Kinabalu National Park in Sabah protects Borneo's highest peak and one of the world's most biodiverse landscapes — a UNESCO World Heritage Site where granite summit trails pitcher plants cloud forest and extraordinary wildlife come together in a single extraordinary destination.
Malaysia: Borneo – Back on the Kinabatangan: Borneo’s Wild Side
Malaysia: Borneo – Return to the Kinabatangan River 🌿
🐘 Why We Were Back on the Kinabatangan
Our first visit to the Kinabatangan River in Sabah was back in 2018, and it’s fair to say it didn’t go entirely to plan. The river itself — one of the longest in Malaysia at around 560 kilometres, draining an enormous catchment of some 16,800 square kilometres across the interior of Sabah — had been on our radar for years. The lower Kinabatangan floodplain is, quite simply, one of the most biologically rich places on the planet. Scientists have recorded ten species of primate here, eight of Borneo’s hornbill species, and a truly staggering diversity of birds, reptiles and mammals, all crammed into a narrow corridor of remaining forest squeezed between palm oil plantations that have swallowed up much of the surrounding land since the 1970s and 80s. The area was declared a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in 2001, recognising not just its ecological value but the increasingly fragile nature of what remains. The Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, established formally in 2005, now protects roughly 26,000 hectares of this critical habitat along the lower river — though conservation groups argue that far more needs to be done, and the battle between wildlife and agricultural expansion is very much ongoing.
The plan back in 2018 had been to spend a few days exploring the lower reaches of the river before heading upstream and then transferring by road to the small town of Lahad Datu, gateway to the spectacular Danum Valley Conservation Area. Unfortunately, on our very first day at the Kinabatangan Wetlands Resort, I had the spectacular misfortune of falling off one of the resort’s boardwalks and breaking six ribs. Six. Ribs. That put a rather abrupt and undignified end to the adventure, and we found ourselves heading back to Sandakan in somewhat less triumphant fashion than we’d arrived. Fast forward five years, through a global pandemic that had kept us firmly on home turf for longer than either of us would have liked, and it was very much time to return and actually complete the journey we’d started. This time, we were coming back with a healthy respect for boardwalks and a determined intention to keep all our ribs exactly where nature had put them.
🐊 Getting There — via Wellington Boots and a Dock
After spending a couple of nights at Sepilok — that remarkable little pocket of conservation just outside Sandakan, where the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre has been nursing injured and orphaned orangutans back to health since 1964, and where the Sun Bear Conservation Centre next door has been doing equally important work for Borneo’s smallest and most endearing bear species since 2008 — it was time to point ourselves back towards the Kinabatangan. The plan was familiar: a couple of nights at the Wetlands Resort, ideally accident-free.
We were transferred to Sandakan first, the historic port city that sits on the north-eastern coast of Sabah and was, in the early twentieth century, the capital of British North Borneo. The city carries a heavy and important history — it was nearly completely destroyed during the Second World War and was the site of the Sandakan Death Marches of 1945, in which the vast majority of some 2,500 Allied prisoners of war and many local labourers perished. A sobering chapter that the Sandakan Memorial Park commemorates with quiet dignity today. But we weren’t there for history on this particular morning; we were there in pursuit of Wellington boots. We needed them for the treks we had planned later in the week in the Danum Valley, where proper waterproof footwear is something you want rather urgently if you have any intention of keeping your feet dry on the forest floor. We tried one shop and managed to find Karen a very satisfactory pair of bright yellow boots — the sort that make you look faintly like a cheerful beekeeper — but nothing at all in my size. A second shop proved equally fruitless. So I would have to make do with the Keen trekking shoes I already had with me, which are perfectly good shoes, just not especially waterproof when you’re wading through Bornean jungle at six in the morning.
With the boot situation comprehensively unresolved, it was time to head for the dock. Once there, we had to wait a little while for some paperwork to be sorted and for another couple to arrive who would be sharing the 90-minute boat ride upriver with us. This gave us a very welcome chance to catch up with Dido, one of the resort’s guides, who had also been there during our visit in 2018 and — rather more importantly from my perspective — had been one of the people who helped me get back to Sandakan after my rather dramatic tumble. There’s a particular bond you form with someone who has essentially helped carry you out of a rainforest, and it was genuinely lovely to see him again under considerably less chaotic circumstances.
