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Fever Trees of Borneo
An intrepid adventurer, Mark has spent the last decade traveling areas left ominously blank on maps. This is the story of his malaria-wracked expedition across central Borneo. Once again he defies cartographers by going in search of the 'wild men of Borneo'—a tribe of jungle dwellers whose existence is validated only by myth. With fellow traveler Paul he paddles up an uncharted river into what was believed to be the valley of the spirit world—where even the island's fiercest head hunters fear to go. Crossing treacherous mountains that no Western eye has ever seen, they penetrate ever deeper into the inhospitable jungle. On the way they encounter shipwrecks, malaria, amoebic dysentery, near-starvation, leeches, exhaustion, enforced alcohol abuse, a barbecued mouse-deer foetus and a ferocious craving for chocolate.
270 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1999
About the author
Mark Eveleigh
41 books9 followers'A borderline insane modern-day explorer' – Maxim magazine.
Mark Eveleigh has been a full-time magazine writer and author for almost 30 years. A British citizen, he grew up in Ghana and Nigeria and has spent more years based in Spain, South Africa and Indonesia than he ever did in UK.
AUTHOR:
'Vagabond' (the book about Mark's 1,225km solo hike up the length of Spain), published by Summersdale, was listed among the '6 top travel reads for 2024' by National Geographic.
His Indonesian travel book 'Kopi Dulu' (PenguinRH SEA, 2022) was listed among the best books of 2022 by Jakarta Post.
His debut novel (in 2023) was 'Driftwood Chandeliers', a hard-hitting magical-realism novel set in a remote village in Bali.
He also wrote 'Fever Trees of Borneo' and 'Maverick in Madagascar' (published in German by National Geographic.)
GUIDEBOOK WRITER:
He co-authored Secret Bali and Secret Bangkok guidebooks along with several Lonely Planet guidebooks including Borneo (2023); Tanzania (2023); Madagascar (2023); Ecuador (2024); Spain (2024).
TRAVEL JOURNALIST:
As a travel journalist Mark (a fellow of Royal Geographical Society) has published more than 850 full-length travel features for more than 120 international publications, including BBC Wildlife, BBC Earth, BBC Travel, CNN Travel, Conde Nast Traveller, Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, Boston Globe, Travel Africa, Sunday Times, Africa Geographic and National Geographic Traveler. He's written for the inflight magazines of countless national airlines, including KLM, Qantas, Etihad, Qatar, Korea, Malaysia, Oman, Brussels, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines, Gulf Airlines and Garuda Indonesia.
When he's not on assignments he can often be found in West Bali where he has some well-stocked bookshelves and a small shed that's crammed with surfboards.
Mark Eveleigh has been a full-time magazine writer and author for almost 30 years. A British citizen, he grew up in Ghana and Nigeria and has spent more years based in Spain, South Africa and Indonesia than he ever did in UK.
AUTHOR:
'Vagabond' (the book about Mark's 1,225km solo hike up the length of Spain), published by Summersdale, was listed among the '6 top travel reads for 2024' by National Geographic.
His Indonesian travel book 'Kopi Dulu' (PenguinRH SEA, 2022) was listed among the best books of 2022 by Jakarta Post.
His debut novel (in 2023) was 'Driftwood Chandeliers', a hard-hitting magical-realism novel set in a remote village in Bali.
He also wrote 'Fever Trees of Borneo' and 'Maverick in Madagascar' (published in German by National Geographic.)
GUIDEBOOK WRITER:
He co-authored Secret Bali and Secret Bangkok guidebooks along with several Lonely Planet guidebooks including Borneo (2023); Tanzania (2023); Madagascar (2023); Ecuador (2024); Spain (2024).
TRAVEL JOURNALIST:
As a travel journalist Mark (a fellow of Royal Geographical Society) has published more than 850 full-length travel features for more than 120 international publications, including BBC Wildlife, BBC Earth, BBC Travel, CNN Travel, Conde Nast Traveller, Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, Boston Globe, Travel Africa, Sunday Times, Africa Geographic and National Geographic Traveler. He's written for the inflight magazines of countless national airlines, including KLM, Qantas, Etihad, Qatar, Korea, Malaysia, Oman, Brussels, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines, Gulf Airlines and Garuda Indonesia.
