Borneo Wildlife Holidays
Rainforest canopy at first light seen from above, rivers of mist lying in the valleys between forested ridges.

Sabah, Malaysian Borneo

Protected. Remote. And open to you.

Some of the finest forest in Sabah cannot be booked. It is entered only with the written agreement of the people who protect it, and we are inside the organisation that gives it.

Explore Sabah Start an enquiry

Where we go

All seven destinations

Who we are

Part of the Yayasan Sabah Group

Sabah is the northern state of Borneo, the third-largest island in the world, shared between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Most of the forest on this page is neither national park nor private land. It belongs to a state conservation foundation, the Yayasan Sabah Group — roughly Sabah's equivalent of the National Trust, if the National Trust also ran the science.

We are part of it. Borneo Wildlife Holidays is operated by Inno Travel & Tour Services Sdn Bhd, a member company of the Yayasan Sabah Group. When we apply for your permission to enter, we are not an operator writing to a landowner. We are inside the organisation that protects the forest.

  • Yayasan Sabah Group
  • Inno Travel & Tour Services Sdn Bhd
  • Licence KKKP 1949

Affiliations and licensing

  • Yayasan Sabah Group
  • MATTA — Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents, member MA0757
  • Visit Malaysia 2026
  • Feel Sabah — Sabah Tourism Board
  • Visit Sabah, Malaysian Borneo — Sabah Tourism Board
  • Tourism Malaysia

  • 20

    camp beds at Tampoi

    The base camp inside Imbak Canyon

  • 70

    seats in the dining room

    Danum Valley, and that is everybody

  • 3 days

    on foot, minimum

    To reach Maliau Falls. Five is advised

  • Zero

    roads inside Maliau

    Four hours of logging track to the gate

A tropical rainstorm sweeping across the rainforest canopy, with one shaft of light breaking through.

What we sell is

Access, and the guiding to use it.

Experiences that stay with you

Ways to see Sabah

  • A narrow trail under a high closed canopy, dappled light on the forest floor.

    Rainforest walking

  • A small wooden boat on a wide river at first light, low mist, forested banks.

    River journeys

  • A torch beam sweeping through dense night vegetation on a forest walk.

    Night drives

  • A pair of hands holding binoculars, dense green forest blurred behind.

    Birdwatching

  • An empty suspension walkway receding into mist high above the forest floor.

    Canopy walkways

  • Mist drifting between tall straight rainforest trunks in receding layers.

    Photography

  • Two trekkers with packs walking away along a narrow forest trail.

    Remote trekking

  • A calm shallow coastline at dusk, still water and warm light.

    The coast, at the end

A single enormous emergent rainforest tree rising above the canopy at dawn, silhouetted against mist.

From first email to the flight home

One person. Every detail.

  1. Before you travel

    One person, and every permit

    You deal with one specialist by name, not a queue. The route is drafted around your dates and your walking pace and rewritten as often as you like. Permits are applied for and confirmed. Internal flights and drives are booked so that they actually connect. And you get a frank briefing on what each place is really like to sleep in.

  2. While you travel

    Met at every airport

    Every transfer, boat and vehicle arranged and paid for before you arrive. Naturalist guides who work these reserves permanently rather than seasonally. An office in Kota Kinabalu you can reach while you are in the forest, on Sabah time, run by the same company that planned the trip.

  3. Throughout

    Nothing handed to a stranger

    The company that designs your journey is the company that operates it, on the ground, in Sabah. That is rarer than it sounds: most Borneo itineraries sold in Europe are passed to a local operator the traveller never meets and the agent has never visited.

A rainforest waterfall falling into a dark pool over mossy black rock.

Before you book

We will tell you what it is not

This is not a resort holiday with a wildlife excursion attached. Some nights are field-centre rooms with plain furniture and shared walls. At Tampoi it is a camp bed, the power goes off at midnight and you cook. Mornings start before light. It rains.

What you are buying is access, and the guiding to use it. Where you would rather have comfort we will build it into the same journey somewhere else in Sabah, and we will tell you plainly which nights are which before you commit to anything.

Close view of tropical tree bark covered in pale lichen and green moss.
Rainforest floor detail, unfurling ferns and damp leaf litter.
Night sky thick with stars above a silhouetted rainforest canopy.
Layered forested ridgelines receding into haze at dusk under a deep amber sky.

Eleven to seventeen days, three or four places, one company.

Speak to a specialist

Alvin Wong

Kota Kinabalu, Sabah

Alvin plans these journeys himself. Write to him with your dates and what you hope to see, and he will come back with a route and a price rather than a brochure.

Write to Alvin

Why so few people get in

  • Permission, not payment

    At Danum Valley, a traveller who is simply keen on wildlife enters under the last of six visitor categories: "keen naturalists with written approval from the Danum Valley Management Committee". A committee decides, in advance. Money does not shorten that conversation. Being inside the foundation is what makes ours a short one.

  • Insurance that covers a helicopter

    Not our recommendation — a published condition of entry, in these words: visitors must have insurance cover that includes emergency helicopter evacuation. No proof, no entry. It is the clearest possible statement of where you are going.

  • Twenty camp beds

    Inside Imbak Canyon the base camp at Tampoi sleeps twenty. Electricity runs from eight in the morning until midnight, and no food is provided. Rangers accompany every visitor into the forest. This is a Class I Protection Forest Reserve, and it is not permitted to build its way out of demand.

  • And then the distance

    Maliau is four to five hours by four-wheel drive over logging road, and there are no roads at all inside the conservation area. Reaching Maliau Falls takes three days on foot at minimum. The road into Danum is shared with seventy-tonne logging trucks.

Travel trade

Working with agents and tour operators

Licensing, capacity and the operational detail your product team will ask for — set out in one place.

Trade information

Where would you like to start

Tell us roughly when, and how long

Permission is applied for months ahead and rooms are held by the season, not the week. Ask about next June before you book this Christmas — tell us the year and we will tell you honestly what is still reachable in it.

Write to Alvin with your dates and what you would most regret missing. A paragraph is enough. He will come back with a route and a price, not a brochure.

Start an enquiry

No mailing list. No automated follow-ups. One person, replying from Kota Kinabalu.