Ode to Orangutans: Four Days in the Sumatran Jungle
Over 7 years ago, I went to South Africa to work with vervet monkeys, and fell fast and hard into the world of primates. For me, there was no going back. I was hooked on their intelligence, ingenuity and fascinating social interactions. Even after I stopped working with monkeys, I found myself often reading about primate behavior and got especially interested in the great apes.
Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Orangutans and Us. Five species on this planet swarming with life who are all more closely related to each other than anything else. The more I read about them, the more interested I become. We are more alike than we are different. We feel fear, loss, pain, anger, amusement, frustration, curiosity and love. We cooperate, learn from each other and need each other. We can problem solve, create, invent and communicate complex thoughts to each other and to us.
During my many readings, I came across a wonderful book called Among the Great Apes: Adventures on the Trail of Our Closest Relatives, in which the author traveled to some of the most remote locations on earth in search of wild great apes. It was a moving book, highlighting the pressing conservation issues that threaten all four species in a compassionate and complex manner.
As I read, and realized with a low-burning terror just how possible it is that these animals, who are 97-99% human and have so much to teach us, might very well go extinct in my lifetime. I became consumed with a desire to see at least one of them in their natural habitat, before it is too late and for several years it’s been a quietly pressing goal, always in the back of my mind as the thing I absolutely had to do as soon as the circumstances were right.
Well, I have finally accomplished it, and am going to attempt to convey the complexity of my bittersweet thoughts regarding the experience. Since this introduction has already been wordy enough, here’s a one sentence summary for those of you who are getting antsy: It was beautiful and heartbreaking and absolutely perfect. Now you can scroll down for adorable pictures. For anyone else, here goes:
Everyone back home knows that as soon as I decided to make the move to China, I began planning to look for orangutans at the earliest opportunity. This became a more concrete reality in a rather funny manner:
On two separate evenings of imbibing probably a bit too much alcohol out in Beijing, I met my two incredible fellow jungle-trekkers, Hayley and Tayler. Some people go to bars to pick up…Apparently I go to pick up like-minded, adventurous travelers. Both of them turned out to be fabulously nerdy and as interested in wildlife as I am.
Tayler and I excitedly traded stories about our work with primates the night we met, while the people around us cocked their heads in confusion at some of the vocabulary we were using. Another evening, Hayley and I discussed overpopulation, humanity’s role in the extinction of megafauna, the frustrations of trying to explain evolution to those who don’t want to understand it, the finer points of Ishmael and more over beers.
It became clear I’d found the perfect people to embark upon this adventure with and we started excitedly making plans months ago.
Once the tickets were booked, it was still a bit of an effort actually getting there: Three plane rides, one eight hour car ride through narrow, winding mountain passes and then several hours of hauling heavy backpacks through the jungle before my dream was able to come true, but there was lots of fun along the way.
When we arrived at our guesthouse in Ketambe, our host Johan, who has been guiding for several decades, told us he’d be sending us off with his son, Romi, who is in his late teens and is studying forestry at university. We got introduced, with some slight awkwardness and upon asking what we should bring, were told “Not a lot…Sleeping bag. Mattress pad…no cosmetics."
We also, that night, ran into a very drunk middle-aged German man named Stefan, who asked whether he could join our trek. Amused, we said the more the merrier, although we had doubts about what time he would actually surface in the morning. Little did we know, the two of them, plus our two camp tenders/cooks who came along would become an incredible temporary jungle family for the next four days.
We left as much as we could back at the guesthouse, but nevertheless, when we set off the next morning, our bags were still rather heavy.

We walked maybe 100 feet down the road and I figured at some point we’d be hitting a trailhead of some kind to begin the adventure.
Not so. Seemingly out of nowhere, Romi turns off the road and heads straight into the jungle mountainside, and we begin a very steep climb up a ‘path’ less than a foot wide. Within three minutes, I was panting, huffing, puffing and sweating through my shirt. After five way too sedentary months in smoggy Beijing, I was beginning to wonder if I’d gotten in over my head.

Despite the physical challenges though, the hike in to our camp was incredible. Being surrounded by SO MUCH lush, vivid greenery was a sight for sore eyes after the bleak Beijing winter. All around us, the deafening chorus of buzzing insects made it hard to even hear yourself think, let alone hear each other sometimes. As we went along, we stopped frequently to pick up millipedes and huge pill bugs, to photograph fungi and learn about the forest. We passed one tree that was absolutely massive. Romi told us that it was there when his grandfather, the first trekking guide in Ketambe, was a kid. We quickly learned how much love Romi has for the forest he’s grown up in, which has been an important part of his family for decades…he even endearingly refers to it as 'my jungle.'





