MULU Canopy Sky Walk, Botanic Heritage Trail, Deer Cave and Lang Cave

28th Aug

The Mulu Canopy Skywalk is about 500 metres in length and about 30m in height. The skywalk has no ground column to support it. Instead it’s hang from large trees. It’s narrow and each portion can only supports two persons at anytime.

There were just 3 of us in this 90 minutes walk. Tour guide Kenneth and a young British lady lawyer. In a way, it was great the whole forest belong to 3 of us. As you walk along the ferns and vines about 50 feet above the valley floor and river, you get close to the ‘web of life’. And some of the jungle trees are well over 200 feet and over 100 years. It was like climbing up a tree and sitting safely high on the branches, looking down at the forest floors. In my younger days, climbing up the rambutan tree and eating the rambutans on the branches was cool.

My next activity for the day was a self guided 3 km walk on the Botanical Heritage Trail. It is a very educational walk as the are numerous signs along the way to provide you with and introduction to the evolution of plants in general covering many interesting families of the rainforests plants. It also include wild flowers like orchids and tropical fruits. There are informative and educational.

Next, I was booked on a 2pm tour of Deer Cave and Lang Cave. This is a guided tour starting with a 3 km trek to the cave entrance. The two cave are about 100 metres apart.

Lang Cave is one of the smaller cave open to public but it too is special. According to our guide, this cave was formed more by standing water dissolving  the limestone rather than an active stream passage eroding it. This is evidence by the flat ceiling and notches in the walls. The cave has spectacular display of stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, shawls and rimstone pools.

 

Deer cave is the largest cave in the world until few years ago, another cave in Vietnam laid claim to be the largest. But it is undisputedly the largest cave passage in the world. The cave passage is about 2 km long with height more than 300 feet and width and height over 500 feet. All this is told to me by our guide. This cave is formed by a very powerful underground river that once flowed through this area, dissolving and eroding the limestone to create this incredible and space. The massive Deer Cave passage is an over-whelming and awesome sight.

                                               
                                                       Garden of Eden below

Back in the 90s, I read that this cave can park up to 40 B747s and that how it captured my attention to this day and kept me motivated to come to Mulu Park.