Mount Kinabalu is a mass of bare granite rising 4,095 metres out of the rainforest of Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, and for the Kadazan-Dusun below it the summit, Aki Nabalu, is where the dead rest. Long before this was a tourist climb, guides from these communities held rites asking the mountain's spirits for safe passage. Every party that goes up still walks with a licensed guide from the same villages. The climb takes two days: cloud forest to the huts at Laban Rata, a few hours' sleep, then out again around two in the morning. Above the treeline there is no peak, only a sloping plateau of pale granite with rock towers standing out of it. An ice cap polished it flat during the last Ice Age, six degrees off the equator, and the grooves are still under your boots. The route follows fixed white ropes, narrow enough that whoever is ahead of you sets the pace. The last stretch is bare rock in the dark, with nothing to see beyond the circle your lamp makes.
You do not have to climb it. From the park headquarters the granite crown floats over the rainforest, clear at first light, gathering cloud through the afternoon and gone by evening. Behind the buildings the Silau-Silau and Liwagu trails follow stream banks past wild orchids, moss-draped oaks and tree ferns — the gentle walks most people in the park actually do. These lower slopes hold one of the richest bands of plant life on Earth, including the largest pitcher plant anywhere, Nepenthes rajah. Its three-litre traps feed mostly on the droppings of a tree shrew that climbs in to lick nectar off the lid. A route down off the summit crosses a granite wall at 3,600 metres on iron rungs, cables and a suspension bridge strung across open air. None of that has replaced the older arrangement. Each year a bobolian priestess still makes the offerings that ask the spirits' permission — traditionally seven white chickens, seven being the sacred number — for everyone going up behind her.