Another fun (or at least funny?) thing about our initial trek into camp, was how quickly we became acquainted with leeches. They really loved us…especially me. Tayler went a few days before even getting a bite, but within the first hour, Hayley and I lifted up our shirts a little to find three bites along our waistlines…
Then I lifted up mine a little further to find a leech- MUCH MUCH fatter than any of the other leeches we’d been finding sucked on to my belly. I knew I picked my travel companions well as Hayley and I both did the heebie-jeebie dance as I flung it away into the jungle, both cracking up at the same time.
Leeches, despite being pretty gross ended up being one of the most entertaining parts of our trip and I’m not sure most people on this earth would see it that way, so I ended up with the right people. We noticed that if you had one on you and you flung it away, even at a pretty big distance, they would come right back for you like a loyal dog…with a thirst for human blood. They almost always came right for me too and I got way more bites than anyone else over the 4 days.
More on our messed up leech fascination later.

As we walked, we came across a few orangutan nests…some old, some new, according to Romi, though how he worked that out, I still don’t quite understand…they certainly all just looked like clumps of leaves to me. As we walked though, up and down steep and winding hills, over huge fallen logs and streams, I came to terms with just how huge this jungle was and began a mental pep talk with myself that lasted even after we made it to camp and ate lunch.
We chose to come to Ketambe, I told myself. We could have gone to Bukit Lawang, where orphaned orangs are rehabilitated and released. There, they are provided with supplemental food in case they’re unable to support themselves in the wild. There are viewing platforms where you’re just about guaranteed to see one.
You didn’t want that. You wanted to see truly wild orangutans. With that, I told myself, comes risk. It’s not a zoo. It takes a long time to get anywhere here and it’s time to face the possibility that you miiight not see them.
And, you know what? That’s okay. You’re still blessed to be here, standing in this lush, green forest they call home. Just knowing that they’re here, climbing through the canopy on powerful arms, going about their lives, is enough. This is magic, and you’re already very lucky.
I needn’t have bothered (though I’m still glad I did!)
That afternoon, after many more hours of walking (though without the burden of heavy backpacks this time) we found our first orangutan.

No sooner did I lay eyes upon her and gasp with awe and wonder, than I immediately felt the sting of salty tears in my eyes.
I couldn’t believe it. I looked up at her, high up in the canopy, a magnificent ginger beast, languidly munching on leaves, living her life totally separate from us and I just couldn’t help the tears, even though they were blurring the very image I’d worked so long to see.
As I gazed up at her, I just felt so, so very privileged to be standing there with this perfect window into a wild thing’s life. She was truly beautiful, her orange coat so vibrant against the green of the jungle and I felt an intense joy and relief at finally having this experience I’d dreamed about for so long.
As I watched her moving through the trees, I thought about time, and how little of it separates us from them. This planet has been around for 4.5 billion years, and has had life on it for about 3.5 billion of those years. Orangutan and human lineages split less than 20 million years ago- really, the cosmic blink of an eye. Watching her, it was easy to see how little has changed between us in that brief slice of time. (It became even more apparent when we saw a mother and baby orang the next day, but more on that later.)
After taking a few photos I was satisfied with, I took a seat on the forest floor and continued to watch her. As I did, I also thought about how rare this experience was.
There are 7 billion people on this planet and such a tiny, tiny fraction of them have had the opportunity to peacefully observe their closest relatives in the wild as I was. On top of that, being critically endangered, there are now fewer than 7,000 Sumatran orangutans left in the world. What I was seeing was so incredibly special, and I felt so grateful for the education I’ve had at SUNY ESF, which allowed me to truly appreciate how marvelous this gift was, and allowed me to understand in considerable depth the complexity of orangutan conservation .