When he's not on assignments he can often be found in West Bali where he has some well-stocked bookshelves and a small shed that's crammed with surfboards.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 28, 2024
If anything, a story like this illustrates the realities of venturing into deep tropical jungles. Many foreigners underestimate the fortitude and strength required to stay in dense jungles, and for what it’s worth, I’m glad the author acknowledges his naivety as opposed to laying blame on local communities. It’s an entertaining tale of clueless visitors in a remote part of Borneo as they attempt a romanticised trek across what they probably then thought of as a simple forest hike. A glimpse of Dayak culture in the 90s, when the crossroads of progress and the old way pushed and pulled, is a profound observation of a small slice of rural Bornean communities.
I don’t necessarily agree with some points made, but it was entertaining in parts nonetheless. A good read and recommended for those seeking an old memory of a place now vastly changed.
I don’t necessarily agree with some points made, but it was entertaining in parts nonetheless. A good read and recommended for those seeking an old memory of a place now vastly changed.
August 15, 2026
I ummed and erred whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars. It's been a while since I finished it, but without over-thinking it, I'd probably want to give it 3.5 stars. I don't think it was as strong and as well written as other books that I've given 4 stars to, but I think it was better than many of the books I've given 3 stars to, so I feel slightly mean.
Anyhoo...
In 2016 I spent two months in Borneo. I grew up watching David Attenborough documentaries and being fascinated by the jungle. So a big motivation for me in spending this time in Borneo was to explore this exciting place first-hand.
In terms of my travel, I've always been drawn to wildernesses and unexplored places. I've always been fascinated by looking at maps of the world, and thinking, "I wonder what's THERE!" - be that in the middle of Siberia, Greenland, Antartica or Canada. Or indeed Borneo. I now realise that sometimes these places are unexplored and unknown because they're actually pretty feature-less and not that interesting! But in Borneo's case, having scratched the surface a bit of its jungle (I did a 3-day trek in the Kelabit Highlights, which fewer travellers do), I was super-intrigued to read this memoire of a man who'd trekked way deeper into Borneo's mysterious interior than I ever got.
SPOILER ALERT: In the rest of this review I will give away some details as to what the story reveals. I'm doing this to manage expectations and to allow prospective readers to consider whether the pay off will be worth it. But if you don't want any spoilers, stop reading this review now.
In this book, the quest was all about being the first westerners to travel across Borneo's Muller Mountains, and seeing things no westerner had ever set eyes on. For me, the question in my mind has always been this: Is there this incredible, exciting landscape in the heart of Borneo that I didn't see? Or is all of Borneo much of a muchness, once you've experienced some of its jungle and hills?
Obviously I wasn't there, and am relying on Eveleigh's testimony, but based on this book, the answer seems to be the latter, not the former.
The first proper jungle trek I did in Borneo was in Batang Ai national park in Sarawak near the border with Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo). Our trek started off by using a river to travel into the jungle, and then staying overnight with a local tribe who lived next to river. We then did a couple of day-long treks, returning to our river-side accommodation each night. I remember at the time, being frustrated that it was impossible to take any good photos of the jungle while on a trek as things tended to look much of a muchness - scrubby undergrowth, uniform types of tree, muddy path. The spaces tended to be quite restricted when you were in the jungle, not the wide-open vistas that make for an awesome or beautiful photo.
Reading Eveleigh's account of his journey, I would say 80% of the story is about him travelling further and further up-river to be in a position to start the trek across the Muller Mountains. Reading about his journey up-river, his testimony rang very true to me. I'm not for a second comparing Eveleigh's mammoth journey to the small ones I made - mine were not in the same league of ambition! - but nonetheless there were themes in my own experience that echoed what Eveleigh's talking about.
Both his journey and mine involved making use of waterways to travel further into the jungle. And indeed Eveleigh says that in the jungle (where there are no roads*) rivers become the main ways to get from A to B, a bit like the motorways of the jungle, I suppose. (* In my Kelabit Highlands trek, we did make use of logging roads - so it is true, sadly, that in much of Borneo's jungle now there are such roads, although in the central more mountainous part, I believe that such roads don't exist (due to the jungle being less suitable/accessible for logging), but I might be wrong,.)
He also spends a lot of time talking about the locals, and their customs, personalities, alcoholic drinks, etc. Having spent two months in Borneo myself, I was familiar with a lot of what he described.
