Cameron Highlands
My visit to the Cameron Highlands was a story of an excellent hostel and two brilliant hikes. First, the hostel. I don’t know exactly how certain hostels manage to curate a consistently friendly atmosphere while others feel socially cold, but one way or another, Hiker’s Sleep Port has got it spot on. Within minutes of arriving I had met Emily, Manu and Simona and we’d arranged to head out hiking the next day. I thought in the moment that it must have been fortuitous timing, but in the next couple of days I stayed there, I watched it happen again and again, both to myself and to others. It’s a proper hiking hostel where people arrive, meet, plan a hike, get an early night and head out the next day. A particularly memorable stay for me, and highly recommended.
Secondly, the hikes. Emily, Manu, Simona and I decided to start with trails 10 and 6, which lead to a big tea plantation. It had been recommended to us as a fairly easy one to start with, but perhaps those recommending it hadn’t tried it in monsoon season. It was very passable, but between some near vertical climbs and some mud slides downhill it was certainly not just a simple walk through the forest. A long ascent at the start, climbing up a combination of tree root ladders and metal ones woke us up and made for a good early challenge. Then descending the other side, a lack of grip on the slippery mud combined with holes in the path meant we were all sliding and falling everywhere. At one point some land gave way under my foot and I half fell in a hole, at another I slid down the same slippery slope 3 times before managing to drag myself up it by some roots buried deep enough to hold most of my weight. The group were covered in mud, but all smiles. Eventually we found a road, which we were supposed to follow to the tea plantation. I’m still not sure where we went wrong, but the road petered out in a local village of very basic homes, and people with very little English, but who kindly pointed us (literally) in the right direction. We slid down a hill of tea plants that didn’t feel like it was part of a trail, and eventually found something resembling a very boggy path which took us through some beautiful tea covered hills to the large tea plantation.
Our route back to the hostel was via a main road, which wasn’t much fun walking alongside as cars zoomed past, so we thought we’d have a go at hitchhiking. A kind man stopped to pick us up in a truck full of vegetables, and we rode in the back, sitting on boxes of potatoes back to Tanah Rata, the town where our hostel was based. A group of Malaysian bikers behind the truck thought it hilarious that three foreigners were riding with the vegetables and did their best to have a conversation with us on the way back, before saying goodbye and overtaking us. After getting a lift back, Simona and I felt like we still had some walking in us and headed to a local waterfall and back, before a well deserved dinner and some drinks that night.
Sadly Emily and Manu were leaving the next day, so couldn’t hike with us a second day. As I mentioned above however, the hostel is a place where people seem to effortlessly meet and plan things together, so we were joined on our second day of hiking by Malene who we’d run in to the night before. Several of the trails around Cameron Highlands are technically closed, either permanently or for monsoon season, however from talking to locals it became clear that many of Malaysia’s forests are officially closed in an attempt to prevent legal action from anyone causing themselves injury inside. Even on the open trails, signs are up everywhere ensuring you know you enter at your own risk. On the advice of some other backpackers, we decided to have a go at the “closed” trail 1, leading to the highest peak in the area. We struggled to find the entrance to the trail, but found a different “closed” trail nearby and decided to explore that one instead. After a bit of confusion at the start, it turned out to be a much clearer path that the trail we had completed on the previous day, and a good challenge. There were constant big ascents and descents, again with tree root ladders, actual ladders, and sometimes ropes for scrambles up and mini-rappels down. It was also very slippery and at times very slow going as the path became ankle deep bog and we had to find creative ways across sections. The plant life slowly changed between cool forest and humid jungle, and by the top we were in the clouds, so misty that from the peak all we could see past the nearby trees was white. One slip and fall from me aside, it was a really magical hike through a misty, mossy forest and it felt great.
We met a gang of muslim bikers at the other end of the trail, chatted for a while and somehow ended up singing Hotel California together, and started walking back on small roads. A kind family stopped and offered us a ride, which we gratefully accepted, while trying not to get our again muddy clothes on their pristine car. We left them in Brinchang and walked the last 45 minutes back to our hostel.
In truth, everything apart from the hiking in the Cameron Highlands was a little underwhelming - the over touristy tea plantations, the obsession with strawberries (I saw strawberry lamb chops in one restaurant, strawberry laksa in another), the slightly dull towns. Luckily though I was able to spend most of my waking hours there walking, climbing, sliding and exploring tea covered hills and mossy forests, and it was brilliant.
That night I met Esther who had just arrived and was looking for people to hike with the next day. Simona and I were leaving, but I introduced her to Malene who was now in need of a hiking partner for the next day. In the morning as I packed my things, they said goodbye as they left together. Hiker’s Sleep Port continues to work its magic.