Flirting with the globe in search of the unusual, we’ve opted for a far-flung adventure on the world’s third largest island of Borneo. The exotic name tickles our travel taste buds, and conjuring up images of ancient rainforests, orangutans, and ethnic tribes; the mysterious island sounds like a wonderful broth of intrigue.
However, our initial gung ho exuberance rapidly wanes during our quest for a room in Banjarmasin. Locals who provide lodging have the rigmarole of reporting this to police, which requires both filling out detailed forms and paying them what’s called ‘cigarette money’. The result is that we are repeatedly shunned during a hunt for a room, and if there was a market for frustration Christine and I could sell franchises!
During our exasperating search we use a ‘becak’, a three-wheel cycle/rickshaw combo with passengers seated in front of the person pedaling to take the brunt of any collision. Going face first into the turmoil of traffic on the lawless streets, with ignored traffic lights blinking uselessly, we clutch our backpacks in front of us as a shield, praying we don’t end up an integral part of somebody’s front bumper!
Shrouded in the moist mist of dawn we boat the Barito River to a massive floating market, with vendors shaded by straw Tanggui hats selling an array of wares from fish to firewood, and plants to pots and pans; all stacked high in dugout canoes that act as floating stores.
Our plan is to work northwards to Samarinda and trek to the home of the Dayak tribe in the remote Apo Kayan area. But to our chagrin, this is torpedoed by two American doctors recently returning from the region. They inform us of an epidemic of Cholera devastating the villages, and since neither of us have our Cholera shots, it’s an easy decision to probe the globe elsewhere. Our spur of the moment ‘Plan B’ is a flight to the isolated destination of Tana Toraja on the orchid-shaped of island of Sulawesi.
We reach the fascinating cultures of the Torajan people by taking an 11 hour, 328 km journey in a bus that looks as if it’s been around since back when the earth was cooling! Waylaid by a mudslide in the jungle, the percussion of rain assaulting the bus sounds like a truckload of marbles being dumped on the roof, but late evening, amid a roaring thunder and lightning prowling the sky, we arrive in the village of Rantepao.
The fascinating Torajan houses and rice barns are unlike anything we have ever seen; proudly adorned with buffalo horns and perched atop wooden piles with saddleback roofs. Watched by giant fruit bats, we resort to a cold rainwater shower to sluice away our patina of bus dust.
We’re stunned to learn that when a tribe member dies, the mummified remains are kept by the deceased’s family in their homes, often for years, until enough money can be put away to arrange for a proper funeral. In the meantime, the body’s skin and flesh are preserved from decay and they are treated as if they’re sick, not dead. Traditionally, the corpses are even cuddled and invited to lunch on a daily basis.
With one of the sacrificial ‘Death Feast’ ceremonies happening nearby we decide to check it out. The gory event involves the butchery of animals as Torajans believe the animal’s soul will follow their masters into heaven. The more important the person, the greater the number of sacrifices required.
Trussed up pigs have a knife plunged into their heart and the blood-thirsty executioner jumps on it to hasten the bleeding-out. Buffalo with predetermined fates are tethered by a leg to a stake, before a powerful double-handed slash of a machete opens their throats; and amid the beasts’ dreadful bellows and terror filled eyes, young lads become ghoulishly accessorized with crimson using sections of bamboo to catch geysers of spurting arterial blood. The corpses are piling up, and with the barbaric slaughter drawing more blood than the Red Cross, Christine and I quietly make our getaway.
Our hike continues to the village of Pallawa, known for its large rice barns and giant fruit bats that locals call ‘flying dogs’. The furry freaks feast on the fruits of the forest at night, and return at dawn to rest and digest their bounty. Hiding Chihuahua-like heads inside the leathery membranes of stilled wings, the creatures of cluster dangle upside down from tree branches looking like grotesque Christmas ornaments.
Next up on the trek is Lemo, another village known for its peculiar death rituals. Carved out of jackfruit wood because its yellowish wood best resembles human skin, effigies of the dead called ‘tau-taus’ peer down from funerary niches cut into sheer rock cliffs. The silent sentinels are considered as guardians of the tomb, and act as a reminder they are ever-present to protect the living.
Brushing aside our angst we forge on in the equatorial heat along a jungle trail alive with vivid butterflies and endlessly fascinating insects. In a beautiful bamboo forest a natural swimming hole on the river with crystal-clear water beckons us in for a skinny dip. That is of course, until noticing some ugly-ass eels of impressive proportions slithering menacingly along the bottom. The slippery mud-dwellers give us the creeps, and their river tenancy squashes our enthusiasm for even a toe-dip!