🌊 Out on the Water — Brown, Slugdy and Beautiful
Soon enough we were out on the water, leaving the calm of Sandakan Harbour and heading out into the Sulu Sea. Sandakan Bay itself is a natural deep-water harbour, which is precisely why the British chose it as their administrative capital back in 1883 when William Pryer established the first settlement here — before the town was devastated by bombing in 1945, it had been one of the most prosperous towns in South-East Asia, built on the timber trade and, less gloriously, on the trafficking of birds’ nests for the Chinese delicacy market. Today it’s a busy working port and a gateway to some of the most extraordinary wildlife country in the world, and we were very glad to be on a boat heading out of it.
It took about thirty minutes to reach the mouth of the Kinabatangan River, where the water changes character entirely. The sea had been an inviting shade of blue-green; the Kinabatangan is a very definite brown, sludgy colour — the result of centuries of tannins leaching from the peat swamp forests along its banks, combined with the rather more recent addition of agricultural run-off from the palm oil estates. It is very much not somewhere you would want to swim, and not just because of the aesthetics. The river is home to a healthy population of saltwater crocodiles — Crocodylus porosus, the largest reptilian predator on Earth, which can reach six metres in length and has a justified reputation for being one of the few creatures on the planet that genuinely views humans as a potential meal. The saltwater crocodile has survived largely unchanged for over 200 million years, which tells you something about the effectiveness of its general approach to life. From the mouth of the river, it took about an hour to reach the resort, which sits on a narrow estuary lined with mangrove trees and palms. Very exotic. Very Borneo.
🏡 Chalet One — Closest to the Jetty, For Obvious Reasons
Not much had changed at the Kinabatangan Wetlands Resort since our last visit in 2018, and everything looked and felt reassuringly familiar. As has become something of a tradition with us, we had somehow managed to arrive at lunchtime — a skill we’ve honed across years of travel — so we went straight into the dining room. After lunch, we headed to our room. During our last visit we’d been in chalet 10, right at the far end of the boardwalk. This time they’d put us in chalet 1. The very first room. The one closest to the jetty. We couldn’t help noticing that this arrangement would, in the event of any further boardwalk-related incidents, minimise considerably the distance required for an evacuation. Whether this was thoughtful planning on the resort’s part or entirely coincidental, we chose to take it in the spirit in which we believed it was intended. The chalets here are enormous and genuinely private — each one is spacious enough that you barely register your neighbours, set among the trees with its own veranda overlooking the forest, and the whole place has the pleasantly unhurried atmosphere of somewhere designed for people who have come to watch wildlife and aren’t in any particular rush.
🛶 First Afternoon on the River — The Elephant Appears
Later that afternoon, we were out on a cruise on the Kinabatangan River with our guide Andis and boat captain Sale. We were given what we can only describe as very agreeable special treatment and had the boat entirely to ourselves. We pulled out from the jetty and down the narrow channel to the main river, stopping several times along the way to observe long-tailed macaques and a couple of other monkey species going about their business in the riverside vegetation. The long-tailed macaque — Macaca fascicularis — is one of the most widely distributed primates in South-East Asia, and has a reputation for being rather opportunistic and somewhat cheeky, which it absolutely lived up to at every opportunity.
After about thirty minutes we reached a junction in the river. One direction led back out towards the South China Sea, the way we’d arrived; the other headed upstream into the interior. We took the upstream route. The banks of the Kinabatangan are covered in dense, lush, wonderfully green forest — the kind of vegetation that makes you understand immediately why Borneo’s rainforest is considered one of the oldest in the world, having developed continuously for somewhere between 130 and 140 million years without the kind of ice age disruption that periodically reset the ecological clock in other parts of the globe. It is beautiful. It is also, from a wildlife-spotting perspective, a tremendous place to hide an animal. You are almost entirely dependent on the eyes of your guide and your captain, and we were fortunate in the extreme that Andis and Sale between them seemed to be able to detect motion through solid vegetation.
