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A Visit to Malaysia’s Taman Negara Raised Unexpected Questions About Belonging

Inside Malaysia's 130-million-year-old rainforest, a visit to the Batek people challenged my assumptions about kinship and identity.

The boat ride begins with a warning from the guide: you will get wet.

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At AsiaCamp Resort, on the edge of Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park, travelers gather in rubber sandals and quick-dry clothes before boarding narrow wooden boats that skim across the muddy Tembeling River. The excursion is called “rapid shooting,” a tourist-friendly name for bouncing through the river’s small rapids at speed. Water splashes over the sides. Everyone laughs.

The trip costs 119 Malaysian ringgit (about $30) and comes as part of a package, including return transport from Kuala Lumpur, the high-speed boat ride through the shallow rapids, and a canopy walk suspended above the rainforest. Tucked inside the itinerary is something more unusual than the rapids and the canopy walk: a stop at a Batek village, deep inside one of the world’s oldest rainforests. 

Taman Negara, a vast protected area spanning three Malaysian states, is estimated to be around 130 million years old, predating the Himalayas. The park shelters Malayan tigers, Asian elephants and sun bears, and dense jungle ecosystems of extraordinary age. But it is also home to people who have lived within these forests for thousands of years. Among them are the Batek, part........

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