Last on todays’ tropical trudge is the remote village of Londa, where as usual we are the only outsiders. Without a word a villager approaches and offers a small lantern, motioning toward a footpath leading to the burial caves. Pushing the edge of edgy, Christine and I venture into a spooky darkness drenched in silence.
Together but alone, we crawl on all fours through a passage from one dark dank cavern to another. A fist-sized spider scampers past in the flickering light causing us to shudder, and we try to suppress overly active imaginings while scanning the cave’s floor for any other cringe-inducing shapes we do not want to see.
Tomb it may concern, it feels as if we are starring in our own Indiana Jones movie in the blackness of the cave; maneuvering about rotting coffins and mummified corpses spookily booby-trapped with cobwebs and dressed in dust. At one point our intestines become unraveled by the macabre skeletal remains of an old woman staring up at us from an open coffin through a pair of thick dusty glasses!
Within minutes I do a week’s worth of cardio as the clingy spokes of a spider web brush against my face and instantly turn me into a Karate Master! Suffering an attack of the heebie-jeebies and a crippling claustrophobia in the morgue-like gloom, we wriggle away from the cadavers and back out to daylight; ending a morbid entombment capable of raising any adrenaline junkie’s pulse!
After our thrilling week of adventures in Sulawesi, a monsoonal storm begins turning mountain roads into muddy quagmires and we’re off like a bucket of prawns in the noonday sun! Safely back in Ujung Pandang we book a flight to Bali, knowing we’ll find a deep kindliness far less prevalent on other Indonesian islands. Lazing about Suji Bungalow’s pool in Bali soaking up the sizzling heat like an iguana, I believe I’ve found my true calling. But after only a week of sun-induced stupor, we’re already missing the pulse of excitement from our Sulawesi escapades, and are keen to see what other ‘derring-do’ we can muster up.
Reading about a primitive tribe residing in the Baliem Valley of New Guinea excites us, as it’s on the world’s largest jungle island and one of the last truly wild places on earth. Seeking info about Irian Jaya, we keep hearing it is unsafe to visit, but luckily we meet a Belgian couple recently returning from there who warn us of the difficulties we’re likely to encounter, but offer encouragement. That’s all we need to hear, count us in!
Seeking lodging in Jayapura with our guts in a gastronomic grumble and darkness masking the town, we find ourselves shadowed by some deranged nutter. We try avoiding him but annoyingly he keeps coming back. Finally having had more than enough of the asshole boomerang, I turn and confront him. Locals rush over to intervene, and in Pidgin English inform us that the wackadoodle lost his mind many moons ago. While they restrain him, we quicken our pace to get away from the kerfuffle and continue the aggravating hunt for a bed. Being dogged by the town’s madman is not exactly an inducement for us to stay!
Unfortunately, we’re waylaid for two long days in Jayapura’s melting 40° heat while awaiting a special permit called a ‘surat jalan’ needed to travel to Wamena. Once we have permits in hand, we leave before the ink is dry and head to the lakeside town of Sentani to sort out ongoing transport to our isolated destination. Outside our rustic bungalow, a helicoptering swarm of dragonflies beating the air into submission quickly scatters as a poacher slinks out of the forest. In his fists are the startlingly beautiful plumages of illegally killed Birds of Paradise, and it’s truly heart-breaking to see these endangered birds as casualties.
New Guinea’s Irian Jaya is one of the most remote places on earth, and our objective is to reach the isolated Baliem Valley. Only accessible by a small plane flying through a gash in the jungle-covered Cyclops Mountains, it is an area that could swallow you up and not spit you out! The tingle of high adventure surges as our twin prop plane begins shedding altitude as it descends into Wamena.
Looking out the plane window we are spellbound by a group of all but naked natives on the dirt runway. Their sole item of attire happens to be a penis gourd, and clutching bow and arrows, they gaze up at our plane as if challenging it to land! As an ear-piercing siren warns them away to avoid a slice and dice by the propellers, thoughts of ‘what the Hell have we got ourselves into’ begin to colonize our minds.
Exiting the plane we’re pointed to a thatched hut, and told to write down our names and nationality in a school notebook. Christine taps me on the shoulder and points towards the huts open windows. Peering in are members of the primitive Dani Tribe with broad flat noses, the curly black hair of a French poodle, and their faces glistening with lard and soot. With their wild-eyed retinas glued to us as if we’re extraterrestrial objects, the realization of just how far off-grid we actually are begins to sink in!
