www.wildlifeworldwide.com Tailor-made natural history specialists Wildlife Worldwide offer an 11-day holiday in the Malaysian province of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, focussing on flora and fauna of the world’s oldest rainforests, and featuring the greatest recorded regular flight of bats.
From a base at Kuching’s Merdeka Palace Hotel, initial guided explorations of Sarawak’s Bako National Park reveal Long-tailed Macque, Leaf, and Proboscis Monkey, Bearded Pig, monitor lizard and some of the 150 species of birds.
Later, travellers visit the Semenggok Botanical Research Centre and an Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre before continuing to Batang Ai Hydro Dam, through rubber and pepper plantations, to the Hilton Batang Ai Longhouse Resort, for three nights.
The Hilton’s design is based on the traditional timber longhouses of the region's native Iban Tribes and the property is located on the shores of a spectacular freshwater lake, surrounded by mountains and the unspoiled rainforests of Sarawak.
Nearby lies the 27,000-hectare Batang Ai National Park where activities include visiting local Iban longhouses and guided cruises of the nearby river on the look out for birds and other wildlife. A short domestic flight to Mulu, and road transfer to the Royal Mulu Hotel, brings travellers to the next tour focus, Gunung Mulu National Park, for a further three nights.
The Park covers an area of 52,000 hectares, varying in altitude from sea level to the peaks of Gunung Mulu at 2,377 metres and Gunung Api at 1,682 metres. Over 3,500 species of plant have so far been recorded in the park, as well as numerous butterfly, mammal and bird species, including deer, monkey and hornbill. Mulu also possess some of the largest and most spectacular caves in the world, perhaps best known being Deer Cave. This is the world's largest cave corridor where travellers may bear witness, to a spectacular daily flight of Wrinkle-lipped Bats each evening. A purpose-built bat observatory offers great views of the bats as they fly in huge wheeling flocks or long sinuous clouds, accompanied by a great whooshing roar of thousands of pairs of wings. Numbers vary, but to date 1.8 million is the highest estimated number to emerge in one evening, still leaving many hanging out inside… The tour concludes with a return transfer to Kuching connecting with overnight flights to the UK.
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