Category:Travel
This is the same boat and same guides that brought me to Mulu from Long Terawan (and that would return me to Long Terawan two days later for my return trip.
I took this photo from the banks of the Melinau River in the Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak, back in 1989.
These buildings are multi-family dwellings with a public space along one side and private divided spaces on the other. The raised floor protects against flooding when it rains and allows air to circulate keeping the structure cooler when it’s not raining. Traditionally, the roof would have been made from leaves but that lost out to the technology of corrugated iron many years ago. I can’t image how noisy it is in there during a storm!
Quite why these three bats chose this spot I’ve no idea. But apparently, every evening they’d head out to feast in the jungle and then return here again at dawn. Home, sweet home!
In the photo below we’d progressed further into the cave and were about to lose sight of the mighty entrance we’d passed through. You can see a set of wooden stairs to the right of the frame. The movement of the torch held by the man behind the railing hints at the exposure length. Since I didn’t have a tripod I must have braced my camera against a rock formation or another railing.
It was here that I made a mistake I was to repeat several times in the caves – I stepped off the path. The material on the floor in front of me is tens of thousands of years accumulation of bat and swiftlet droppings – a big steaming pile of bat shit! I didn’t realize that till I stepped off the path and my foot started to sink into this soft, gooey material. As I said, I made that same mistake several times!