Kalimantan Barat Indonesia.

The Kapuas River moves slowly through the darkness like a living thing.

I sat beside the river one humid evening in West Kalimantan, deep in Indonesian Borneo. A young local man began speaking quietly to me about the shamans of the interior forests. His voice carried the casual rhythm of ordinary conversation, but as the night deepened, his stories began to feel older than the river itself.

He told me the forests beyond the towns were still guarded by unseen forces.

When I told him how fascinating I found these stories, he smiled and continued.

Among the Dayak communities, shamans known as Balian or Manang were believed to walk between the human world and the spirit world. They healed sickness with forest herbs, protected villages through ancient rituals, and maintained balance between people and the jungle. Their ceremonial clothing was said to act as spiritual armour, heavy with beads, sacred carvings, animal teeth, brass bells, and hornbill feathers that rattled softly as they danced.

He explained that some spirits protected, while others were best left undisturbed.

Singkawang, West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Further north in Singkawang, he told me about another kind of shaman who appeared during the Cap Go Meh festival. Known as Tatungs, these spiritual mediums entered deep trances during celebrations, allowing ancestral spirits or deities to possess them.

Singkawan, West Kalimantan Indonesia.

The young man explained that during these rituals, the Tatungs pierced their cheeks with steel rods and stood barefoot upon blades without bleeding or showing pain.

I asked him if he believed the spirits were real.

He smiled as he looked towards the dark river.

“In Kalimantan,” he said softly, “not everything lives in the world you can see.”

A chorus of insects filled the darkness, and somewhere across the river a dog barked briefly before the jungle fell silent again.

Somewhere beyond the riverbanks, the jungle stretched endlessly into the night.

And listening to him, I realised that in West Kalimantan, myth and reality did not always walk separately.