Sarawak - Borneo - page 375

the flora and fauna do their thing high up in the trees, not down on the ground, where less
than 2% of the forest's total sunlight is available. Mulu's 480m-long skywalk, unforget-
tably anchored to a series of huge trees, has handy signage and is one of the best in South-
east Asia. Often gets booked out early - for a specific time slot, reserve as soon as you've
got your flight.

Show Caves
Mulu's 'show caves' (the park's name for caves that can be visited without specialised
training or equipment) are its most popular attraction and for good reason: they are, quite
simply, awesome. All are accessible on guided walks from park HQ. Bring a powerful
torch.

Deer Cave & Lang's Cave
(per person RM20; departures at 2pm & 2.30pm) A lovely 3km walk (40 minutes to
60 minutes) through the rainforest along a plankwalk takes you to these adjacent caverns.
The highlight here is not so much what's in the caves as what comes out of them every
evening around dusk (unless it's raining): millions of bats in spiralling, twirling clouds
that look a bit like swarms of cartoon bees. It's an awe-inspiring sight. The bats' cork-
screw trajectory is designed to foil the dinner plans of bat hawks perched on the surround-
ing cliffs. Count on getting back to park HQ at around 7pm.
The Mulu Bat-Cam ( www.muluparkbatcams.com ) - in fact, five infrared webcams -
follows the lives of bats inside the Deer Cave. It's not internet live-streamed yet but you
can see the feed at the Bat Observatory , next to the cave's grassy bat-viewing amphi-
theatre, as well as back at HQ in the park office.
The Deer Cave - over 2km in length and 174m high - is the world's largest cave pas-
sage open to the public. (It was considered the world's largest cave passage, full stop, until
what may be an even larger one was discovered in Vietnam in 2009.) It is home to two
million to three million bats belonging to 12 species (more than in any other single cave in
the world) who cling to the roof in a seething black mass as they gear up for their evening
prowl.
We're not sure who did the calculations or how, but it's said that the Deer Cave's bats
devour 30 tonnes of mosquitoes every night. That's one reason why mosquito bites are al-
most unknown at Mulu.
If it's raining, the bats usually (but not always) stay home because echolocation (the
way they find prey) is not very good at honing in on flying insects amid an onslaught of
raindrops.

CAVE