Jungles, Mountains, Hitchhiking and Tea Plantations

Our plan for this day was to climb two small mountains in the Cameron Highlands. The first being Mount Batu Brinchang and I can't remember nor find the name of the second one. We had to wake up awfully early once again to catch the bus to Brinchang at 6:30 am. We had checked for the start of the trail the day before so we knew where to go. That's what we thought at least!

We started following the small road in darkness and saw a few local kids on their way to school apparently. We asked one of them where to go and followed his instructions. When we didn't see anything promising within the next ten minutes we asked again and we were told to turn back! We should have learnt at this point to always ask multiple times from different persons to be sure :).

The first touch with Malay jungles

With the second set of instructions we found the route and started hiking up the hill. The jungle trail was quite wet and muddy and Inna kept checking the surroundings for tigers and snakes. She didn't see any. The route was easy to follow but we had to avoid pits of mud and some spiky and thorny plants. Sometimes the locals had even attached a rope to the steep sections on the path. It felt nice to be in the jungle without any guide but after walking for an hour there wasn't much new to see. I guess all the animals were long gone because of the noise we made and not too many plants survive on the floor of the jungle almost without any light.

In about two hours we found the end of the trail and the ugly buildings on top of the mountain. The buildings had a high fence around them and a group of angry-looking men was guarding the area. I had never seen a mountain like this before! Next to the other buildings there was an old watchtower. At least it was allowed to climb that one but we couldn't really see anything because of the fog all around.

We ate some of the food we had with us and started looking for the trail to the other mountain. We didn't have a proper map (only a silly tourist map) so we weren't sure where the trail was supposed to be. We kept walking down the road, checking the jungle on our left side for any sign of a trail. We saw a few small paths and decided to try the second or third one of them. It was a disaster. The path we tried was almost impossible to walk because of plants, mud and loose soil falling down the hill. We kept walking for a while and the path took us back to the main road :). But we saw a few monkey cups next to the path so it wasn't for nothing!

Inna navigating through the roots.

We decided not to try one of these paths again and walked down the asphalt road. In a while we found something better. There were stairs leading to the jungle! We started climbing them and walking along the "bridges" through the jungle. We already hoped it would be like this for most of the way but oh how wrong we were! On the wooden bridges we met a local guide who told us that it takes about three hours to get to the other mountain. I checked my watch and realized that we could make it there and back before the sunset so we kept on walking. The wooden bridges and stairs ended soon and we found ourselves on a really muddy and dirty path through the jungles. It had been muddy before but this was ten times worse. The trail was going up and down and sometimes we met a crossroad without knowing which way to go. We kept walking and wading for about half an hour until Inna said that she wants to turn back, and for once I agreed with her about it. I enjoy tough hikes but this wasn't just tough, it was tough and extremely boring. There was nothing to see, it was wet, the mountain wouldn't have been too high, the weather wasn't too great and most of the time it was tough only because you had to balance on some slippery log to avoid swimming in a pool of mud!

Luckily it seems that there's something good everywhere. In this jungle we heard an interesting insect, I assume. We never saw the creature but its sound was really loud and very easy to follow. You could hear it coming from far away, closing in and then going further again. It felt like I could really point my finger at it but we never saw a thing. Maybe it was invisible! I used my mp3 player to record the sound. I hope you enjoy it!

Eventually we got back to the asphalt road and started walking down. We knew that there were six kilometers between us and the tea farm we wanted to visit so we started walking. On the way I washed my really muddy trousers and shoes in a small river running next to the road. Not long after that it started raining like never before. At that altitude it made the weather pretty cold too. We were lucky though as two travelling women stopped their car and gave us a ride to the tea farm we wanted to get to :).

Green was the colour of the day!

The green tea plantations were really beautiful and made everything look so fresh. Inna was naturally very happy to be there as she loves tea :). It was free to enter the tea farm and we got to see some of the machines they use or have used in the past to gather and make tea. It was a nice place to visit and Inna bought some cheap tea that turned out to be really tasty too!

The women who gave us the ride were a bit slower than us so we started walking down towards Brinchang. In a while we found a bigger road and bought some exotic fruits and vegetables we hadn't tasted yet. Inna wanted to buy an avocado and it tasted just as bad as I remembered from almost twenty years ago :). The other fruits and vegetables were white snow, something a bit like apples and small tomatoes.

We waited for a bus there and it took us straight back to Tanah Rata and to our guest house. Before sleeping and warm shower we booked tickets to Taman Negara, the oldest jungle in the world, for the next morning!

I guess this is what they mean by green tea!

A nicely shaped flower

One of the crawling beasts we saw

Monkey cups! Unfortunately we didn't see anyone using them.

This looked promising...

...but this is what it turned out to be :).

Someone wishing she could take all this tea back home :).