Splinters

There's something about travelling that makes people really po-faced. Reading the Amazon reviews of Redmond O'Hanlon's 1983 classic Into The Heart Of Borneo, which sees him and poet James Fenton heading into the uncharted jungle depths of deepest Borneo in search of the fabled Borneo rhinosaurus, I'm struck by how holier-than-thou - and how plain wrong - many of the comments are. One reviewer bafflingly complains that there's too many birds and flowers mentioned in the book, along with citations from previous 19th century adventurers - Christ, what else does he want from a travel book that's about going to find an extinct creature in the most diverse biosphere on the face of the earth? Another reviewer says Hanlon spends all his time complaining about the rigours - and extreme dangers - of being in the Sarawak jungle, as if this wasn't a subject worthy of (continual) comment, and indeed, the whole point of foreign travel itself - I am a foreigner in a foreign land. Not native. Different. Not built or adapted for it. All travel writing centres around the fact that the writer is within an alien environment, so to complain that Hanlon is somehow not beatifically at one with the monster leeches and the suffocating heat from day one is again in denial of the subject of the book.

As you may have gathered, I was really impressed with Into The Heart Of Borneo. Hanlon has a fantastic comic writing skill in which he sets himself and Fenton up as the fools rather than taking the piss out of the locals. He never goes for the cheap punchline of "Hey wow! These primitive native types are crazy!". Instead his humour portrays a deep respect and unsentimental admiration for the ingenuity and hardiness of the Borneo tribespeople he encounters, especially his companions who fearlessly lead him up the river and their ultimate mountain destination, despite their own fears, both physical and spiritual.

Hanlon never reduces this utterly bewildering, dangerous and uncomfortable world into his own preconceptions. Why his book works so well is because he is open to being impressed by the new things that his travels open up to him - a new creature, a new way of carrying something, a new way of preparing food, a new concept of how to perceive the world. He takes these as they are within their own environment - there's little arrogance to Hanlon's writing, little need to compare it back to Western life and say "Well, this is better". Instead, Hanlon's book lets the reader immerse themselves in Borneo, some of its people and its wildlife, understand some of the history of this difficult land the British conquered and almost wished they hadn't, and understand that life there is completely different. Given even the SAS think twice about venturing into Sarawak's interior, as Hanlon explains in his first chapter, his efforts are all the more remarkable. Especially because they're not po-faced.