We were cruising along when they suddenly spotted something and headed towards the bank. It turned out to be a single Bornean pygmy elephant, quietly following a trail that ran along by the river. The Bornean pygmy elephant — Elephas maximus borneensis — is the smallest subspecies of Asian elephant and, until a genetic study in 2003 confirmed it as a distinct subspecies, was considered simply a feral population descended from animals brought to Borneo centuries ago. We now know they have been isolated on the island for at least 300,000 years and represent a genetically unique population of very considerable conservation importance. There are estimated to be only around 1,500 of them left in the wild, the vast majority in Sabah, making every sighting genuinely precious. Ours was moving at quite a lick, so we followed it along the river, which was both exciting and faintly absurd — a small boat full of breathless tourists quietly stalking an elephant along a Bornean river. Andis had radioed the other guides, so before long we had company in the form of other boats, but we’d had it to ourselves for a few glorious minutes. We only got glimpses through the vegetation, but honestly, it didn’t matter — the sheer fact of it was enough.
After a while the elephant disappeared off into the bush and we headed back towards the Wetlands Resort, timing it beautifully for that golden late-afternoon hour when the sun starts to drop and the monkeys begin making their way down to the riverside trees to roost for the night. We got to see several family groups of maroon leaf monkeys and proboscis monkeys settling in for the evening — the latter in particular are impossible to mistake, the males sporting their extraordinary pendulous noses, which can grow to seven centimetres in length and are believed to function as a resonating chamber that amplifies their honking calls. By the time we got back to the Wetlands Resort it was dinner time.
🦎 Night Walk — Hornbills, Owls and a Flying What?
After dinner, Andis led us on a night walk along the resort’s boardwalk nature trail. The trail is not especially long, but Borneo after dark is an experience that rewards attention even in a short stretch. Along the way we encountered two rhinoceros hornbills roosting in a tree — the rhinoceros hornbill, Buceros rhinoceros, is one of the largest of Borneo’s eight resident hornbill species, with that magnificent casque on top of its bill that prompted the Dayak peoples of Borneo to use hornbill feathers in their traditional headdresses for ceremonial occasions — alongside a small bird curled up on a bush that Andis identified with the casual confidence of someone who simply knows everything that lives in his forest. We also found scorpions (glowing green under ultraviolet light, as they obligingly do), a tree frog, a pair of storm storks, a scops owl, and a sambar deer, which at roughly 200 kilograms is the largest deer species in South-East Asia and moved through the undergrowth with considerably more grace than anything that size has any right to.
Most exciting of all was the flying lemur. This extraordinary creature — which, to be clear, is neither a lemur nor, strictly speaking, capable of flight — is actually a colugo (Cynocephalus variegatus), a small mammal that spreads a membrane called the patagium between its limbs and glides between trees with implausible elegance. Colugos are so anatomically distinctive that they occupy their own entire order of mammals, the Dermoptera, and their closest living relatives are actually primates — they represent, in a sense, an evolutionary step along the road that eventually led to us. Finding one on a boardwalk night walk felt like a genuine privilege. It had been a busy and genuinely exciting day, and most remarkable of all, I had managed to reach the end of it without falling off any boardwalks or breaking anything whatsoever.
🌅 Day Two — Oxbow Lake, Hyacinths and a Sunset Worth Stopping For
Day two at the Wetlands Resort at Abai on the Kinabatangan River was, it is fair to say, a big improvement on our last stay. The first order of the day was a 6:30 am boat safari, heading for the Oxbow Lake, which is reached along a tributary off the main river. Oxbow lakes are formed when a meandering river cuts off one of its own bends, leaving a curved, isolated body of water that over time develops its own distinct ecosystem. The Kinabatangan has several of them, each one a quiet, wildlife-rich pocket away from the traffic of the main channel. It was a quiet morning on the river, and whilst we would have very much liked to see more elephants, the wildlife was clearly observing its own timetable and it was not to be on this particular morning.