The bone-through-the-nose tribesmen flaunt their maleness with only a hollowed gourd called a ‘koteca’ over their penis, and feeling slightly overdressed, I ask Christine if she thinks I should try and acquire one. With a tilted grin invading her face, my ‘ninth wonder’ turns to me with her calm unruffled demeanor and asks ‘but where would you put your passport?’ Touché my dear. Touché.
Their other native adornments include fancy feathered head-dresses, fur armbands, and shell necklaces. Oh yes, and they also have wild boar tusks stuck through their noses! And if by chance tusk-less, there remains a nose hole just slightly smaller than Madagascar, through which we can gaze at the scenery beyond.
The Dani believe the pig to be their brother, surviving basically on sweet potatoes and pigs. In this mega-weird culture a man’s social status is measured by the number of pigs he owns. Men can have as many wives as they want providing of course the brides can be paid for in pigs; usually four or five per wife.
Faces of the bare-breasted Dani women are encrusted in mud and their wardrobe is simply a short skirt made of orchid fibers and straw worn almost below their butt. Their only other indispensable is a bag woven from bark fiber called a ‘noken’, supported by a strap over a woman’s forehead. It is used for carting stone axes, vegetables, babies, and even baby pigs; and when empty it can also be worn over the shoulders and back to provide extra warmth in the cool of the evenings.
Only recently emerged from the Stone Age the Dani are notorious for pagan rituals, which to us are more of a mystery than the Abominable Snowman. For example, upon the death of a man’s parent, the man pulls a ‘Vince’ and lops off the top of an ear. Likewise, when a family member dies, females mourn by voluntarily amputating a finger segment with a stone axe. In this practice called ‘Ikipalin’, the severed section is then either burned to ashes or worn around the neck to satisfy ancestral ghosts!
One woman holds her hands up to us as if at gunpoint, proudly showing off mutilated hands with six of her ten digits reduced to bulbous nubs. Now I’m not a bookmaker, but I reckon this freakish village has a Popsicle’s chance in hell of ever becoming a spawning ground for sensational female pianists! To us, the Dani’s abhorrent ritual of appendage chopping and other acts of ‘what-the-fuckery’ make about as much sense as a submarine with screen doors; but then we are simply visitors to this incredible land of intrigue!
Exploring a forgotten corner of the map, we trek through Baliem Valley to Kurulu, a village about as remote as world peace. The huts are enclosed by a corral of sharpened tree branches, but with fear and fascination holding hands, we warily step inside. Spooky, near-naked bodies approach us through a smoky haze coming from a massive fire pit in the ground. The unwelcoming faces are likely suspicious of what new tribe has just intruded, but fingers crossed, they’re not considering Christine and I as ingredients for a native stew!
The men look menacing with wild unkempt hair and coal black eyes staring out from soot-blackened faces, and the women have body and face smeared in a mustard colored mud. This jolt of adrenaline is the kind of exhilarating encounter that leaves you speechless and then turns you into a storyteller!
While we’re trying to determine who’s who in the zoo, a brain-bending event occurs. Christine and I suddenly make the acquaintance of a blackened human mummy dragged out from one of the tribe’s mud huts! We’re unsure of an appropriate reaction towards the crispy carbonized corpse, as the macabre encounter is both creepy and exhilarating in just the right proportions!
The Dani were engaged in headhunting and cannibalism as recently as 1968, when they chopped up and ate two missionaries from Australia and America. But fortunately, having not eaten anyone in the last 23 years, they appear to view us as simply an exotic rarity rather than lunch! In a child-like manner the tribe inquisitively wants to touch our cadaver-colored skin, and it feels as if we’ve reached the end of the earth.
Looking for a bamboo bridge one day while hiking along the river we spot one of the Dani tribesmen, and point across the river hoping he might show us the direction of the bridge. However, in a lovely gesture the fellow quickly begins stacking rocks in the river for us to use as stepping stones, so we can cross while staying dry! During our wanders throughout the remote valley we’ve developed a fondness for these former fearsome cannibals who now show only kindness, and find it disheartening that they are a vanishing breed.
Trying to ensure that plane and treacherous Baliem Valley terrain do not meet, pilots make no attempt to fly in or out of the valley unless weather conditions are perfect. In order to leave, we are required to write our names down at the tiny dirt airfield in another school notebook serving as a rudimentary waiting list to fly out whenever the notoriously unreliable weather decides to cooperate.
Knowing we are never going to experience anything like New Guinea’s astonishing Baliem Valley ever again, we feel incredibly privileged for all the National Geographic-like and ‘remember when’ moments. This has been the adventure of a lifetime in these strange and exotic lands known as ‘The Last Frontier’.
Mark H. Colegrave 1991