John Boyd Macdonald
John Boyd Macdonald
The Dayak Tiwah ceremony that we attended back in last November was one of the most astonishing and powerful things that we have experienced in Kalimantan. So when we heard that another, much larger Tiwah Massal was to be held in the nearby…
We’ve been to a fair number of wedding receptions over the past year in Kalimantan. Actually, Karen counts 11 that she has attended – Dayak, Banjar, Javanese (she’s a couple ahead of me…) – and we’ve been invited to even…
One of the many nice things about working of the Agricultural Project of the Yayasan Usaha Mulia (hereinafter just ‘YUM Agro’) is that I get to meet the project participants, and to spend time making photographs in the seven villages in which YUM works.…
No story this time, just some faces from the opening parade of the Isen Mulang Festival, which was held in Palangkaraya 18-24 May. The festival is an annual celebration of Central Kalimantan cultural diversity – but most particularly Dayak culture.…
The dry season has begun here, and the smoke has started to thicken from the countless fires across the island of Borneo (especially our part of it…!). Soon it’ll be mask-wearing time again. The smoke is likely to worsen from now…
Here’s a followup to the previous post about the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan, but this time focussing on just one part – the wonderful Mahakam Lakes. The Mahakam Lakes region is a complex of wetlands including some 32 lakes, three of which…
The Mahakam River runs for just under 1000km from the Muller Mountains in the ‘Heart of Borneo’ southeast to the provincial capital of East Kalimantan (Samarinda) and the coastal delta, eventually discharging into the Makassar Strait. It’s very wide and muddy in…
Danau (Lake) Sentarum drains into the Kapuas River, not far to the southwest of the Betung-Kerihun National Park. In the dry season there’s just a network of snaky rivers there, but now (at the end of the wet season) there’s a huge and…