Trekking Borneo’s Headhunter Trail
‘You better run like Usain Bolt!’ Nicholas said. He had just been telling me about finding himself face to face with a leopard last time he walked along this trail. So I asked for his advice on what I should do if we meet one today.
The chances of me ever moving anything like the world’s fastest man or outrunning a hungry leopard are zip. So we better hope we don’t meet a leopard today. Nicholas, a national park tour guide, is leading my partner and me along the Headhunter trail deep in the jungle of Gunung Mulu National Park in Malaysian Borneo.
The trail stretches for almost 12 kilometres through the jungle. It was once a route used by headhunting tribes in raids against rival tribes. Thankfully the trail today is used by locals and tourists and a leopard is the scariest thing I’m likely to encounter.
The hiking trail extends from Camp 5 to Kuala Terikan by the river at the national park’s boundary. It is about as remote as you can get. Our journey to reach this point began with a flight to Mulu airstrip from Brunei three days ago followed by a two-day stay in Mulu National Park headquarters. From there we explored some of the famous Mulu caves. Then it was a ride down the river by long boat followed by a five kilometre jungle trek into Camp 5 (from where me made a probably ill-advised side trip to the Pinnacles.)
So, if you want to walk the Headhunter Trail you have to really want to be here. It’s not somewhere you can just pop over to for the day. Perhaps the remoteness and effort required to get here is one of the reasons why the trail is not overrun with tourists. We don’t see another person other than our guide and boatman all day.
A number of tour companies offer packages named Headhunter Trail that include the Mulu Park caves and the rivers into and out of the national park. (In fact we have used one of these tour packages to get here ourselves.)
Nicholas tells us though that this 12km section of jungle trail is the actual Headhunter Trail. Stories passed down through his family tell of different tribes in the area using this track as their main road, both to fight and to trade. The first half of the trail was typically controlled by the Kayan people, a group said to be very aggressive and war-like. The latter part of the trail, from where the track crosses the river, was traditionally the turf of the Iban people.
Trekking along this trail is hot and sweaty work but otherwise relatively easy. There are no steep ascents or descents and no rock scrambling. Whenever a branch obstructs our path Nicholas makes short work of it with a flailing machete ensuring we have a clear trail all the way.
Not long after we finish chatting about emulating Usain Bolt should we see a leopard, Nicholas suddenly stops on the track and points to an animal track in the mud in front him. It’s a fresh track belong to something big that has walked along the path not long before us. I hope there isn’t a leopard waiting to gobble me up. Fortunately, Nicholas says it’s a large primate, a large monkey or possibly even an orangutan. The foot that has made this mark is long and skinny, nearly as long as my own hiking boot. We don’t ever see the animal it belongs to.
Past the halfway mark of the trail, we cross a river by a rope ‘monkey’ bridge at Lubang Cina, or Chinaman’s Cave. It was installed here in 1999. Before that, the only way to cross was to wade through the water and hang on to a rope stretched across the river. A small cave, visible from the monkey bridge, is the site of a tragedy when three Chinamen were swept into the cave to their deaths while attempting to wade across the swollen river. We make our own crossing in safety well above the water thanks to the rope bridge.
At the end of the trail we are met by a boatman who transports us for nearly three hours down the jungle river by long boat – a real highlight of our trip – and then, after an overnight stay in a village homestay, by road to Limbang where we fly to Kota Kinabalu towards our rendezvous with Mount Kinabalu.