Indonesia 2025 Trip Report

Finally a trip that I actually planned ahead of time! I've been doing a bit of unplanned travel lately, but I had planned a trip to Indonesia about a year ago after discovering that there was wildlife that I could photograph there on a budget. I'll be honest, safaris are really getting to the point where they're breaking the bank, so it was a nice change of pace to do a photography trip for only a couple thousand dollars total.

So why come to Indonesia in the first place? The answer is obviously, for orangutans. I have seen so many companies offer trips to photograph orangutans in Borneo, and charging absolutely outrageous prices. We're talking high end luxury safari prices. While orangutans are incredible animals, I wasn't interested in them enough to pay for that sort of experience. On top of that, pretty much all the research I've done into orangutan tours in Borneo involve feeding them, viewing platforms, and all sorts of other experiences that feel less than wild.

Last year I had discovered that you could also see orangutans on the island of Sumatra, by visiting a little village called Bukit Lawang that is very popular with backpackers and other budget travelers visiting southeast Asia.

It serves as the gateway to Gunung Leuser National Park, a place that I had never heard of until I watched a Netflix documentary narrated by Barrack Obama on this pristine Indonesian rainforest. Gunung Leuser National Park is the only place in the world where you can see orangutans, Sumatran elephants, Sumatran tigers, and Sumatran rhinos, all living tin the same place. The only sure subjects to find are the orangutans, because the other animals live much deeper in the jungle, but it is still amazing that such a place even exists in the world today.

I had begun my trip on the Indonesian island of Java, where I visited many of the cultural sites of Indonesia's early Hindu and Buddhist history. After all, I flew all the way over there, it would be silly not to see the amazing Borobudur, the eruptions of the Merapi volcano, or the ballets of Javanese culture.

But I am a wildlife photographer first and foremost, so I don't travel anywhere unless I know there are some animals to photograph. After a whirlwind few days in Java, I made a quick island hop to the island of Sumatra, which would be home for the next week.

A couple months back, I had heard of some visitors to Sumatra who had managed to find a herd of truly wild Sumatran elephants that would frequent a palm oil plantation near the park border. This immediately piqued my interest because I knew that elephants can really only be seen if you trek deep into the jungle for multiple days. The idea that there were some close enough to be seen nearby made me shift my initial plans, and I skipped one day of orangutan trekking to try and find some of these rare elephants.

It was a 2 hour motorcycle ride to the plantation, where I got to see much of what rural Sumatra has become in the modern age. You see nothing but trees as far as the eye can see, except instead of natural jungle, the entire island is covered by palm oil plantations. This sort of unnatural foliage makes you realize the horror of how much deforestation has occurred, and how the home of so many animals is shrinking more and more into tiny isolated islands of wilderness.

When we arrived to the plantation, I quickly spotted fresh elephant dung nearby, which meant one must be very close. It took some rather muddy navigating around the plantation, but across the hillside from us we had spotted a lone male Sumatran elephant. To be able to see one of the most critically endangered large animals on earth, with as few as maybe 900 individuals, was one of the most incredible wildlife sightings of my life.

Moving around to get a view of the elephant was very hard, and these elephants can be aggressive to humans like us on foot. As a photographer the experience didn't yield any good photos sadly, but just being able to say that I've seen a truly wild Sumatran elephant was special enough.

After a long day's rest, I was ready for the main part of the trip. Finally, the moment that I had been waiting for, my first orangutan trek was about to begin! I'll admit that I didn't really know what to expect in terms of hiking, and my only previous great ape trekking had been gorillas in Rwanda. Instead of hiking in and sleeping in the jungle like many tourists do, I decided to simply go in and spend the day in the jungle and then hike back out. Sorry but I like a clean bed and warm shower every night, plus I've heard that the wildlife sightings are actually worse the deeper in the jungle you go.

Each day would begin with a long ascent up a trail/staircase to the park gate, and frequently we would find monkeys even before entering. I would usually like to start my days around 7AM, because most other tourists don't begin until 9, which meant that if we had a good sighting it would pretty much be exclusive to only us for a couple of hours. It took a little bit of trekking, but after a couple of hours we were lucky to find our first orangutans.

