tales of travel

If you are an animal lover, then you will love these ATJ adventures that connect our travelers to beautiful animals in their natural habitats. Devote a week or two in 2018 to decompressing in the wilderness and looking for exotic, wild creatures, like looking for orangutans in Borneo, or embarking on a luxury Australia travel package that includes a visit to Kangaroo Island. At ATJ we can design the perfect custom adventure for every animal lover. Here are four of our favorite ideas.

1. ORANGUTANS IN BORNEO

With rainforests filled with all kinds of exotic wildlife, Borneo is an animal lover’s dream destination. Beyond wild orangutans, which you have the best bet of seeing around the Kinabatangan River and the Danum Valley, you’ll find everything from pygmy Asian elephants, barking deer, sun bears and clouded leopards to proboscis monkeys, slow loris, pig-tailed macaques and huge flying fox bats in the jungles here. There are also a profusion of birds. To interact more closely with orangutans pay a visit to the Sepilok Rehabilitation Center. It was founded in 1964 with a mission to protect orangutans that had been made homeless due to logging or kept in captivity, and has worked with around 80 orangutans over the decades.

2. KOALAS AND KANGAROOS IN AUSTRALIA

From koalas to kangaroos, wallabys to fairy penguins, Australia is home to species found no where else on earth. Opportunities to see the wild native animal inhabitants are found across the country-continent with some areas standing out in particular. Philip Island, about a two hour drive from Melbourne, is home to one of Australia’s largest penguin and fur seal colonies. Here, you can also see wallabies, koalas and lots of birds. For roos, head to Kangaroo Island, off the mainland southwest of Adelaide. Also in South Australia, Flinders Range is excellent for spotting various marsupials including yellow-footed wallabies. For a extra special experience, you can get up close and personal with koalas at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane.  

3. LEOPARDS IN SRI LANKA

Close of 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s land area is made up of national parks. The wildlife experiences in these preserves are the best in Asia—this continent’s version of a safari on the African Serengeti. Asian elephants, sloth bears, crocodiles, jackals, wild boars, civets, deer, monkeys, sperm whales, blue whales, spinner dolphins and countless species of colorful birds all make their home on Sri Lanka. But the most famous resident is the elusive leopard. For your best shot of seeing these elusive creatures head to Yala or Wilpattu National Parks.

4. TIGERS IN INDIA

Watching a Bengal tiger stalk its prey in the wild is a mesmerizing sight. And to see these majestic big cats you’ll need to head to Bandhavgarh National Park in India, which looks like it came straight off a central casting location lot for The Jungle Book. One of India’s most beautiful national parks, its dramatic landscapes feature tropical forests, steep rocky hills and flat grasslands that make for prime tiger habitat.