So for me, and I appreciate many readers reading this book won't have had any first-hand experience of Borneo jungle trekking unlike me, a lot of this book was more of an enjoyable and sentimental trip down memory lane, rather than the exciting discovery of something new I was looking for.
I found it quite frustrating that most of the book was building up to the trek through the Muller Mountains proper, and when you finally reach the trek, to me, it felt somewhat anticlimactic. This was the moment of awe, I'd been hoping for, but when I read it it felt not dissimilar to my own experiences. The description is less about what Eveleigh could see around him, and more about his own physical exertion and tiredness of attempting it. It reminded me of my own experience of jungle trekking - that in practice, you don't spend much time looking around at the view because there isnt' much of a view to see, and you spend more time looking where you're next going to step.
In fact, I did a quick Google: the Muller Mountains rise to 1,200 to 1,500 metres above sea level. On my trip, I climbed to the viewing platform of Mount Api in Gunung Mulu National Park to view the Pinnacles there, and that is apparently 1,200 metres above sea level. I also climbed Mount Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in Borneo, rising to 4,095 metres above sea level.
So how would I sum up this book?
Eveleigh writes well, and he's a good guide through his Borneo trek. You get a vivid sense of that journey, the people he meets and the experiences and challenges he has along the way. I think it's a good read and entertaining, even for someone like me who has quite a lot of experience of Borneo first-hand.
It was written in the 1990s, and some of the jokes in it are a bit "Dad-joke" at times. I think Eveleigh was young when he wrote it, but for me at least the humour felt a bit flat / corny (although not offensive in any way).
I think if you're interested in learning about what jungle trekking in Borneo and its tribes are actually like, then this is a great book to read. I would slap a huge caveat on that that it was written 30 years ago, so I'm sure if you went to do the same trek today it would be very different, but probably not entirely different.
If, however, you're a reader like me who has some experience of jungle trekking in Borneo, so is less interested in that basic stuff and more interested in the tantalising question of "But what is that in the HEART of Borneo to see?" you might come away, like I did, slightly underwhelmed. I did enjoy it, but I came away less with a feeling of "Wow!" that I wanted, and more with a sense that Borneo inland is pretty similar to the terrain that I covered.
Obviously it's impossible for me to be certain of this unless I too were to explore Borneo's interior first hand. But this is the sense I got from this memoir.
Anyhoo...
In 2016 I spent two months in Borneo. I grew up watching David Attenborough documentaries and being fascinated by the jungle. So a big motivation for me in spending this time in Borneo was to explore this exciting place first-hand.
In terms of my travel, I've always been drawn to wildernesses and unexplored places. I've always been fascinated by looking at maps of the world, and thinking, "I wonder what's THERE!" - be that in the middle of Siberia, Greenland, Antartica or Canada. Or indeed Borneo. I now realise that sometimes these places are unexplored and unknown because they're actually pretty feature-less and not that interesting! But in Borneo's case, having scratched the surface a bit of its jungle (I did a 3-day trek in the Kelabit Highlights, which fewer travellers do), I was super-intrigued to read this memoire of a man who'd trekked way deeper into Borneo's mysterious interior than I ever got.
SPOILER ALERT: In the rest of this review I will give away some details as to what the story reveals. I'm doing this to manage expectations and to allow prospective readers to consider whether the pay off will be worth it. But if you don't want any spoilers, stop reading this review now.
In this book, the quest was all about being the first westerners to travel across Borneo's Muller Mountains, and seeing things no westerner had ever set eyes on. For me, the question in my mind has always been this: Is there this incredible, exciting landscape in the heart of Borneo that I didn't see? Or is all of Borneo much of a muchness, once you've experienced some of its jungle and hills?
Obviously I wasn't there, and am relying on Eveleigh's testimony, but based on this book, the answer seems to be the latter, not the former.
The first proper jungle trek I did in Borneo was in Batang Ai national park in Sarawak near the border with Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo). Our trek started off by using a river to travel into the jungle, and then staying overnight with a local tribe who lived next to river. We then did a couple of day-long treks, returning to our river-side accommodation each night. I remember at the time, being frustrated that it was impossible to take any good photos of the jungle while on a trek as things tended to look much of a muchness - scrubby undergrowth, uniform types of tree, muddy path. The spaces tended to be quite restricted when you were in the jungle, not the wide-open vistas that make for an awesome or beautiful photo.