My main camera setup was my Sony A1, and my 70-200 F2.8 lens. I had brought my 200-600 as well, but that was really only for the elephants or just in case we found a subject really far away. I knew that I was going to need F2.8 for lowlight, but I had no idea just how little light reaches the forest floor. The trees here are so tall and cover so much space, that you're pretty much photographing entirely in shadows except for some small rays that might make it through the tree cover. Or even worse, the orangutans are high up in the tree canopy that you're photographing them against the harsh light. The dark faces of orangutans and their sunken eyes also means that camera's really struggle to grab focus of them against the foliage around them, making this some of the hardest photography I've ever done.

I was frequently missing shots, and only had a handful of good ones at the end of my first day. I was very frustrated, but it just meant that I had to really think critically about positioning and light in ways that I may not have with oth er subjects I've photographed in the past.

The real highlight of day one was finding a mother orangutan with her young baby, which was maybe 3-4 months old. Orangutan mothers stay with their babies until they're about 8 years old, so finding one this young was a very special treat.

The next day we went searching for a male orangutan, which was one of my major targets for the trip. There is only one male orangutan in the area around Bukit Lawang, and he has a habit of disappearing for weeks or even months at a time. The week before I arrived he had finally reappeared, so I knew that he was around, we just had to find him. We hiked deep into the jungle, and it was tough maneuvering around the branches and vines around us. Not to mention the blood sucking leeches, which seemed to be obsessed with attacking me every chance they could. Unfortunately the first two days yielded no sightings of the male, but I did get some shots I liked from day two.

Day 3 started out like all the others: find that big male. With only 5 days in total trekking, I could feel the clock starting to tick against me. Before we could even reach the park entrance, we found a handful of orangutans up in some trees. The photos weren't that special, and because the sighting was so close to the entrance it meant that all the other tourists of the day were stopping at this one sighting. It became too crowded for my taste, so I decided to press on and search for the male on our own.

As we reached the park gate, we heard a chainsaw running out in the distance. It seemed like illegal loggers were chopping down trees, and one gigantic tree quickly hit the ground. As it smashed into the earth, we heard the bellowing alarm call of a male orangutan close by. My guides and I all stared at each other in shock. We had been searching relentlessly for him for days, and just by chance we found out he was only a few hundred meters away. It took a bit of jungle trekking, but then up in a tree we had found him. The big male.

He was with a female orangutan, and it seemed like wherever she moved he would follow. News of the male orangutan quickly got out, and then the hordes of other visitors showed up. Because this sighting was so close to the gate, everyone who was just arriving into the park for the day were already in the area. Even if we found him first, before we knew it there were close to 100 people at the sighting. It was extremely frustrating to try and move around people trying to take selfies with the orangutan so that I could get in position for a good photo, but I just told myself to be patient and that eventually all these people would leave.

Other tourists came and went, and then there were only around 30 people left with him. Trying to get a decent shot through the thick foliage as he swung around the tree canopy was proving difficult, and it was all because the female he was with was leading him on a wild goose chase around the jungle. Finally he came down close to eye level, and I captured some of my favorite shots of the trip of him.

When he was on the ground, one of the guides from another company began shaking a bag of fruit, clearly trying to get his attention and come closer. The guide then threw a fruit at the orangutan, and I went absolutely ballistic. I began yelling and scolding at the guide about how terrible that behavior was, and how he was going to cause these orangutans to be aggressive towards humans to get food. Of course the guide shrugged me off, but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I refused to photograph anymore as long as the orangutan was being fed.

That is the tricky part about orangutan trekking in Sumatra. There are so many companies that don't care about being ethical and treating the wildlife with respect. To them these animals are just a source of money, and if they can give their guests a chance for a good selfie then that's all that matters. It really is the wild west out there, but I felt like I had to speak up so that others knew that feeding wildlife is wrong no matter what.

