Kayaking the longest river in Indonesia (Borneo) - 2025

[Ozymandias]

You heard it here first folks! In mid-2025 my expedition partner Ben and I plan to kayak the longest river in Indonesia from source to sea. As usual we'll be filming the whole thing and I'll eventually write a book about it.

It's called the Kapuas River, it's on the island of Borneo (in the Indonesian bit, West Kalimantan province), and it's roughly 1,140km long. Although since nobody can point me to the official source of the river, it might end up being longer than that. As with our Madagascar trip, we'll probably only find the source once we're on the ground, in the jungles of the Müller mountain range, trekking around for it!

Anyways, I'll keep y'all posted on preparations for the expedition in this thread, which will likely take at least 9 months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapuas_River

[ReptilianKittenEater]

Sounds like fun. I was on the Malaysia side of Borneo in 2006 and note the following:

- though there are a few places in wetlands with lots of mosquitos there was suprisingly none deep in certain jungles.
- lots of neat other insects though, a cacophany of cicadas big birdwings and centipedes.
- give up on ever being dry even when there is no rain. the humidity will turn everything wet. An a/c hotel room will be a rare treat to dry out.
- the thickest, darkest jungle I've encountered, but I think parts of the Indonesian side are quite settled and cleared.

[Kurt]

Holy shit. You can do a "Source of The Nile" type thing (also a cool boardgame)

RKE: was there a lack of mammals in the mosquito-less part of the jungle?

[ReptilianKittenEater]

There were mammals there, they were difficult to see as the jungle is so thick.

The lack of skeeters had to do with the millions of bats that were around I think.

Neat place to visit, the jungle is real atmospheric.