Batang Ai, in the far southeast towards the Kalimantan border, is where Sarawak feels most like the Borneo of the imagination: a vast reservoir ringed by rainforest, reached by road from Kuching and then by longboat across the water. The surrounding forests hold one of Borneo's healthiest populations of truly wild orangutans, alongside gibbons and langurs.
This is also Iban heartland. Longhouses dot the lake's shores and the rivers that feed it, and most visits combine wildlife trekking with time spent as a guest of the communities that have lived along these waters for generations.