Kinabalu – The Haunted Mountain of Borneo

Enriquez’s short account, ‘Kinabalu – The Haunted Mountain Of Borneo’ requires only a brief introduction in that it is a succinctly composed record of an expedition to Borneo in 1925, made principally to collect zoological specimens. This was when Borneo was a far-away land of orang-utan and headhunters, savagery and piracy and when (under the British North Borneo Company) “the question of communications remains… in the air.” It is still a far-away land of orang-utan for many Europeans, but the headhunting and the savagery has gone, remaining only in the annals of the past.

The reader can finish the book in one or two days at the most, but the admirer of Kinabalu and keen collector of Borneo literature will notice that some of the most beautifully written passages on Kinabalu that portray its starkness and many wonderful moods exist in Enriquez’s book. Even in those days, at a time when it was thought there had been only 25 documented visits and sacrificial rites were an essential condition to climb the mountain, he notes that “ Kinabalu is a sort of Mecca for naturalists.”