Gunung Irau #1 - Up The Highest Road In Malaysia.

This is my climb up Gunung Irau. Together with one of my working colleague, we joined a group of 18 young adults to scale up this mountain which rose 2110 meters or 6923 feet above sea level and is the ninth highest hill in peninsula Malaysia. I document the whole journey is an photo essay form and all the pictures have been uploaded to my flick site http://www.flickr.com/photos/11517445@N08/

8.24 a.m. – I drove with Andrew to Heritage Hotel in Tanah Rata to meet up with the rest of the team who drove up from KL through the night. There were a total of 20 in the group including the two of us.

8.56 a.m. – We checked into this apartment where the group will be staying for the night.

9.32 a.m. – After checking in and packing for the climb, the group were raring to go despite the lack of sleep.

9.36 a.m. – Everyone put their best foot forward in a show of faith. We may be different but our shoes are all the same. And these RM5.00 shoes are the best money can buy for trekking in tropical jungle.

9.36 a.m. – My shoes are cleaner than your shoes. But not for long. Clean shoes and clean legs. Both will be very dirty before the day is done.

9.56 a.m. – Two vans drove us up the highest road in Malaysia. So narrow that it is a really tight squeeze. You have to horn at every sharp turn not to end up in a nasty crash.

9.59 a.m. – We passed by the Boh Sungei Palas plantation on our way up. The rolls of light green tea plants are a sight to behold.

10.01 a.m. – Rolling hills of green tea leaves in irregular undulating rolls following the contours of the hill – lovely.

10.01 a.m. – The tea plants reaching up to the sky. Not an inch of ground are wasted. They are grown right to the road's edges and up to the top of hills.

10.03 a.m. – We drove up to the cloud line and above. The driver wonder if there is more road ahead. We told him he will know the end when he reached it. Actually, we were not so sure but we had to say something to keep him going.

10.16 a.m. – Soon enough, we did reach the end. A locked gate with a “trespasser will be shot” greeted us. Not someplace we wanted so go so we parked by the side and alighted from the vehicles.

10.17 a.m. – Just beyond the locked gate is a blast of inviting bright yellow blooms that contrasted greatly with the forbidding barrier. One is man-made and the other is nature after all. The irony is not lost to us.

10.17 a.m. – We stretched our legs and took photos…


Of this imposing telecommunication tower.

10.17 a.m. – Last minute preparation before we tackle the unknown. Unlike the lowland jungle, there are no leeches or mosquitoes, just mud and mud everywhere.

10.18 a.m. – Before we did that, we were going to scale this watch tower to view the world from above. We are now on top of Gunung Brinchang and up in the tower, the world are spread below our feet.

To be continued...

Taman Negara #5 - Into The Ear Cave.

Before we enter the house of bats, we took a picture as proof in case anyone did not re-emerge from it. The Ear Cave is so named because it is shaped like an ear. Like one too, once you enter it gets progressively narrower till it is just a small channel into the inner ear. But even more like an ear, you went in one direction and came out the other. :-)

Last minute advice – “keep your head low, don’t bump into things though I know all of have thick skulls; talk soft, don’t wake up the dead; it is slippery, watch out for the sharp rocks; if it is too slippery, God gave you a backside for a reason; if it is smelly, hold your breath until you came out the other side; if you are not dirty when you come out, we all know you cheated and double back.”

With those words swarming our heads, we climbed in and plunged into instant darkness. The feeble beams of our tiny torches seemed to be sucked in by the darkness and eaten up. Don’t let some of the pictures fooled you. Only when the camera flashed could we see with any clarity. See the three tiny lights in the picture, they were made by torches – not very bright was it? Immediately in and the low ceiling forced us to bend double to walk like a hunchback.

Sometimes we have to climb down and other times we have to climb up. Luckily, there were ropes strung at strategic points in the cave to help in the climbs.

In the semi-darkness, you could just about see several feet in front of you and the general appearance of the cave wall while further away or deeper caverns are shrouded in complete darkness. I did not know there were bats in this cave even though they are just feet away until I used the camera to illuminate the cave.

Take for example this photo. Even with the flash you could not see beyond the rope.





If you grabbed too far, you may end up with grabbing one of the bats instead which are just inches away. They were around us everywhere except we couldn’t see them – we were like they said “blind as a bat”.

They may just be on top of our head and we would not even realize as this picture showed.

Something spooked the bats, probably our loud voices having woke them up from their slumber and they started flying. They flew in erratically in complete darkness yet managed to avoid slamming into anything. We now have to climb up towards a break in the cave where light and jungle greens were visible.

The path we have to climb is the area through which the bats were flying. We have to just hope that their radar is good enough to avoid crashing into us. “Mayday! Mayday! Bang!!”

Well, there were no flaming hits so we made to the next chamber which is all the way down. The first section was easy enough, just have to make sure we had a secure hold.