The route to the lake passes through a narrow channel lined with tall grasses and the spectacular aerial root systems of mangrove trees, whose long prop roots reach down from overhanging branches into the brackish water below. Mangroves are among the most ecologically productive ecosystems on Earth — they act as nurseries for fish, as carbon sinks storing four to five times more carbon per hectare than tropical rainforest, and as coastal buffers protecting the land behind them from storm surge and erosion. They also create, as we were discovering on a personal basis, a rather spooky and eerie tunnel that you travel through with the slightly unnerving sensation that something large and patient might be watching you from the shadows.
Oxbow Lake itself is narrow, curling around almost in a circle — hence the name — with dense natural vegetation along its edges. Parts of the channel were becoming clogged with water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes, an invasive species originally from South America that was introduced to South-East Asia in the nineteenth century as an ornamental plant and has since spread with the enthusiasm of something that knows it’s winning. It reproduces extraordinarily rapidly, can double its coverage in as little as two weeks, and in dense mats blocks sunlight from reaching underwater plants and depletes oxygen levels in the water to the detriment of fish and other aquatic life. Sale beached the boat in among the plants surrounding the lake with practiced ease, and Andis produced a picnic of coffee and sandwiches, which we tucked into with the cheerful appreciation of people who had been up since shortly before six in the morning.
After our picnic we headed back to the resort, had our proper breakfast, and spent the middle of the day relaxing and having lunch in the manner of people who have entirely earned it.
Late afternoon we headed back out on the river with Andis and Sale for an extended cruise that would run until well after dark — our longest stretch on the water yet. The river was quieter than the previous evening; no elephants presented themselves, and no orangutans appeared in the canopy. But there were macaques playing down by the water, a pleasing variety of birds, and when Andis made another attempt at Oxbow Lake in hopes of an elephant encounter, several family groups of proboscis monkeys were settling into their riverside roosts for the night in the trees along the water’s edge.
The sun started to set, and Bart pulled the boat into a position from which we could watch it go down over the Kinabatangan. It was an absolutely extraordinary sunset — the kind of big, lurid, tropical sunset that looks faintly implausible, as though someone has turned up the saturation dial rather further than is strictly necessary. On the way back in the dark, we found ourselves travelling at a fairly considerable speed along a river we now knew contained large floating logs, which gave the journey an undeniably exciting quality that we hadn’t entirely signed up for. Andis swept a powerful spotlight along the riverbanks as we went, and with genuinely astonishing eye-sight, both he and Sale were able to pick out kingfishers — relatively small birds — perched on branches in the darkness. There are ten species of kingfisher found in Sabah, several of them resident along the Kinabatangan, and each one is more jewel-bright than the last.
Andis had also been promising us something he’d been referring to as a Christmas tree. This turned out to be fireflies — Pteroptyx tener, a species of synchronous firefly — gathered en masse on the branches of certain mangrove trees along the river’s edge. Synchronous fireflies, as the name suggests, flash in coordinated unison, creating a pulsing, shimmering effect that looks precisely like a set of fairy lights draped on a tree. For a moment, genuinely, we thought they were electric lights — the kind that some optimistic soul had strung up in the jungle for reasons that would have been interesting to discover. They were not. They were tens of thousands of bioluminescent beetles doing what tens of thousands of bioluminescent beetles have been doing along these rivers for millennia, and it was genuinely magical.
⛵ Onwards to Sukau — and a Lesson in What $108,000 Buys You
It was time to travel further upstream, where we would be spending one night at the village of Sukau, staying at the Sukau Rainforest Lodge, widely regarded as the finest lodge on the river. We had no activities planned for the morning, which gave us the agreeable luxury of a leisurely breakfast before taking to the water at 10:30 am. As planned, we arrived at the jetty on time, only to be informed that we needed to wait for three other passengers who were in a meeting that would wrap up around 11 am. This was not, it turned out, just any meeting. Two of our fellow travellers were employed by National Geographic as Logistics Specialists — and National Geographic, this most storied of institutions, founded in Washington D.C. in 1888 and for most of the twentieth century the primary vehicle through which millions of people around the world were introduced to the natural wonders of the planet, has in recent years developed a very particular tourism business aimed at people for whom money is genuinely not a consideration.
