Look mum, no hands!

An early start today to catch the 7.15am bus to Semenggoh Nature Reserve. Walking from the bus stop up the hill into the forest, the sound of traffic recedes and the sound of cicadas takes over. It was quiet when the few people on the bus arrived at the centre. I looked around the information centre and when I came out, lots more people had arrived.

The orang utans in the reserve are either semi-wild ones who went through a rehabilitation programme and were released into the protected forest, or they are the wild offspring of those graduates of the rehabilitation programme. At least one of the original inhabitants is a grandmother now. There are 28 orang utans living there. They can all survive in the forest but the staff supplement their feeding twice a day. There’s no guarantee that any orang utans will show up as they don’t need to. The centre is opened twice a day at the feeding times and it’s the only time visitors can go in. There’s a viewing area for visitors to stand and they’ve put ropes across a clearing in the trees so you have more chance to see any orang utans who drop by to get some fruit.

This morning two females and with their babies turned up and one more adult. One adult and her baby hung around (literally) for quite a while after the others had grabbed their fruit and disappeared back into the forest.


They were a lot more difficult to photograph than the proboscis monkeys on Tuesday because they moved around a lot more. The proboscis monkeys just sat in the trees. The lighting was also more tricky but I got a few decent shots. The babies are so gorgeous!