There were many highlights of this trip but the picture on the left reminds me of our experience at Tanjung Harapan. It's one of my favorite parts of Tanjung Puting national park and we first went here on day 2 of this trip. We waited patiently for about an hour without seeing the slightest glimpse of an orangutan. This is actually a good sign as it means that there's plenty of fruit and other foods in the forest so that the orangutans don't need to visit the feeding platform. Good news for the orangutans, bad news for people who've come to see them ! There was another small group of people in the clearing and they decided to leave the forest and head back to their boat just leaving our group behind. We waited another 10 minutes or so and made a decision that soon we would leave and head to another part of the national park. I'd left my camera on its tripod down a path in the forest so I went to get it and on the way back to the group I found a stick insect. I let it crawl onto my hand and showed the group ... it was a fine specimen and they were happy to watch it but the reality was that they had come here to see orangutans ... not stick insects. However a couple of people wanted to photograph it so it delayed us for another 5 minutes or so during which time we heard the unmistakeable russle of trees that meant an orangutan was close by. Over the next hour or so we were then treated to an exceptional wildlife display ... many orangutans (some with babies) arrived and there were periods of time where we didn't know where to look ... just too much mammal action going on all around us !

Thanks to the stick insect we had stayed just that bit longer to see the orangutans but it had also changed our plans for the rest of the day. We were planning to cruise further upsteam that afternoon but ended up slowly chugging back down to Rimba Lodge, enjoying a delicious lunch onboard our Klotok. Mid afternoon is not normally the best time to see Proboscis monkeys but we came across a large group moving through the trees on one side of the river ... and in good enough light for everyone to get some shots of them in mid air.

The other highlight of this trip has to be a very special afternoon at Camp Leakey. So many orangutans with so many very young babies ... and they were so relaxed in our company. We were surrounded by them for some time and when we finally left and wandered up the forest path we were joined by Princess with her baby (pictured) accompanying us back to the main Camp.

For information on future Orangutan trips please visit Orangutan Photo Holiday section.