from $4,595* per person	14 Days	March
Boutique accommodations		Exertion level: 4
Operator: Cultural Explorations		24 people max

Sarawak is one of the world's best travel secrets, happily bypassed by mass tourism. On this trip, we set up the contrast with a good look at Kuala Lumpur's brash modernism; beneath the city's Blade Runner surface lies a multicultural population coming to terms with new wealth, religious diversity and the aftermath of colonialism. After two days in Kuala Lumpur, we move on to our port of departure, Sibu the city that tourism forgot. We too step out of time and loose ourselves in the majesty of the jungle.

With a gentle hum, the Orient Pandaw does a steady 8 knots and leaves almost no wake as it glides along the chocolate-coloured Rajang River. We spend an exotic eight nights on board with daily stops at villages, rubber plantations, schools and markets. We'll meet farmers harvesting pepper and rubber and weavers keeping the tradition of ikat alive. We'll be hosted in longhouses and in colonial forts. The river is the native habitat of crocodiles, rhinoceroses, clouded leopards, and orangutans and is home monitor lizards, monkeys and a huge diversity of bird species. We'll spend lots of time in jungle walks along well marked trekking trails with our local guides.

We conclude our Borneo experience in Kuching, a little gem of a city. It will surprise you by its quiet prosperity; streets of old Chinese shops happily co-exist with the restrained dignity of the Brooke Raj colonial buildings. Here we visit the Matang Wildlife Reserve to hear first hand about captive conservation breeding of orangutans and the rehabilitation and release of orangutans into the semi-wild.

Once you're in this part of the world, we suggest you join us to visit the magnificent Borobudur Temple complex, surely one of the greatest monuments in the world. The monks will introduce us to the devotional practice of circumambulating around the galleries and terraces always turning to the left and keeping the stupa to the right while either chanting or meditating.