George Ellis: The Journey to Indonesia & Ketambe Research Station

12th – 13th June – Many minutes to Medan

We all met at 4pm in high spirits at Bournemouth coach station to board the National Express to Heathrow. Having never travelled this far or exotically before, it still hadn’t sunk in what sort of experience this was going to be. After a fairly smooth coach journey, we arrived at Heathrow to meet two others of our group at around 7pm. We had two flights to take, a thirteen hour one to Singapore then an hour and thirty minutes to Medan. After checking in we ate our last meal in England for two weeks or so and begun to feel the excitement. Once security had passed and we learned that it was thirty degrees over in Singapore it all began to start sinking in. To many of our delight the plane had in built entertainment with endless films, TV series and games; along with the free breakfast and dinner the dreaded thirteen hour flight didn’t seem all too bad. After landing in Singapore it had definitely sunk in, it was twice as hot as the temperature in England when we left and extremely humid; we landed in Singapore and after learning that our flight to Medan was solely waiting for us to board before it took off, we swiftly searched for the terminal and boarded. We arrived in Medan at around 7.30pm local time, met our coach driver and set off on our way to the hotel. The first sights of Indonesia were seen in darkness, through tired eyes and wet, rainy windows. Nevertheless it was an exciting journey, and gave us our first small glimpses of urban Indonesia. After passing endless markets and mopeds we arrived at Jangga House where we were warmly greeted by the staff. At the hotel we also met up with two researchers – Emma Hankinson an MRes student and Chris Marsh a PhD student; and Ross Hill, a lecturer at Bournemouth University. After being briefed about our plans for the next day, we went to our rooms for a well needed sleep in a comfortable hotel bed

14th June – Off to Ketambe

We woke up at around 5am in the hotel, and met in the lounge at 6am where we ate our first proper meal in Indonesia, consisting mainly of rice, noodles, eggs and pork. We left the hotel at around 7am in order to miss traffic and set off on our seven hour journey to Ketambe! The lengthy nature of the journey was buffered by our first sights of Indonesia in the daylight. Eyes were glued to the windows as we passed endless people beginning their every-day lives, causing a slight feeling of culture shock. The joy on the locals’ faces as we drove past was warming, we exchanged waves with some of them and took photos of all which would have been every day sights for them, but completely novel to most of us. As we made our way into the more rural areas; there were even more sights to behold. We stopped for a toilet break and after spotting a glimpse of a recently erupted volcano on the horizon earlier in the coach, we went for a better look. Back on the coach we passed plenty of villages, cemeteries, monasteries and got our first glimpses of the widespread palm oil and corn plantations.

Our first up-close encounter with the Indonesian (wild)life came when taking a coffee break in a café with a beautiful view of the forests – a pig tailed macaque greeted us, then another, and another. We soon realised there were a whole group dotted around us and in the fringes of the forest below. They were scavenging for our food and coffee – which one was half successful in getting.

We continued on the last stretch to Ketambe leaving a spilt coffee and a somewhat caffeine stimulated macaque. We arrived in Ketambe at around 3pm where we negotiated with some locals to use their boats to take us and our luggage over the river to the research station. We split up; some staying in the station and others in a guesthouse back across the river. The first impressions of the forest and the research station were great, and after a welcome meal (more noodles and rice) we got our bearings. Part of Amanda, Chris and Emma’s research in Ketambe involves tracking primate group ranges in the forest and comparing them to forest structure. In order to track the primates, their early morning vocalisations are recorded, so before it got dark, we went out to help mark some of the stations which we’d return to in the early morning to record the morning calls of gibbons, siamangs and langurs. Once we’d returned to the camp however, the rain began to pour…

15th June – ‘Man of the Forest’

Sadly the rain continued throughout the night and into the early morning, so the vocal sampling was called off and we decided to lie in and meet for breakfast at around 8. After breakfast, led by Arwin (one of the local rangers), we headed off into the forest to undertake one of the longer trails. Throughout the journey we were in awe by the beauty of the forest; the diversity of insects, birds, mammals and plants to see kept us on the trail for around five hours. A particularly noteworthy phenomenon was the sound of Hornbills flapping around the fringes of the forest. Their sheer size and incredible presence gave off quite an eerie feel; making it seem as if we were in a forest being circled by Pterodactyls.

