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Within the boundaries of Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak is one of the most extensive and spectacular limestone cave systems on earth, as well as the second highest mountain peak in the state. Gunung also enjoys unusually high rainfall. As a result it bursts with life, and many new plant and animal species have been discovered here. Officially constituted in 1974 and opened to the public in 1985, Gunung Mulu National Park encompasses only 544 sq. km in North Sarawak, Borneo.

Gunung Mulu's Caves are extraordinary. Mulu's Sarawak Chamber is the largest natural chamber in the world, and Deer Cave is the largest cave passage known to man. It has two huge entrances at either end of the mountain it penetrates. Most of Deer Cave is illuminated, one can see 600-foot waterfalls pouring from the roof following a rain storm. Perhaps the most popular attraction of this cavern, however, is the daily exodus of its colony of nearly a million bats. Every evening the bats stream from the cave to spend the night dining on Gunung's rich insect population.

Clearwater Cave is the longest cave system in Southeast Asia. Although little of it is open to park visitors without special permission, over a hundred kilometers of passages have been discovered so far.

Not all of Mulu's limestone features are contained in caves. Gunung API, a 1,750 meter high mountain of limestone, lies directly beside Sarawak's second highest mountain peak, Gunung Mulu (2,376 meters). Both mountains are over five million years old. About two-thirds of the way up Gunung API sits a mass of enormous razor-sharp limestone pinnacles, the result of the steadily heavy rainfall experienced in this area over the last, oh, couple of million years or so..

For further information, please contact:

National Parks and Wildlife Office
1st Floor, Wisma Sumber Alam
93050 Kuching, Sarawak Tel: 082-442180/201 Fax: 082-441377
or
Section Forest Office
98000 Miri, Sarawak
Tel: 085-436637
Fax: 085-417629

THE PARK AT A GLANCE:

Size: 544 sq. km
Highest Point: Gunung Mulu (2,376 meters)
Flora Fauna: To date, Mulu is known to contain 1500 species of flowering plants including 170 species of orchids and 10 species of pitcher plants, excluding thousands of fungi, mosses and ferns. There are over 67 species of mammals, 262 species of birds, 74 species of frogs, 47 species of fish, 281 species of butterflies and 458 species of ants.
Activities: Jungle-trekking, caving expeditions.

Almost every evening over Deer Cave there rises a wheeling, twisting black clouds of hundreds of thousands of bats exiting from their roosts within the cave. Other common cave dwellers include 3 species of swiftlets, centipedes, earwigs, spiders and giant crickets.

GETTING THERE:

Miri is the jumping-off point. From Miri, visitors can take a Malaysia Airlines flight (15 minutes) or take the express boat from Kuala Baram (3 hours) to Marudi. From Marudi, take a commercial express boat to Kuala Apoh or Long Panai on the Tutoh River (a tributary of the Baram River). The express departs Marudi at noon daily and returns to Marudi in the early morning of the next day. The trip takes about 3 hours.

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