And here come the more bittersweet emotions, the sadness that mixed in with the joy.
I thought about the future.
I thought about how, a child born today, who may grow up watching the same nature documentaries I did, who may learn of Jane Goodall in elementary school and decide she’s their ultimate hero forever, a child who may develop the same affection and affinity for primates as I have…that child may not have the chance, in their twenties, to go backpacking off to some remote corner of the world to get in touch with a distant relative in its natural habitat. Because in twenty years, they might not exist.
It’s a real possibility, one that it hurts to think about.
Orangutans once roamed in China, Thailand and other parts of Asia, but human encroachment wiped them out of most of the world over the last several thousand years. Their last sanctuaries are the islands of Indonesia and Malaysia, both of which are being deforested at rapid rates while babies are being captured through extremely cruel methods to be sold on the black market to the illegal pet trade.
The battle for their survival will be an uphill climb. I’ll be talking more about that in a moment, but first, a little bit about the next day’s adventure, which led us to a mother orangutan and her precious baby.
It had poured rain the entire night, so when we set out after breakfast in search of more wildlife, the jungle was slick, soaked and extremely muddy. After walking for quite a while in crazy, impossible to discern patterns, lead
by Romi who was so quiet the whole time, I couldn’t help wondering if he was secretly messing with us, we come to a hillside that is almost completely vertical in slope.
Again, Romi starts walking up it like he could do it with his eyes closed. Meanwhile, I became convinced a painful death by falling was in store for me. On the one hand, I thought, at least I’ve completed my goal already! On the other…It sure would have been nice to tell some people about it.
We were basically "root climbing” all the way to the top, which took maybe 15 or 20 minutes but honestly felt like a lifetime as I struggled to stretch to the next tree, hanging on to roots with notoriously weak arms, my feet treadmilling wildly in slick mud as my boots struggled to find traction. As we climbed, I could only hope the roots and plants I was clutching to were stronger than me. Sometimes they weren’t and snapped…though fortunately no major hurts came of it.
Eventually, we made it to the top and once I’d caught my breath, I felt pretty exhilarated. It was a challenge, but a super fun one, and a few minutes later, we were rewarded for our efforts with the sighting of an absolutely beautiful mom and precious, fuzzy baby orangutan. Even Stefan, big, burly German that he is, was practically cooing at the sight of them.

I can’t even describe how sweet it was, watching them together. The baby, less than a year old, was starting to get a little rambunctious. While his mom quietly chewed on leaves, the little one began exploring on his own a bit, tentatively, never straying too far from mom.
He went off maybe five or six feet from her at most, and swung around in the trees. Every so often, his mom would stretch out her long arms, and he would reach out to her too. They would grasp hands, for just a moment and then he would go back to doing his thing while she did hers. It was beautiful.

(HE’S GIVING THE THUMBS UP AGHFDHFHG)
You could see the tenderness and love there, even with them being so high up in the canopy. We watched them for a good half hour. Then, as the baby was playing by itself, they made eye contact. A moment later, he moved back to his mom, clutching on to her fur. At once, they began to move off together, almost as if she’d said 'Time to go’. This is obviously an unscientific, anecdotal incident obseved from afar, but it was nice to see the clear communication between them. Their bond was just so lovely.
Sure enough, a few minutes later the sprinkling rain got much heavier. Perhaps they went to seek better shelter somewhere.