In the back of our heads there was one main goal for our time at Ketambe however – to see a completely wild orangutan. After no sightings we returned for breakfast back at the hut. On arrival the other group were ecstatic as they had just seen a female orangutan and her baby on the trail! Needless to say we were fairly jealous, and eager to get back out there soon. The previous day Emma had set up butterfly traps around camp using mosquito nets and fermented banana with sugar in effort to record any new butterfly species in Ketambe, after lunch we had a look through them and Emma taught us how to properly handle the butterflies.

Our break from the forest came to an end and before we knew it we were kitted up and back again for more. We wanted to catch the forest before it got too dark – so we set off at around four thirty. Arwin said he was fairly confident that our group could also catch sight of the orangutans, so we keenly followed his lead. Half an hour passed and his predictions were right! Very high up in the canopy we saw the mother and her child foraging for figs. We stayed for around 45 minutes simply watching and photographing the experience – and what an experience it was! Our day was made and we were all very upbeat about our first wild orangutan encounter. After our necks could take no more from looking up we eventually headed back to camp where it began to pour again in the early evening – rainforests eh?! So we decided to relax on the small porch outside our lodge until night time, and set our alarms for 4:30am in the hope of a dry morning suitable for some vocal sampling.

16th June – Vocal sampling

Success! Four thirty in the morning arrived and the only water that we could hear outside was the sound of the river next to where we were stationed. Normally a 4:30am wake-up call wouldn’t be very appealing but the excitement of hearing (and possibly seeing) some of the primates, along with witnessing the sunrise over the forest cancelled out all tiredness. We split up into three teams to cover three stations in order to try and triangulate the positions of the vocalisations. I was in a team with Chris, and we were stationed at the furthest point – at one of the highest points in the immediate surrounding forest.

After navigating the wet, slightly cooler (although still pretty hot) and dark forest to the top, leaving each of the other two groups at their posts on the way, Chris seemed optimistic that we’d hear a fair bit due to being high up. We arrived at our post and set up the hammock where we’d be stationed for the next four hours. Chris explained that different sections of the morning were devoted to different animals, and before the primates – the birds sung their songs. Amongst various birds and insect calls, we heard out first Thomas langur call – a very stereotypical monkey call which is hard to miss (apparently at least, it seems Chris had a much better ear for them than me!). The langurs called fairly consistently throughout the duration, and we both sat in anticipation of hearing one of the other species, no luck though unfortunately.

During the morning we thought a few branch breakages may have been orangutan movement, however Arwin told us they were just great argus pheasants (Argusianus argus). Other than a few more macaques the morning didn’t throw up much for us, that’s not to say it still wasn’t worthwhile! We began heading back to camp at around 10am where we picked up the other groups on the way back. The other groups were slightly luckier with their sightings throughout the morning, having witnessed a dispute between some Thomas langurs (Presbytis thomasi) and a feeding orangutan right above their heads! Back at camp, we compared our data from the vocalisations and after rough comparisons we believed that we located four Thomas langur groups. Although it wasn’t statistically sound analysis (which would be carried out by Chris and Emma at a later date) we still gained a basic understanding of the logistics of the study. As the evening closed in we headed back over the river as it was our groups turn to stay in the guesthouse.

The heavens opened again (shock!) just before we set off to cross the river, making the journey a whole lot more dramatic. After being completely drenched through and turning up at the wrong guesthouse (which was not to their liking) we arrived in Friendship guesthouse, where we checked in and sat down for a slightly more varied choice of dinner. As part of our placement tasks we were (amongst other tasks) required to design and distribute questionnaires regarding sustainable ecotourism throughout different areas of North Sumatra. Rachel and I were in the team allocated to design the questionnaires, so Rachel carried out the first questionnaire of the trip that evening at Friendship guesthouse. The guesthouse was empty and unfortunately there was only one guest present for the evening, so we weren’t able to carry out any more. Nevertheless it served as a good pilot for the study and the participant was quite insightful and made some interesting points.

17th – 19th June – Back to Jangga and off to Langsa and the HAkA CRU

After a lie in at the guesthouse we headed back over the river to meet with the rest of the group. In the afternoon, some of us ventured out into the forest one last time at Ketambe with Amanda on a route we had not taken before, but Amanda spoke highly of it. In the couple of hours we trekked we again saw an amazing variety of plants, fungi and animals – most notably an extremely large and old tree and a strangler fig (Ficus spp.). Evening came and we headed back across the river for one last time. We spent one last evening in Friendship guesthouse and planned to leave for a day-long journey back to Medan for 9am the next day and then off to Langsa...