Trekking at Cameron Highlands

Most people who goes to Cameron Highlands think of the strawberry farms and tea plantation. After all, there is no  shopping mall, theme park or anything of interest for visitors. Except the mountains and jungles. Which most sane tourists would only admire from the road and not venture into.

Anyway, we got sick of visiting farms after farms and decided to do some trekking up one of the hill. We didn't know what to expect and having heard tales of people getting lost in the jungle, we decided to get a guide although we were told it was possible to go without as most of the trails were clearly marked.

We told our guide we wanted something exclusive and that we did not want to join other people as we anticipated we will be slower in our movement. We obviously didn't know what we asked for because we got more that what we bargained for.

The guide brought us to this place. He called it a private trail as opposed to public trail, that is, trails that are known only to his company. 

We started at the foot of a hill just in front of a vegetable farm. Our first objective was the summit of this peak which involves an almost 70 degree vertical climb over soft muddy ground. 

Distance to the summit was not too long - just about 300 metres but it took us almost an hour to climb, clambering over the dense undergrowth and ducking under many fallen trees. 

 

We finally reached the summit which is just a narrow strip of rock barely 2 metres wide. Luckily we had the guide with us otherwise M would have freaked out having to walk over this area.

That's our guide leading the way.

And that's our next target, said the guide. The next peak. Gulp!

 

And so we continued our way, slithering and sliding over some areas, crawling under trees and bashing  through thick undergrowth which do not seems to have been trodden on for ages. 

 

The Princess crawling under a tree

But we were well rewarded with impressive scenes of what the guide called "mossy forest" which was actually thick growth of moss over the trees, branches, grounds and everywhere.

 

After a tired but rewarding 3 hours trek, we made our way back but not before having to climb over more steep cliff side like this one. 

Overall, it was an exhausting 5 hours trek made worse by the intermittent rain that falls every now and then and more challenging than we had expected but nevertheless a wonderful way to spend the day rather than visit the farms/