It was one of the greatest half hours of my life, but as I watched them, awwwing and squealing as I tend to do when I see cute animals, I was also plagued by an article I had read just a week before leaving. In addition to discussing the heavy deforestation to make way for palm oil that is destroying the Indonesian rainforests, they focused in on the pet trade and an orphaned baby orangutan who was rescued from the black market.
How he was orphaned makes me ill to think about. Orangutan mothers are famously and fiercely protective of their babies and do all they can to keep them safe. Once she and her baby got trapped in a tree by some loggers, they ended up getting her to the ground and literally beating her to death so that they could take the infant from her who ended up deeply malnourished and obviously traumatized beyond belief before rescue came.
The real tragedy in all of this, is that the people who killed his mother and sold him got the equivalent of 6 US dollars for him.
Being in the country, it’s more apparent to me than ever that the blame for this can’t really fall on the illegal loggers and poachers. People will do what they can to try and make a better life for their children than they have had for themselves and that’s wholly understandable. NGOs and the government (when it’s not being insanely corrupt, which is a whole other story) can do a lot to try to provide alternatives to the people, but the fact remains that the demand for palm oil and baby orangutans is coming from elsewhere.
The U.S., for one, has absolutely horrible laws regarding exotic pets. In far too many states, people are able to get their hands on primates, big cats and all sorts of things that are both kept in miserable conditions and are a danger to others. (Sidenote: An excellent documentary, The Elephant in the Livingroom highlights the pertient issues very compassionately and anyone with Netflix should watch it now) And of course, palm oil is in an insane amount of products that we consume and one of the biggest driving factors in deforestation in Sumatra and Borneo.
Hopefully, these issues can be combated. There are lots of sad stories, but there are uplifting ones as well. My favorite involves two girl scouts who have tirelessly campaigned to have palm oil banned from girl scout cookies and other Kellogg’s products and have made considerable headway, even earning an award from the U.N. for their efforts. I follow avariety of Great Ape survival organizations and often find stories showing the positive results of their hard work.
I really, really want to believe that these magnificent creatures will have the chance to continue existing long into the future. Not forever, obviously, because evolution doesn’t work that way, but I really hope I never have to live in a world where humans are the only great ape left. I want this world to be big enough for all of us.
Anyway, seeing those three orangutans was certainly one of the most moving and powerful moments of my life. I am so grateful to our amazing guides for making the trip so special and to Tayler and Hayley for being such wickedly awesome travel companions.
I loved how much Romi and the rest of Johan’s crew cared for the forst. They made sure our camp was spotless when we left and though Romi joked about how much money he could make for this tree or that tree to get a rise out of us, I know he would never dream of harming 'his jungle.’ You could see how much he loves it as he told stories of gibbons and orangutans hanging out together, laughing about how the gibbons like to make the orangs angry on purpose (he even showed me pics).
I’m glad he’s studying forestry, and it’s good to know there will be at least one incorruptable ranger in Gunung Leuser National Park one day.
And I really want to end this entry on a positive note, so here are a bunch more awesome things about our trek:
-We saw tons of monkeys! We could see macaques and Thomas Leaf Monkeys right from our camp site. We also got a super good look at some Thomas Leaf Monkeys out on a hike one day, including a tiny little fuzzy white baby who was so cute. We also saw squirrels, hornbills, a snake, frogs, and tons more cool insects and arthropods.

-We invented a game…a messed up game called A Thousand and One Ways to Kill a leech. Because one night, while it was pouring rain and we were all crammed into our tent…it just seemed like the right idea. Except they’re actually pretty damn hard to kill. We learned that sticking them in candle wax does NOT kill them, as the one Romi put in wax horrifyingly emerged about half an hour later.

Alcohol also doesn’t kill them, but it does get them super wasted. When we dropped some in some beer in a bottle cap, it emerged moving around in a super wonky, squirrelly manner, then promptly passed out. It woke up, probably feeling horribly hungover and started crawling home, much like a college kid waking up in a bush after too many keg stands.

Yeah…it’s messed up but I’m pretty sure it made Romi realize why he was crazy for ever thinking he needed to remind us not to bring cosmetics into the jungle.
-Our group seriously became a family. We had so much fun laughing together. Romi and Raja, one of the camp tenders, kept us so amused during all the down time with jokes, songs, stories, riddles, magic tricks and more. Stefan was also hilarious and was so sweet (immediately rushing to my rescue after one particularly bad fall in the jungle). We all bonded so much in the four days and I just miss them so much already.




-We also went on a night hike. We didn’t actualy get to see any of the nocturnal animals we were hoping for such as civets or slow lorises, but it was fun stomping around the jungle in the darkness, enjoying the sounds of night.

- On our last night we had a little party beneath the stars, with our crew and some other guides who work with Johan. They all had wicked senses of humor and we had a lot of laughs as they teased us and each other.

-We visited some hot springs in the jungle. They were beautiful and really great, although we did all get awfully sunburned at them.




-Hayley and I stuck around an extra day to go river rafting with Romi and Raja, and that was a complete blast, and we saw soooo much beautiful scenery along the way!
We also got to chat with Johan about his years of experience doing wildilfe research and leading treks, including some slightly terrifying elephant encounters, and some tales of his experiences in international rafting competitons. Also, his wife cooked us some amazing food, including a dish called Gado Gado which was heavenly.
The only souvenirs we left with were handmade gifts from Raja and Johan and they were so sweet! We got rings, a hand carved stick with monkeys on it and Johan even got these special stones cut down for us, which we can get made into necklaces. We got to watch the cutting process too, which was very cool!

I will never forget my times spent here. They were just pure magic and when I’m old and grey, I will absolutely be forcing any grandchildren or grandnieces or nephews or maybe just random and unfortunate neighborhood kids or old folks’ home nurses to hear all about this adventure.
I left a piece of my heart in Ketambe, and I hope one day I’ll get to go back and look for it.
Terima Kahsi, Ketambe!