We decided to leave the orangutans and have lunch in the jungle, which probably helped me cool off a bit. We came back later only to find them up in a tree and resting. "Maybe 20-30 minutes, then they will move", my guides said. So we sat and waited for them. For the next 4 hours...

Waiting for them didn't give me any good photos, but it was definitely nice to just sit and enjoy being immersed in the Sumatran jungle. How cool it is to see monkeys swinging by, gibbons calling in the distance, and the most beautiful butterflies floating along the forest floor. Even if it can be crowded and frustrating photography, this is a really magical place.

The next day we decided to hike very deep into the jungle for one subject: Siamangs, or black gibbons. I have always loved these primates since I first saw them in my local zoo, and was excited when I found out that it was possible to see them in Leuser. But when I say we had to go deep in the jungle, I mean DEEP. We had to cross rivers in inner tubes, hike up and down 90 degree slopes in the mud, and did some of the hardest hiking I've ever done in my life. After almost 5 hours, we finally found a pair of them high up in the trees. There were no photos to be had, but I told myself I'd sit and wait for them to come closer for a shot.

One of my guides quickly called out to me that up in a tree he had spotted a rhinoceros hornbill, one of the most beautiful, but difficult birds to see here. I knew that this would be a rare photo to have, so I decided to quickly go and photograph the hornbill and then run right back to the siamangs. We actually found that it was a mating pair of hornbills, and they were posing fantastically up in the trees for me.

I had a handful of photos that I liked, and then decided to run back to the siamangs. When I got there, everyone else around was smiling and looking at their phones. The siamangs had swung right by, and I had missed it. I should have known better, you never leave the sighting you're after for something "better". I have a love/hate relationship with bird photography, and in this moment I was kicking myself for prioritizing birds when I knew that the whole reason we hiked so hard today was for siamangs. I was exhausted and frustrated, so at this point I decided to call it a day and head back.

We were going to raft back to Bukit Lawang since we had spent such a long day hiking, and just before we got to the raft location, we found a mother and baby orangutan. I had virtually no photos from today up until this point, so this really helped save my day after being so upset about the siamangs.

Suddenly our last day had snuck up on us, and today we were only going to do a partial day trekking since we had to head to the airport later that evening. We didn't head too far in, when we found the big male orangutan feeding on some fruit with his girlfriend. They were high up in the trees, but hopefully they would come lower before all the other tourists showed up for the day.

A group of Thomas Leaf Monkeys, which can only be found in Sumatra, quickly appeared and eyed us as we watched the orangutans.

After a couple of hours, the orangutans finally starting moving, and on my last day in the jungle I got some great shots of the big male.

As I was photographing him, my guide told me to turn around. It was a Great Argus pheasant, commonly referred to as the jungle peacock. It was one of the last animals that I hadn't seen yet around Bukit Lawang, and while they don't look that special or colorful, it was still nice to say that I'd seen one.

Our time was quickly running out, and we started to make our way out of the jungle to get ready for our flight. One animal that I did not yet have a good photo of was the white handed gibbon. I had seen them a number of times, but they move so fast and spend most of their time way up in the trees, so good photos are hard to come by. So what do we find just as we're leaving the jungle? A pair of gibbons of course! I tried to delay our exit as long as possible, hoping to get a good photo of them. My guides become more and more stressed the longer we waited, thinking that I would miss my flight. But photography always comes first, and I wasn't leaving without these gibbons shots. Finally I got a couple I liked, and then we left Leuser for the last time.

So after a few days in Java, and a week in Sumatra, I would call my Indonesia trip a success. I came away with plenty of good photos, saw some very rare animals, and ultimately loved the experience of being out in the jungle trekking and looking for wildlife. It's certainly a much cheaper way to see animals like orangutans, though with that of course comes way more people who don't all share the same respect and appreciation for wildlife that I do. Would I do it again? Maybe some day, but there are plenty of other subjects that I want to photograph first, so Sumatra may have to wait a bit for my eventual return.