One of the tours they offer is travel by private jet — a curated global wildlife and culture experience that this particular advance party had come to assess the suitability of the Kinabatangan Wetlands Resort for. The logistics, as they were explained to us whilst we waited on the jetty, were not especially modest: forty people would be staying at KWR for two nights, taking up the entire resort, whilst a further fifty would be based at the Sukau Rainforest Lodge at the same time. Ninety people in total, touring by private jet. The itinerary took in Singapore, Borneo, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Madagascar, South Africa and Rwanda before concluding in Rome — where, we noted, the wildlife credentials are perhaps somewhat thinner on the ground than the preceding stops, though the pasta is excellent. The whole experience ran to twenty-four days, for which the going rate was $108,000 per person. Per person. We counted our blessings, kept our budget firmly to ourselves, and waited for the meeting to conclude.
Our fellow travellers did indeed appear around 11:00 am and we started our ninety-minute journey upstream. Temperatures by now were climbing rapidly, which tends to drive wildlife into the shade, so the banks were quiet for much of the journey. We arrived at Sukau in time for lunch, sadly bidding farewell to Sale, who had been our wonderful boat captain for the past couple of days and who had made every moment on the water feel both safe and special.
The restaurant at Sukau sits right alongside the river, and we secured a table in an excellent position from which to watch the activity on the water. Sukau is a substantially larger settlement than Abai — it has a population of around 3,000 people, predominantly from the Orang Sungai community, literally meaning “river people,” an ethnic group who have lived along the Kinabatangan for centuries and whose traditional knowledge of the river and its wildlife is as profound as you’d expect from people who have never really lived anywhere else. There was considerably more river traffic here than at the Wetlands Resort, including some large flat-bottomed barges carrying trucks and cars being pushed along by tugboats, which gave the scene a pleasantly working-river quality alongside all the wildlife watching. Lunch was delicious — a definite step up on the food at KWR, if we’re being honest — and the chef, who was both talented and delightful, came out to chat with us and then very kindly organised a special vegetarian dish from the kitchen on our behalf. After lunch we checked into our room, which was smaller than the chalet we’d left at KWR but perfectly comfortable, with the minor caveat that the bed was slightly on the firm side, which is the kind of detail that matters rather more at the end of a full day on a river than it does when you first arrive.
🦧 Baby Orangutan — The Show-Stopper
For the afternoon cruise, we were sharing a boat with two other couples and, of course, Andis, who was continuing upriver with us. Our captain for this leg was Bart. We travelled downstream on the Kinabatangan for about thirty minutes, pausing at a sandbank to admire some juvenile crocodiles — considerably less alarming at this size than their parents — before turning down a narrow tributary. After about a kilometre, Bart pulled the boat to the bank.
In a low tree not far from the river, a female Bornean orangutan had built a nest for the night for herself and her young infant. Orangutans — Pongo pygmaeus in the case of the Bornean species — build a fresh sleeping nest every single night, weaving branches and leaves into a stable platform high in the canopy with a speed and dexterity that would make most humans feel inadequate with a flat-pack wardrobe. The Bornean orangutan is critically endangered, with the population having fallen by more than 50% over the past sixty years, driven by habitat loss, hunting and the pet trade. Seeing one in the wild, in its own forest, on its own terms, is an experience that carries a weight you don’t entirely expect until you’re sitting in a boat staring up at it.
We could just about make out the mother, settled into her nest with the weary but patient expression of a parent who would really rather like an early night. Her offspring, however, had entirely different ideas and appeared to have no intention whatsoever of settling down. We were the first boat to arrive, so for the first twenty or so glorious minutes we had the scene entirely to ourselves — watching this small, extraordinary creature teasing its mother with the absolute commitment of a toddler who has consumed too much sugar and spotted a willing audience. Other boats began to join us as word spread along the guide network, but just as everyone was beginning to wonder if it was time to move on, the youngster made the decision to vacate the nest and take to the tree itself, where he was suddenly in clear, perfect, unobstructed view and absolutely performing for the crowd. He worked the gallery for a good fifteen more minutes, at one point briefly returning to his somewhat exasperated mother before climbing even higher and beginning, with great concentration, to weave himself what appeared to be a practice nest of his own. Rehearsing, as it were, for his future independent life. It was one of those wildlife moments that you know, even as it’s happening, that you will still be talking about years from now.
