Finding Eden: A Journey into the Heart of Borneo

by Robin Hanbury-Tenison

-Sometimes it feels as though the whole planet has been so polluted and ravaged that there are no Edens left, but they are there to be found by those who step off the beaten track... So it was with mine.- Fifty years ago the interior of Borneo was a pristine, virgin rainforest inhabited by uncontacted indigenous tribes and naIve, virtually tame, wildlife. It was into this 'Garden of Eden' that Robin Hanbury Tenison led one of the largest ever Royal Geographical Society expeditions, an extraordinary undertaking which triggered the global rainforest movement and illuminated, for the first time, how vital rainforests are to our planet. For 15 months, Hanbury Tenison and a team of some of the greatest scientists in the world immersed themselves in a place and a way of life that is on the cusp of extinction. Much of what was once a wildlife paradise is now a monocultural desert, devastated by logging and the forced settlement of nomadic tribes, where traditional ways of life and unimaginably rich and diverse species are slowly being driven to extinction. This is a story for our time, one that reminds us of the fragility of our planet and of the urgent need to preserve the last untamed places of the world.

Genres: Travel

240 pages, Hardcover

Published November 28, 2017

Reviews

[AB Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, especially as it serves as an epistolary journey into the experiences Hanbury-Tenison encountered in the Borneo of the late 1970s, the friendships created, sufferings faced, and landscapes revealed. Sadly, I struggled to maintain interest. However, as an expression of the environmental degradation and subsequent loss of biodiversity in the Borneo rainforest, this text remains an important anthropological expression of what we lose as we march lockstep into a future in which the extractive policies of the past have not yet declined.

Hanbury-Tenison is an apt narrator, his friendship with Along, his primary guide, a powerful touchstone of both memory and an appreciation of the lifestyles of Indigenous peoples. Both as memoir and partial anthropological ethnology, the text respectfully describes the land and its peoples. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t remain interested in how the tale ended.

3 stars. Full disclosure: I read roughly three-quarters of the text, then skipped to the end. It wasn’t that the book was poorly written, or that the events discussed didn’t paint a powerful portrait of the changes both the rainforest and her peoples have suffered. It simply became repetitive and uninteresting. Another reader may find it exactly the opposite. Still, I’m glad I made the attempt.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arranged in three sections: Chapters on the meeting and subsequent relationship with Nyapun who is an indigenous hunter in Borneo, excerpts from diaries of the expedition, and a final section called "Today". The first section of the book was the most interesting to me. The author relates the background of the Royal Geographical Society expedition into Borneo and his remarkable cross-cultural friendship with Nyapun. It is also a story of the Borneo rainforests that reminds us of the fragility of our planet and of the urgent need to preserve the last untamed places of the world.

[Kieran · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is about the incredible Mulu Caves and the Penan people of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo, or more specifically the Royal Geographical Society expedition to Mulu in the 1970s. Although the writer is no doubt a great champion of the indigenous people he works with, he is also keen to highlight his own achievements and status in a way that I found off-putting. For example, quoting people who praised him and his work, and comparing an experience in the field to watching a firework display when he was a student at Eton. The writer's voice made parts of it read like it was written much earlier than the 1970s and 2010s. It is from the perspective of someone high up in the Royal Geographical Society, so I suppose this isn't surprising. For me, this detracted from the enlightening parts about the Borneo rainforest, Mulu caves and the Penan, which is a shame, because it is a story really worth telling.

[Carina Howitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

We should all be reminding ourselves of what has and is still happening in this world of destruction. We can all make more effort to change.