Kelay district: the largest district in Berau Regency by area
Kelay district is the largest district in Berau Regency, East Kalimantan, by land area, covering more than 6,500 square kilometres of forested interior around the Kelay River and its karst highlands. Fourteen villages sit scattered across that enormous territory, most of them small and some reachable only by a long inland road journey from Tanjung Redeb, the regency capital. Where coastal districts like Batu Putih and Biatan pack several villages into a short run of shoreline, kelay district spreads a far smaller population across a far larger footprint of forest, river valley and limestone hill.
That scale shows in the population figures: the 2020 census counted fewer than nine thousand people across the entire district, a density low enough that kelay district stands as one of the most sparsely settled kecamatan anywhere in Berau Regency. The land itself does most of the work explaining why, since so much of the district’s area is forest and karst terrain rather than cleared, settled ground.
Fourteen villages across a vast interior
Sido Bangen serves as the district seat, the administrative centre for a kecamatan where the other thirteen villages, Lesan Dayak, Long Beliu, Long Duhung, Long Keluh, Long Lamcin, Long Pelay, Long Sului, Mapulu, Merabu, Merapun, Merasa, Muara Lesan and Panaan, sit at varying distances from it along the river system and the roads that follow it. The repeated Long prefix across several village names, Long Beliu, Long Duhung, Long Keluh, Long Lamcin, Long Pelay and Long Sului, marks a naming pattern common among Dayak communities along rivers in interior Kalimantan, where long typically denotes a river confluence or a settlement built at the meeting point of two watercourses.
Muara Lesan carries a related kind of river-based name, muara meaning river mouth or confluence, placing the village at a point where the Lesan River meets a larger waterway. Lesan Dayak, distinct from Muara Lesan despite the shared Lesan name, sits elsewhere along the same river system. Mapulu, Merapun and Panaan round out the villages along the main river corridors, while Merabu and Merasa, both well known beyond the district for reasons unrelated to farming, sit toward the karst country that gives kelay district much of its distinct landscape.
Borders across Berau’s interior and beyond
Kelay district borders Segah district to the north, Sambaliung and Tabalar districts to the east, East Kutai Regency to the south, and Malinau Regency, in the neighbouring province of North Kalimantan, to the west. That western border with another province places kelay district at the edge of Berau Regency’s own territory as well as East Kalimantan’s, a position shared with gunung tabur district further north, though the two districts otherwise look nothing alike: one is a dense farming plain by a bridge into the regency capital, the other a vast, thinly peopled forest interior reached by a long inland road.
The district’s size, more than 6,556 square kilometres, makes it larger than several entire regencies elsewhere in Indonesia, and it is by a wide margin the biggest single kecamatan within Berau Regency. Covering that much ground with fourteen villages and under nine thousand people means long distances between settlements are the norm rather than the exception inside kelay district.
Merabu: karst caves and an ecotourism village
Merabu sits inside the Merabu Karst Area, part of the wider Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst landscape that runs across this part of East Kalimantan, a limestone terrain riddled with caves, including Bloyot Cave, that carries prehistoric rock art and burial remains alongside its natural features. The village has built a tourism economy around that karst landscape, drawing visitors interested in caving, trekking and the surrounding forest rather than the beach and reef attractions that define Berau’s coastal districts.
Merabu is home to a Dayak Lebo community, and reaching the village from Tanjung Redeb takes roughly five to six hours by road, a journey that runs deep into the forested interior before arriving at the karst country where the village sits. That travel time alone sets Merabu, and kelay district generally, apart from the coastal parts of the regency, where a few hours covers most journeys along the shore.
Merasa and its customary forest
Merasa village manages its own customary forest, a hutan adat recognised separately from the surrounding state forest land, and within that forest sit ancient burial caves holding remains and artefacts estimated at between five hundred and a thousand years old. More than one hundred and twenty tombs and thousands of individual artefacts have been identified inside the karst caves of the Merasa area, making it one of the more significant Dayak heritage sites in this part of Kalimantan.
The customary forest status gives the community in Merasa a formal role in managing the land and its heritage sites directly, rather than leaving that responsibility entirely to outside government agencies, a model that has become more common across Berau’s interior districts as communities seek recognised rights over forest they have used and protected for generations.
Travelling into kelay district
There is no shortcut into kelay district from Tanjung Redeb: the road runs inland through forest and, in places, alongside logging and mining access tracks before reaching the district’s villages. Sido Bangen, the seat, and the Long-prefixed villages along the river system sit at varying points along that road network, while Merabu and Merasa, both oriented toward the karst country rather than the main river corridor, add further travel time beyond the main route.
Weather affects travel here as much as distance does. Rain can make unpaved stretches difficult, and the same landslide and road-damage risk that affects Berau’s coastal corridor further south also applies to inland routes serving the regency’s interior districts, kelay district included. Visitors heading to Merabu’s caves and trekking routes typically plan for the full five to six hour journey each way rather than treating it as a short side trip from Tanjung Redeb.
A district shaped by river and karst together
Two landscapes define kelay district more than any other feature: the Kelay River itself, flowing through the district toward its confluence closer to the regency capital, and the limestone karst country that rises around Merabu and Merasa further toward the district’s interior. The villages along the river corridor, including most of the Long-prefixed settlements and Muara Lesan at its confluence, built their livelihoods around the waterway, using it for transport as much as for farming and fishing. The karst villages built something different, an economy and a cultural identity tied to caves, forest and the particular geology of the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat limestone belt.
That split between river villages and karst villages is not an administrative division, since all fourteen settlements sit inside the same kecamatan government based in Sido Bangen, but it is a real difference in how each part of kelay district relates to the land around it. A visitor moving from one of the Long villages toward Merabu notices the landscape itself change, from river valley to limestone hill, well before any sign marks a shift from one part of the district to another.
Forest, conservation and the scale of the district
Much of kelay district’s land lies within forest valued for its karst caves and its place in the wider Kelay River catchment. The customary forest status recognised at Merasa is one example of how communities inside the district hold a formal role in keeping stretches of that forest intact, a model that sits alongside the logging and resource-extraction activity found more widely across Berau’s interior.
For a kecamatan this large, with fourteen villages spread across more than 6,556 square kilometres, no single description covers every part of it well. The river villages, the karst villages, and the stretches of forest between them each tell a different part of the story of kelay district, and together they make it the most varied, as well as the largest, district in Berau Regency.
Questions about kelay district
How many villages are in kelay district? Fourteen, with Sido Bangen as the seat: Lesan Dayak, Long Beliu, Long Duhung, Long Keluh, Long Lamcin, Long Pelay, Long Sului, Mapulu, Merabu, Merapun, Merasa, Muara Lesan and Panaan.
Why is kelay district so sparsely populated? Its land area of more than 6,556 square kilometres, the largest of any district in Berau Regency, is mostly forest and karst terrain, against a 2020 census population of under nine thousand people.
What makes Merabu village notable? Its location in the Merabu Karst Area, part of the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst landscape, with caves carrying prehistoric rock art and a growing ecotourism economy built around them.
How long does it take to reach Merabu from Tanjung Redeb? Roughly five to six hours by road, travelling inland through forest before reaching the karst country where the village sits.
Kelay district forms part of the wider Berau Regency, reached from the capital at Tanjung Redeb. The Kelay River runs through the district and gives it its name, flowing on toward its confluence near the regency capital, while the broader Berau Malay language context applies to the district’s river communities alongside its Dayak villages. Visitors flying into the regency use Kalimarau Airport before the long road journey inland.