Meratus Mountains
After Tabang we traveled to the southern part of Borneo. The Meratus Mountains is a chain of low hills that runs north to south along the eastern coast. The inhabitants are Dayaks that retreated into the interior when Muslim Indonesians migrated to the area several hundred years ago. Strapping on backpacks, we made a three-day loop through the mountains, staying along the way in communal houses in the small mountain villages. These houses, called “balai”, are the Meratus equivalent of longhouses. Each family has a few rooms attached to a central space built around a giant, decorated sculpture of wood and dried straw. The Dayaks in this part of Kalimantan are not Christians. They still practice their native, animist religion called “keharingan”. The indoor sculpture was linked to religious festivals that took place at important points in the seasonal agricultural cycle.
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The balai that we visited were isolated, without electricity or road links to the outside world. We had trouble understanding their Indonesian because it was mixed with their local language. At night, without electricity or TV, we became the center of attention. The occupants of the balai sat with us around an oil lamp, talking and playing games, before we turned in to sleep on the hard floor. Dayaks don't seem to like mattresses! The region was renowned for its cinnamon trees. Every day trees were being harvested; their bark stripped and laid in the sun to dry. Men carried racks of rolled cinnamon on their backs down the mountains to market. Some of the cinnamon was for local use, mixed with cloves and tobacco for smoking. When the bright rays of the sun beat down on the trees, we could smell the cinnamon as we walked through the forest.
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At one balai where we stayed overnight we offered to buy vegetables for the family when a mobile vendor turned up in the afternoon. We discovered too late that we had forgotten to buy oil. When we asked if anyone had some, an old man approached us with a small plastic bottle filled with a dark liquid. It turned out not to be oil, but locally-harvested wild honey. It had a wonderful flavor of exotic fragrant tropical flowers and trees.
Despite the promise of seeing some good forest, most of the area was subject to slash-and-burn agriculture. One short section of the trail led through a lush, dense forest with tall trees. We frightened a troupe of monkeys as we walked along the slippery path. Later, we came across the grave of Ratu Mona, an ancient queen, by the side of the trail. A wooden frame, draped with orange cloth, covered a small altar with offerings of coins, dried flowers and bottles.
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