Reading Eveleigh's account of his journey, I would say 80% of the story is about him travelling further and further up-river to be in a position to start the trek across the Muller Mountains. Reading about his journey up-river, his testimony rang very true to me. I'm not for a second comparing Eveleigh's mammoth journey to the small ones I made - mine were not in the same league of ambition! - but nonetheless there were themes in my own experience that echoed what Eveleigh's talking about.
Both his journey and mine involved making use of waterways to travel further into the jungle. And indeed Eveleigh says that in the jungle (where there are no roads*) rivers become the main ways to get from A to B, a bit like the motorways of the jungle, I suppose. (* In my Kelabit Highlands trek, we did make use of logging roads - so it is true, sadly, that in much of Borneo's jungle now there are such roads, although in the central more mountainous part, I believe that such roads don't exist (due to the jungle being less suitable/accessible for logging), but I might be wrong,.)
He also spends a lot of time talking about the locals, and their customs, personalities, alcoholic drinks, etc. Having spent two months in Borneo myself, I was familiar with a lot of what he described.
So for me, and I appreciate many readers reading this book won't have had any first-hand experience of Borneo jungle trekking unlike me, a lot of this book was more of an enjoyable and sentimental trip down memory lane, rather than the exciting discovery of something new I was looking for.
I found it quite frustrating that most of the book was building up to the trek through the Muller Mountains proper, and when you finally reach the trek, to me, it felt somewhat anticlimactic. This was the moment of awe, I'd been hoping for, but when I read it it felt not dissimilar to my own experiences. The description is less about what Eveleigh could see around him, and more about his own physical exertion and tiredness of attempting it. It reminded me of my own experience of jungle trekking - that in practice, you don't spend much time looking around at the view because there isnt' much of a view to see, and you spend more time looking where you're next going to step.
In fact, I did a quick Google: the Muller Mountains rise to 1,200 to 1,500 metres above sea level. On my trip, I climbed to the viewing platform of Mount Api in Gunung Mulu National Park to view the Pinnacles there, and that is apparently 1,200 metres above sea level. I also climbed Mount Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in Borneo, rising to 4,095 metres above sea level.
So how would I sum up this book?
Eveleigh writes well, and he's a good guide through his Borneo trek. You get a vivid sense of that journey, the people he meets and the experiences and challenges he has along the way. I think it's a good read and entertaining, even for someone like me who has quite a lot of experience of Borneo first-hand.
It was written in the 1990s, and some of the jokes in it are a bit "Dad-joke" at times. I think Eveleigh was young when he wrote it, but for me at least the humour felt a bit flat / corny (although not offensive in any way).
I think if you're interested in learning about what jungle trekking in Borneo and its tribes are actually like, then this is a great book to read. I would slap a huge caveat on that that it was written 30 years ago, so I'm sure if you went to do the same trek today it would be very different, but probably not entirely different.
If, however, you're a reader like me who has some experience of jungle trekking in Borneo, so is less interested in that basic stuff and more interested in the tantalising question of "But what is that in the HEART of Borneo to see?" you might come away, like I did, slightly underwhelmed. I did enjoy it, but I came away less with a feeling of "Wow!" that I wanted, and more with a sense that Borneo inland is pretty similar to the terrain that I covered.
Obviously it's impossible for me to be certain of this unless I too were to explore Borneo's interior first hand. But this is the sense I got from this memoir.
July 11, 2023
Labai žavinga knyga! Primena Lonely Planet vadovus savo baisingai entuziastingu autoriaus pasakojimo būdu ir išryškintomis keistomis kultūrinėmis detalėmis. Kita vertus, ji daug daugiau nei kelionės vadovas. Tai pasakojimas apie du bepročius vakariečius, norinčius nukeliauti ten, kur nėra įžengusi civilizacija, ir kartu niūrus žvilgsnis į nykstantį džiunglių atšiaurumą. Tikrai įtraukia ir nepaleidžia, kol neužbaigi.
January 14, 2026
If you have some familiarity with the dayak people its nothing special, but it is good to be exposed to Kalimantan in the 90s.
If you're not familiar with Borneo it could possibly be an interesting read.
If you're not familiar with Borneo it could possibly be an interesting read.
August 10, 2012
I love this book as much as I did when I first read it 9 years ago, before going to Borneo myself. Great travel adventure!
September 27, 2014
Read years ago. Need to reread
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews