Check out the tree-houses and zip-lines that let you live The Gibbon Experience

STAYING in a tree-house accessible only by a zip-line through jungle treetops is the best way to get up close with gibbons.

A guest at The Gibbon Experience riding part of the 52km of zip-lines in Bokeo, Laos.

WITH nerves stretched as tight as the steel cable stretching 300m across a seemingly bottomless valley, the knowledge that this is the only way forward is little comfort.

Shaking myself loose of the paralysing grip of fear, I steel myself and push off from the small wooden platform beneath my reluctant feet. The zip-line whirrs and an involuntary scream unleashes from my body.

A female gibbon with a baby at Gibbon Experience, Bokeo, Laos.

We have trekked through the forest, hearing the call of a hornbill, spying vivid green geckos, butterflies, delicate ferns and fungi, and the fresh tracks of an Asiatic black bear. In the silence, but for the sound of our feet, there’s a sense of how ancient this place is.

After about an hour’s trek from the nearest village, we have already nervously tackled the first zip-line, one of 15 that link the tree-houses in which we will roost for a couple of nights. At 80 metres across, it still elicits sweaty palms and hyperventilation.

Advance warning that a trip to see endangered gibbons, deep in the rainforests of northern Laos, would involved staying in tree-houses and zip-lining was still not adequate preparation for the reality.

I want someone to push me off the platform, to force my step into space. “No,” says Jef Reumaux, the founder of The Gibbon Experience. “You must take the step yourself.”

Eventually, I push off and feel the exhilaration of “flying” through the trees to gentle whoops of encouragement from those behind me. We’ve been asked to keep as quiet as possible, so we don’t disturb the wildlife, but it’s sometimes impossible.

Reumaux, a Frenchman, has worked in this forest for more than a decade, developing The Gibbon Experience, a project that will give the villagers in this part of Laos’ Bokeo province an income that does not come from slash-and-burn farming, poaching or logging.

This area, near the border with Myanmar and Thailand, has one of the last remaining populations of Black-cheeked crested gibbons in Laos. A three-day excursion into the Nam Kan Provincial Protected Forest, is the only chance to see or hear this endangered ape.

Local Hmong girls use the zip-lines to access the highest points of The Gibbon Experience tree-houses to get phone coverage so they can call their boyfriends.

Income from the limited number of tourists — the tree-houses accommodate a maximum of 25 — is reinvested in forest protection.

A former university mathematics teacher in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, Reumaux spent a number of years doing survey work in remote areas of Laos, and in 1997 learned of a population of Laotian Black Gibbons. Once believed extinct, the gibbons were living in the range where he has built seven tree-houses.

The tree-houses at The Gibbon Experience are accessible only by zip-line.

Ten families of gibbons, each of about five individuals, are known to range between the tree-houses.

“There are also about 35 individuals on the other side of the range, a little less than a total of 100 we know of, and we suspect that there are another 100, from the stories we hear from rangers in the forest,” says Reumaux.

This, he says, is a subspecies that exists only in one other spot in the world, in China.

“They are considered both the most endangered gibbons in Laos, but at the same time the healthiest population in Laos, because there are no predators,” he says.

The Bokeo Nature Reserve was established in 2004 by the Lao Forestry Authorities and Reumaux’s conservation-based eco-tourism company Animo. The reserve covers 123,000ha in a mountainous region that borders the Nam Ha Protected Area, ranging up to 1500m in elevation.

The tree-houses — at between 20 and 40m above the forest floor — are accessible only by zip-line. Once you have taken the first there’s no other way back to the ground.

The developer and manager of The Gibbon Experience Jef Reumaux rides a zip-line.

And so we settle in for the first night. Our tree house is three levels, with an open-sided bathroom looking out into the trees. Dinner is delivered — by zip-line — from a kitchen on the forest floor, by local guides who fearlessly handle them as if they were born to it.

A telescope is set up to help with sightings, but it is nature that will determine if the gibbons come close to us or not.

A family crosses a suspension bridge built by The Gibbon Experience.

I fall asleep to the noises of the forest, and wake at dawn to the haunting call of a gibbon drifting through the early morning mist across the trees.

We scramble to the telescope as it gets light. High in the trees, a family of gibbons is heralding the new day and we’re eager for our first sight of these elusive creatures.

Over our three day stay, we travel on all 15 “zips” as we explore the forest just below the canopy. The longest reaches 300m across a wide valley, but the most terrifying — in my book, anyway — is one which requires a jump off the windowsill of a tree-house.

The tree-houses are built without nails, all bound to the trees with steel cable that is renewed every two years. The replaced cable is later used to build suspended bridges in the villages, instead of the traditional rattan bridge which need replacing every six months.

In the end, our own “gibbon experience” is limited to that eerie dawn song and glimpses of the families playing in trees too distant to be excited about.

“About 60 per cent of our guests see gibbons, but everyone hears them,” says Reumaux in consolation. That’s nature.

For me, it’s almost enough. Once heard, the song of the gibbon will stay forever in my mind.

The writer was a guest of The Gibbon Experience.

GO2 THE GIBBON EXPERIENCE

GETTING THERE

The Gibbon Experience leaves from Huay Xai in northern Laos. It can be reached most easily Thailand. Fly to Chiang Rai in Thailand, then take the bus to Chang Khong and a short boat trip across the Mekong to the border post at Huay Xai. Alternatively, fly to Luang Prabang in Laos, then take an overnight bus or two-day boat trip to Huay Xai.

WHEN TO GO

The best time to travel in Laos is during the cool, dry winter months (November-February). It’s best to avoid travelling in the wet season (May-August) when roads are often impassable.

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The Gibbon Experience can be contacted on [e-mail] or [phone]; gibbonexperience.org