Product Description

‘We’ve left a lot of men in Borneo – know what I mean?’ With their SAS trainer’s warnings ringing in their ears, the naturalist, Redmond O’Hanlon, and the poet, James Fenton, set out to rediscover the lost rhinoceros of Borneo. They were loaded with enough back-breaking kit to survive two months in a steaming 95° (in the shade) jungle of creeping, crawling, biting things. O’Hanlon could also rely on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the region’s flora and fauna, and had read-up on how to avoid being eaten by anything (stick your thumbs in a crocodile’s eyes, if you have time). And yet they proceeded to have an adventure that neither O’Hanlon, nor his friend, nor even his guides were remotely prepared for… ‘Consistently exciting, often funny, and erudite without ever being overwhelming’ Punch.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17731 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Redmond O'Hanlon is an explorer in the nineteenth-century mould. In addition to his four bestselling travel books, Into the Heart of Borneo, In Trouble Again, Congo Journey and Trawler, he has published scholarly work on nineteenth-century science and literature. For fifteen years he was the Natural History editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He lives outside Oxford with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

A hilarious comedy - not a stuffy travel book
My husband was reading this book while we were on holiday in Borneo and he drove me so nuts chuckling every few pages that I just had to read it myself.
Where I had expected a stuffy travel book I found a hilarious comedy. Well worth the read!

Ignore the other reviews...
...This is a real journey into a real country. How can you complain that he gives you descriptions of the birds and flora of the country he's travelling through? Don't you want to know what the place is like? You leave the book feeling you have experienced the place - and the ending is great, showing the contrast between the young and the old, and how the old tribal ways, with their customs and skills, are going to die out very soon as the young move away from the jungle. This, like his masterpiece Congo Journey, uses exaggeration and humour to show the contast between the travellers and the natives of the country they are in. So his books teach as you laugh. And make you think asbout the nature of the world, and the issues facing people who's lives are changing impossibly fast. Heartbreaking, funny, it's brilliant: a book that makes you think and is fun to read, and which you learn an awful lot from: what more could you want?

A classic from a great travel writer
I'm moved to write my first review for Amazon by this classic of the travel genre. It moves effortlessly from humour to history, from adventure to scientific account. Like all the the best travel books, it takes you there without having to go to the expense of airline tickets. I got a real flavour of Borneo, borne out by a trip there which would have been all the poorer had I not read this book.