Explore ancient rainforests, untouched by time
With its lush greenery, soaring trees and winding valleys, Taman Negara offers you a vast area of over 4,000km2 to explore. As you enter the landscape you walk into one of the oldest tropical rainforests: it is estimated to be 130 million years old.
The park was once only accessible by river and, although this is no longer true, there is still something very special about taking the wooden longboat trip along the Tembeling river to the park entrance.
The park is teeming with wildlife, and on a Taman Negara holiday your guide will help you spot Malayan tapir, elephant, muntjac (barking deer), seladang (wild oxen) and wild pigs. No promises, but you may be lucky enough to catch sight of critically endangered species such as the Sumatran rhinoceros or the Malayan tiger. As you trek through the rainforest your guide will point out many of the 360 different species of colourful birds that live here too.
Taman Negara is also home to the indigenous tribes of Orang Asli, which translates to ‘original’ or ‘first people’. The descendents of the peninsula’s earliest inhabitants, they continue to live a traditional life, hunting for birds or monkeys using traditional blowpipes and darts. On your Taman Negara tour you can visit one of the settlement villages, where members of the tribe will teach you to build fires and use blowpipes, as well as other survival skills.