People say it's the longest living river in Sabah. Stretching far to 560 km, it snakes across different forms of vegetation and bathes the topography from rocky hills to the flat mud plains of Kinabatangan. I, for once, would like to call it the fragrant river.

It occurred to me how travelling by boat felt like flying. As the soft breeze sweeps you across the face, your adrenaline pitched high with the speed, the smooth acceleration aloft the chasm body of water and the mirror of puffy clouds beneath, give a tale that you're no different from the birds of the Borneon sky.

The sweet taste of figs tantalizing to the nostril is yet a tempting manner for in contrast to its' smell, it is not palatable neither to humans nor animals. Hence the name. This image is what Kinabatangan conjures. Almost everything is such a contradiction to the other. The degree of uniqueness is at its peak here in Kinabatangan.

We're entering into the domain of wild orangutans, man of the forests as defined by the word or the red ape to others. The orangutan is the only great ape in Asia with two adjacent cousins, the gorillas and chimps in Africa. Sabah, Borneo is fortunate enough to harbour these marvelous creatures. Orangutans are only confined to two countries, both Malaysia and Indonesia respectively. Far from what people think, orangutans are not found uniformly throughout the country. Restricted to certain areas, orangutans are deprived from pristine lush forests. Thereby, unsuprisingly, could also be found in degraded forests such as those in the Kinabatangan region.

What attraction drew me to this forest creature? It's the same question that I ask myself everyday. There isn't any definite answer that I can simply put it down in words. Maybe it's because they share the uncanny resemblance to us humans. Some had argued how similar we are to them in relative to other great apes in terms of behaviour, physical form and social relationship.

Orangutans are sexually dimorphic, long-lived and the most solitary of great apes as Birute Galdikas put it. What better reason than this can we say as we speak of ourselves.

Maybe it's also because of that intrinsic value they hold, although some would prefer to call it economically beneficial. There's no doubt that orangutans are the golden goose for the proliferating tourism industry. Everybody wants to see cute cuddly orangutans. Why? Because they're ENDANGERED, labelled as potential candidate to extinction and the fact that they are cute. But is that all?

What is the value of one species gone entirely from the face of the earth? Is it measurable in our materialistic language of ringgits, dollars, pounds etc? Once gone, it's gone forever. Well except for the coelacanth and other species like it that have thought to be long-gone. But what is the probability of this chance, one in a thousand, one in a million?

The only rendezvous we have with these long-gone creatures is a cold memoir of dead species carved in tombstone near Brooklyn, New York. Plus, children's story books.

Ask any tourists why they come travelling to Kinabatangan, you'd be struck dumbfounded to hear their answers, "people tell us to better come here before it's too late". Eerie feedback, but true.

I recall a story once told by a good friend of mine. He used to work as a logger before making a head start into conservation. You'd be surprised how bulldozers can work wonders with the forest landscape. Within minutes, trees that took years and hundreds of years to develop would be squashed down to the ground, flat.

Going through his daily routine, he continues to pull down logs until he came to one last standing tree. Huddled close between the foliage of leaves, was a mother and a baby orangutan. One thing about orangutans is that they don't flee away as logging operation takes place. Hoping to stay camouflaged and undetectable, they remain quiet and still. As the last tree falls, so do the orangutans.

The mother dead, with the infant still tugging her arm.... Unbearable with this sight, my friend made it quits to logging and ventured into Kinabatangan Orang-utan conservation Project, an initiative of a French NGO Hutan. What becomes of the baby orangutan? Perhaps wanting to sell it in the pet trade, the loggers took it away and tied it down with cables like a dangerous animal. The sharp wire etching into the flesh bit by bit drew the last breath of the baby orangutan. A bit the same story as elsewhere.

I have been wondering to myself, are the orangutans able to think or feel as we do? If perhaps the answer's yes, then do they qualify the same status as we humans oblige, an ethical recognition in a sense.

A philosopher once noted that this question is not the matter of thinking or feeling capability but to their ability to suffer. Not the extremity degree of suffering but the ability to feel pain. This is what all beings share in similarity.

I'm currently studying the orangutans which I hope, could better help me understand their behaviour. And also, with the hope that I could personally see the empathy in them just as how one looks a kerbau in the eye, or even other creatures big and small. It's more like a personal thing which could only help me satisfy. But again, which I hope I could share with others.

Kerbau = water buffalo