By late afternoon, a considerable flotilla of boats had gathered beneath the tree. Bart, with the timing of a man who knows when a show has peaked, made the decision to depart, and we headed back towards the lodge, stopping on the way to watch groups of roosting proboscis monkeys and a pair of rhinoceros hornbills doing what hornbills do best — sitting in trees looking magnificent and slightly prehistoric.
The Best Time to Visit Sabah, Borneo
Sabah sits on the northern tip of Borneo and straddles two distinct weather systems, which means the question of when to visit is less straightforward than for many other Malaysian destinations. Unlike Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah generally escapes the worst of the South China Sea monsoon that batters the east coast of the peninsula between November and March, and it enjoys a longer, more reliable dry season than much of the region. That said, rain can arrive at any time of year in a tropical rainforest state, and conditions vary considerably between the interior, the west coast and the dive islands off the eastern shore. The table below summarises the three broad seasons; the sections that follow explain each one in detail.
🌞 March to October — Dry Season
This is Sabah’s headline season, stretching for the better part of seven months and covering the optimal windows for almost every activity the state is known for. Skies over Kota Kinabalu are mostly clear, humidity is lower than at other times of year, and the seas around the Semporna Archipelago are calm and well suited to diving and snorkelling. Sipadan Island — consistently rated among the world’s top dive sites for its hammerhead sharks, green and hawksbill turtles, and dense schools of barracuda — is accessible throughout this period, though the daily permit quota of 120 divers means bookings need to be made months ahead, particularly for the peak months of April to September.
Mount Kinabalu, at 4,095 metres the highest peak in Southeast Asia outside the Himalayas and Karakoram, is best climbed from March through to September, when the mountain’s infamous cloud cover is thinnest and the overnight temperatures on the summit plateau, while always cold, are less bitter than in the wetter months. April to June brings the added attraction of whale shark aggregations around Derawan and the broader Celebes Sea, drawing divers from across the world for encounters with the largest fish on the planet. The Rainforest World Music Festival, one of Asia’s most celebrated music events, typically takes place in Sarawak in July but draws visitors who combine it with a Sabah leg; meanwhile, Sabah’s own Harvest Festival (Pesta Kaamatan) in May is a lively, culturally rich occasion worth timing a trip around.
What to pack: Lightweight, breathable clothing for the heat and humidity; a thin fleece or warm layer for the summit night on Kinabalu (temperatures can drop to 2–5°C near the top); reef-safe sunscreen; a rash vest and snorkel for the islands; and an early-morning layer for boat departures at the Semporna jetty.
🌤️ February and November — Shoulder Seasons
The weeks either side of the wet season — broadly February on one end and November on the other — offer a useful middle ground for visitors who want to avoid both the peak-season prices and the heaviest rains. Weather is transitional: more cloud and the odd afternoon shower are to be expected, but sustained all-day rain is still relatively uncommon, and the landscape is beginning to green up beautifully. Danum Valley Conservation Area, one of the finest lowland dipterocarp rainforests remaining in Borneo, is particularly rewarding in these shoulder months, when wildlife activity is high and the lodges are quieter. The Kinabatangan River, where proboscis monkeys, pygmy elephants and long-tailed macaques gather along the riverbanks, is similarly good value for a wildlife cruise outside the peak months, with boat departures less crowded and more intimate. Accommodation rates across Sabah ease off noticeably in these transitional months, and some of the higher-end jungle lodges offer shoulder-season promotions.
What to pack: Lightweight clothes plus a compact, packable waterproof jacket; insect repellent (mosquitoes are more active as the rains build); quick-dry trousers for jungle walks; and a small dry bag to protect cameras and phones on river cruises.
