Imagine this. It is May 1945. Clad only in ragged loin-cloths, over 500 men, barely recognisable as human, struggle to their feet at the Sandakan Prisoner of War (POW) compound, on Sabah's north-east coast. Three long years in captivity, half of them on starvation rations and with little or no medical attention, have taken their toll. These men are bound for Ranau, a small village on the flanks of Mt. Kinabalu, situated 250 kilometres away to the west, in the rugged Borneo jungle interior.

“In 1943, 2,400 Australian and British Prisoners of War (POW) were brought in from Singapore by the Japanese to Sandakan to construct an air strip and towards the end of World War II, Japan realised that they were going to lose in the war and they did not want to have any of the POWs alive as witnesses in the war crimes. They forced the POWs to march from the Sandakan campsite to Ranau indirectly forcing them to have a slow walk to hell. Ninety nine percent died and six Australians survived,” explains Tham Yau Kong the Managing Director of TYK Adventure Tours, a company that conducts a march along this exact trail.

The idea for this tour came about when a 60-year commemoration walk was done in 2005 by the Sabah Society. “I was approached by Madam Lynette Silver an Australian historian to re-trace the track and turn it into a tourism product because there were a lot of relatives of the POWs who wanted to know more about the Sandakan Death march and wanted to experience it for themselves,” says Tham. “After re-tracing the track, my company established the walking tour in March 2006.”

The whole track has a distance of 240km but only 140km is used for walking. The path goes through forests, rivers, plantations, and villages. “It starts in Sandakan with a visit to the St Michael Church, the POW campsite and the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. The next day the walking starts; there is a total of six days of walking from Telupid to Ranau. On the first four days from Telupid to Taviu Hill tourists will stay at our base i.e the Telupid Forestry Resthouse. On the fifth night they will stay at the Sabah Tea Longhouse and on the last night they’ll be at the Hotel Perkasa in Kundasang,” Tham explains.
This walk is not extremely strenuous and the tourists are well looked after by the guides, but it can be emotional. “Since we’re walking through the track of the POWs and most of them died walking it, it’s very emotional when we stop and tell them stories about what happened at certain points.”

If you want to go on a trek to test your physical ability while learning something along the way this is certainly one of the more interesting tours out there!

TYK Adventure Tours
www.sandakan-deathmarch.com
www.tykadventuretours.com
Tel: +6088.720826/ 088 727825