The second section proved to be more tricky. It was steep but also very smooth and wet and a bit dangerous to try to stand and walked down unless the shoes have a good traction. It is safer to slide down with the buttocks. Four Englishmen were standing here obstructing the traffic, debating on whether to proceed and go back and wondering aloud where this leads to while others just moved round them and continued below. It is kind of strange they way they carried out their conversation as if none of us understand their language. So I volunteered them some information and told them that there is only one way to go – forward. There are still many people coming from the back as we were almost at the head of our party. One of them said to the other “There – there is your answer” and followed us in.

However, we could not proceed far when we had another traffic jam. After sliding down the slippery slope, we have to crouch and crawl through a watery channel. We could not see what was ahead and had to wait until the path was cleared. You can imagine what can happen when this cave became flooded. Incidentally, the Ear Cave is closed during the rainy season for obvious reason.

It seemed the cave got narrower as we went in. This is a slit between two huge boulders and only a medium sized person could squeeze through. One of the participants (not of our group) had to turn back for there is no way his extra large size is going to squeeze through this gap.


There are more tight spots ahead. At the end of the long channel, there is a hole through which you have to push yourself upward with the strength of both your arms. It is not a large hole and our guide told us in an earlier trip, one guy was stuck there for three hours before being rescued. Our guide told us that the cave is getting narrower over the years as the earth movement hemmed the cave in.


But once we pushed yourself through it, sunlight again greeted us and we found that we were at the bottom of a deep narrow ravine. Using our arms and steeping on places of the rocks where there are footholds, we pulled ourselves upward.

“I did it! I am out of the cave!” she seemed to say as she flashed both a beaming smile and the V sign.

Those who have got out helped to pull the others up.

“Look! My front is pretty clean.”

“But my back – well, I did use my buttocks!”

This group of girls said “Hey, we also want our front and back taken.” So I shot their front.

But when they turned their backs to me, they suddenly felt shy and dispersed before I could get a proper shot. Girls!


As we were about to depart, I saw the four Englishmen coming out from another path. I was puzzled and asked them how come. They told me they were tired of waiting for the queue and double back where they came from. I thought – what a pity! So near yet so far. I would have regretted and always wondered what it was I missed, for want of a little patience.

To be continued...

Taman Negara #4 - The Trek To Gua Telinga.

We continued our way through the jungle when we came across a point where two paths forked into different directions. This reminded me of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” where it said – “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Well, in this case, we took the well worn path for we would not dare to take the one less traveled by and end up lost.

Road sign in the jungle pointing to us the right direction.

In single file we marched on, sweat soaking our shirts. It rained here the last few days and the ground was muddy at some stretches slowing down our walk. It was unusual to rain this time of the year but the weather had been upside down all over the world, it seems.

These black jungle termites took advantage of the wet cool weather to troop through the ground looking for food. You would not find their white urban cousins doing that in day time even under the shades of trees. They are not as hardy. These jungle termites are dangerous, their bites are poisonous and can give you painful swelling for up to a day. They are however important for the health of the forest chewing up dead and rotten trees to rejuvenate the forest.

We stopped by this tall tree which if I’m not mistaken is called Pokok Kering. Its sap is used by the aborigines to make vanish.

Trees in the original tropical jungle grows straight and tall making for the sky. Every trees fighting for the precious sunlight. Here sunlight is filtering down from a break in the dense foliage.

It is time for a group photo under the giant Tualang tree, the third tallest tree in the world. This huge baby is only about a thousand year old. They can grow up to more than four thousand years old and more than 80 meters tall. Such a giant would take more than 20 people to link their arms round its trunk. It is an amazing tree.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep” and a little scary too to be wandering off by yourself.

We were surprised to see such a bright colored bean growing on this tree. They also grow much higher up in clusters on tree branches. Our guide told us they are edible but this is not ripe enough to be eaten. These pods can be opened for the edible beans within. They made a wonderful contrast from the homogeneity of the green, brown and grey of the forest.

The group came to an abrupt stop as there was a traffic jam just ahead. There was a puddle of mud that we have to figure out how to negotiate. Our guide laughed at us. He said after the cave, we would not care about getting our legs dirty and would just be stepping through the puddle.

We finally reached the mouth of the cave. Everyone stopped for a breather and waited for the traffic to clear a bit before going in. All of us armed were with a torch for it will be dark inside. We will be entering through this entrance and exiting through the other end.

It was photo session as group after group took the opportunity to pose before the fading sign. Here our pretty smiling ladies revealed their best smiles to the camera.

This guy is standing at the edge of the mouth of the cave staring into the abyss wondering when to make the plunge. It was dark and damp; and the fetid smell of the bats’ guano was emanating from it. After a moment’s hesitation to get our bearing, we plunged into the depth…

To be continued...