Mount Ngoc Linh

Provincial borders have been redrawn around Ngọc Linh many times, and the mountain has stayed exactly where it was. The range lies where the Central Highlands meet the central coast, a border zone throughout history. The name Ngọc Linh matters more than any administrative line.

The massif rises to about 2,600 meters, though the sources do not agree exactly. ASEAN gives 2,604 meters, the Kon Tum newspaper gives 2,605, and another source gives 2,598. The small gap comes from the reference system and the way of measuring. By any count, Ngọc Linh is among the high peaks of Vietnam.

What makes Ngọc Linh more than a tall mountain is its value for conservation. In 2019 the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity formally recognized the Ngọc Linh Nature Reserve as an ASEAN Heritage Park. This title is not UNESCO World Heritage. Still, it shows that Ngọc Linh counts among the most important forest regions in Southeast Asia.

ASEAN records more than 1,000 species of vascular plants in the reserve and nearly 700 species of animals with backbones. Of these, 40 species are in Vietnam's Red Book and 25 are on the world Red List. These numbers describe a living store of nature, not a landscape that is merely pretty in photographs.

Mention Ngọc Linh, and most people think first of ginseng.

Ngọc Linh ginseng, Panax vietnamensis, was found by scientists in 1973 on the Ngọc Linh range. It grows wild at heights from 1,200 to 2,100 meters, under cool, damp primary forest. It is a rare medicinal plant, studied closely by many scientific bodies at home and abroad.

For the Indigenous Xơ Đăng people, though, Ngọc Linh ginseng is more than a commodity or a remedy. They live in Đắk Glei and Tu Mơ Rông. It belongs to their memory of walking the forest, and to knowledge handed down through many generations. The Kon Tum provincial web portal records that Xơ Đăng folk knowledge of Ngọc Linh ginseng has been entered on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. That means the way the Xơ Đăng know the plant, use it and live with it is recognized by the state as heritage worth keeping.

Another species is less known. It is the khướu Ngọc Linh, Garrulax ngoclinhensis, a bird found only on the Ngọc Linh range. ASEAN and the Kon Tum newspaper both mention it as one of the most representative species of the area. A bird that carries the name of the mountains it lives on is reason enough to stop and listen.

As for the landscape, the range holds terraced fields, valleys, highland villages, and a way of life tied to the forest and to medicinal plants, the way of the Xơ Đăng. Toward the summit, the primary forest grows thicker and colder with every layer of altitude.

The foot of Ngọc Linh alone is enough to leave a person quiet. Terraced fields spread down into the valley. Streams run under the canopy of ancient trees. The air is cool with height. And there are stories of ginseng, of the Xơ Đăng, and of a stretch of forest left largely whole since long ago.

At the foot of Ngọc Linh, a person stands at the edge of a world that people have not yet fully reached.