen's memoir of his travel across the wilds of Borneo. In 1983, hardwood timber prices had just doubled twice in 3 years, and there was significant felling underway on the coastal perimeters, but it had not yet pushed its way inland and to the highlands. On the best map he could find, Hansen found large blank areas, with the words ‘insufficient reliable relief data available'. These were located on his planned route.

His goal, was to travel from Sarawak on the West Coast, across the highlands to the East Coast and the Celebes Sea. He had a lot of preparations to make, and some false starts. Leaning the trade goods appropriate for his journey, learning the language, understanding the culture, were all equally important.

His journey is told relative simply, and honestly. He introduces the tribesmen and women he travels or temporarily settles with well, his writing conjures the images, and picks up on the character traits well. For me, it makes compelling reading.

Its not spoiler, as it is signalled on the dust jacket, but 137km into his journey, a mere days journey from the Celebes Sea, Hansen falters. He stops walking, and has a realisation. He can be back in San Francisco in under a week - but he realises he isn't ready to go home. He stops his eastward journey, and heads back to the west. He decides to undertake the return journey to Sarawak.

I have a particular compulsion to read books on Borneo. For me it was always a exotic destination I wanted to travel to - jungles, headhunters, longhouses, semi-nomadic tribes living an almost stone-aged existence. Many of those iconic images we conjure up are no longer, destroyed by the three-pronged pressure of hardwood logging, palm oil plantations and missionaries. For me there is no one of three worse, or better than the others. I did manage some travel in Borneo over the years - nothing as ambitious as Eric Hansen of course, but I did manage to visit a handful of the places he spent time and writes about in this book. For me it was fascinating to read about how they were, and to know what had changed at the time I was there. I dread to think how they have further changed now.

Bario, in the highlands was the most poignant for me to read about. In his epilogue, Hansen is lamenting the progression of logging roads in Borneo generally - bulldozers giving access for the logging trucks. He mentions in passing that “the network of roads expands closer to the highlands of Bario”. By the time I was there, the road was not only formed, but there was a contract underway to widen and seal the road to Bario.

Great book, 5 out of 5 for me.