🌧️ November to February — Wet Season
Sabah’s wet season is a relative term in a state that receives rain year-round, but from November through to February the downpours become heavier, more frequent and, at their worst, sustained enough to disrupt trails, swell rivers and close sections of Mount Kinabalu’s summit route. The east coast dive islands bear the brunt of the rougher sea conditions, and some operators at Semporna reduce their schedules or suspend certain routes during the worst weeks of December and January. That said, this is by no means a write-off of a season: prices drop to their lowest point of the year, lodges and tours operate at a fraction of their peak capacity, and the rainforest is at its most dramatic — swollen waterfalls, mist drifting through the forest canopy and rivers running full and fast. Wildlife on the Kinabatangan actually congregates more predictably along the river’s edges when the interior forest floods, making the wet-season wildlife cruises unexpectedly productive for orangutan, elephant and crocodile sightings. The Turtle Islands Park off Sandakan, where green turtles come ashore to nest, is one attraction that continues to operate through the wet season and can be strikingly atmospheric in the moody, cloud-heavy light.
What to pack: A proper waterproof jacket or lightweight poncho; quick-dry clothing throughout; waterproof footwear or sandals with grip for muddy trails; a dry bag for river and boat trips; insect repellent; and a flexible attitude towards itineraries that depend on weather and sea conditions.
Overall Best Time to Visit
For most visitors, March to October represents the most dependable window for experiencing the full range of what Sabah offers — diving Sipadan, climbing Kinabalu, cruising the Kinabatangan for wildlife and exploring the lowland rainforests of Danum Valley — with the lowest risk of weather disruption and the widest choice of accommodation and tour availability. Within that broad window, April to June is arguably the sweet spot: the dry season is well established, whale sharks are in the area, Pesta Kaamatan adds a cultural dimension in May, Kinabalu permits are available, and the tourist numbers have not yet reached the peak intensity of July and August. Travellers happy to accept a daily shower or two, and who are primarily interested in rainforest wildlife rather than diving or summit climbing, will find the shoulder months of February and November offer excellent value and a more intimate experience of the jungle lodges and river cruises that make Sabah one of Borneo’s most rewarding destinations.
Where to stay?
1. Kinabatangan Wetlands Resort
The most exclusive resort in the lower Kinabatangan area, tucked into the wilderness of the internationally recognised Kinabatangan wetlands, surrounded by pristine freshwater swamps and dense mangrove forest. The resort has been operating for a number of years and has built a strong reputation for the quality of its guiding — the staff genuinely know the river and its wildlife with an intimacy that makes a real difference to what you actually see. Accommodation runs from four twin-share rooms in the Longhouse Cabin, which provides clean, basic facilities for the budget-conscious traveller who is here for the wildlife rather than the thread count, through to ten spacious, beautifully designed Deluxe chalets that offer serious privacy, their own verandas, and enough room to swing a proboscis monkey. The boardwalks connecting everything are admittedly an adventure in themselves. We’d recommend keeping your footing — though if you don’t, Dido will sort you out.
2. Nature Lodge Kinabatangan
Located within Kampung Bilit, a small and quietly charming riverside village of somewhere between 150 and 180 people set along the banks of the Kinabatangan, Nature Lodge Kinabatangan takes its name from the white-trunked kabilit trees found in the nearby forest. Unlike the more remote lodges further downstream, NLK is accessible by road, which makes it a more straightforward option for travellers who’d rather not add a boat journey on top of everything else. The community here is primarily Orang Sungai — literally “river people” — a group who have made their living from fishing and traditional craftwork, including the making of fishnets and boats, for as long as anyone can remember, selling their work to neighbouring villages. Staying here gives you an immediate and genuine connection to that river culture, which is worth as much as any wildlife sighting.
3. Sepilok Jungle Resort
The undisputed jewel of the Kinabatangan lodge scene, and a place that rather redefines what you might expect from accommodation in the middle of a Bornean rainforest. Sukau offers twenty superior rooms and twenty private villas, all positioned to make the most of the river and the forest beyond it, and the whole operation is run with a genuine commitment to sustainability and low-impact tourism that goes considerably beyond the usual glossy brochure promises. The food is outstanding — a serious upgrade on most riverside lodges, as we discovered at lunch on the day we arrived, when the chef came out personally to chat with us and arranged a special dish on the spot. The guiding is equally accomplished, and the afternoon and evening boat safaris run from here cover some of the most productive stretches of the upper Kinabatangan. If the budget stretches, this is where you want to be.
More to Explore
