Kundasang

The slopes below Kinabalu were settled long before anyone drew a road there. Dusun villages farmed rice, fruit and buffalo on the ridges, and the mountain itself was regarded as the resting place of the dead, approached with ceremony rather than sport. In March 1851 the colonial administrator and naturalist Hugh Low, guided by the Dusun Lemaing of Kampung Kiau, made the first recorded ascent of the summit plateau, though the highest point was not reached until 1888, by the zoologist John Whitehead; Low's name is carried by the peak and the gully. British North Borneo Chartered Company officials later used the highlands for their cooler air and experimented with temperate crops.

The war brought Kundasang its darkest association. Ranau, just down the valley, was the destination of the death marches of 1945, when prisoners of war were forced from Sandakan across the mountains; almost none survived, and villagers who helped them risked execution. After the war an Australian officer promoted the idea of a memorial garden at Kundasang, opened in 1962, and the marches are commemorated there and at Ranau each year.

Kinabalu Park was gazetted in 1964, protecting the mountain and its forests and opening it to guided climbing; it became Malaysia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. Alongside the park, commercial vegetable growing spread across the cleared hillsides from the 1960s and 1970s, and dairy cattle were introduced to the pastures above the town. The road up from Kota Kinabalu turned Kundasang into the service village for all three: farms, park and memorial.

Kundasang is Kadazan-Dusun country. The language is heard in the market alongside Sabah Malay, and the district is split almost evenly between Muslim and Christian families, so mosque and church both anchor village life. Kaamatan, the harvest festival that runs through May, is the great event of the year, with thanksgiving ceremonies for the rice spirit, the sumazau dance to gongs, and homemade rice wine offered to visitors; the highland villages keep the older forms of it more closely than the towns do.

Mount Kinabalu stands at the centre of local belief. Its name is commonly explained as coming from Aki Nabalu, the revered place of the dead, and ceremonies of respect have long accompanied ascents; mountain guides, most of them local men and women from villages around Kundasang, treat the climb as work carrying obligations as well as wages.

Everyday manners are gentle and informal. Bargaining at the vegetable stalls is mild, hospitality is warm, and visitors are expected to accept at least a little of what is offered. The memorial garden gives the town a second, quieter identity: Australian families come to it in numbers each year, and the relationship between those visitors and the villages whose grandparents helped the prisoners is remembered locally with pride.

Kundasang itself is a small town of a few thousand people, part of the Ranau district, which has roughly 90,000 residents spread through the surrounding valleys. Work is farming above all: terraced plots of cabbage, carrot, leek, tomato and chilli worked by family smallholdings, strawberry and flower nurseries, and the dairy pastures on the higher slopes that supply fresh milk across Sabah. Lorries take produce down to Kota Kinabalu overnight, and much of it returns as the vegetables sold in city markets.

The second economy is the mountain. Guides, porters, drivers, cooks and guesthouse staff live in the villages around the park gate, and a season of poor weather or a drop in climbing permits is felt quickly in household incomes. Tourism has also raised land prices and filled the ridges with resorts and hillside cabins, and the clearing of slopes for vegetables and building has brought erosion and landslip worries.

Daily rhythm starts early and cold: the market sets up at first light, school runs follow, and the afternoon usually brings cloud and rain. Evenings are quiet and the town is largely shut by mid-evening. Water supply, road maintenance and the condition of the highway down to the coast are the standing local complaints, along with the price farmers get for a crop that has to travel.

Kundasang's food is defined by what grows in the cool air. Highland cabbage, carrots, leeks, broccoli, spring onions, tomatoes and chillies are piled at the roadside stalls, along with strawberries, passion fruit and jars of forest honey, and the same vegetables turn up in the local kitchens — stir-fried with garlic, or simmered in the clear soups that suit the climate. Sayur manis, the sweet leaf of Sabah, is everywhere, and highland ginger goes into tea.

Dairy is the other local product. The pastures above the town supply fresh milk, and cafés sell it warm, as yoghurt, or as soft ice cream, an unusual thing in Malaysia and a standard stop for visitors from the coast. Corn on the cob grilled at the roadside and roast sweet potato are the cold-weather snacks.

Kadazan-Dusun cooking appears at home and at festivals more than in restaurants: hinava, raw fish cured in lime with ginger, chilli and shallot; pinasakan, fish braised with sour fruit and turmeric; linopot, rice mixed with tapioca or yam and wrapped in a leaf; and bambangan, the sour wild mango, pickled as a relish. Tapai, the fermented rice wine, and its stronger distilled relative are poured at Kaamatan. In the shophouses the everyday options are Chinese and Malay: noodle soups, ngiu chap with sliced beef and tripe, fried rice, roti canai and strong sweetened coffee.