Gear up
We’re going on a hike today which should be pretty fun. I went on hikes in the UK quite often. I’d get lost now and again, but the GPS never failed me. However, I think it’d be a different ball game if we got lost in the Cameron Highlands! We had a reasonable lie in, until midmorning, got ready, and headed out for breakfast, just something simple. There was a 7/11 shop next to our hostel, so we nipped in to stock up on some supplies. We popped to the hostel once more, collected all our gear for hiking, and headed out.
It was a bit wet and cloudy, but that wouldn’t deter us from our walk up the nearby mountain/hill. We had a short walk across town to get to the starting point, this happened to be behind a building in some random bushes and trees. The path was very narrow, overgrown by trees and plants on both sides, slapping us and getting us wet. After a while, it opened up a bit, and the ground was a bit flatter as opposed to uphill. It looked a lot more like a forest in the UK now. The weather was still cloudy, damp, and quite cool.
Down 'n' dirty
After a while of traipsing through the forest, the landscape went uphill, and we had to traverse up staircases made from tree roots, pretty damn slippery. Shortly after we’d reached the top of this, the hill was so steep that it was a hands and knees kind of job. The climb got a bit dirty to say the least! But, it’s not enough to deter us from carrying on, a little bit of mud never hurt anyone. After this testing section, the path evened out once more, and it wasn’t too long until we reached the top.
The peak was enclosed by trees and large plants, with only a small opening through some of the trees that you could see the opposing mountain and part of the town. We stuck around here for a while, taking photos and enjoying the moment. It was completely clouded when we got there, but after 10 minutes or so, it had cleared and we had sunshine streaking through the foliage. We descended down a different path (there are several routes on a map at our hostel).
For more info on the Cameron Highlands hikes, check this out.
Taking a wrong turn
This path was fine to begin with, a little bit steep, but nothing unexpected. We also passed the first people that we’d seen up here too. However, things got very sketchy, very fast. The ‘path’ became very steep, and due to the rain, the mud was extremely slippery, almost a mudslide. I could almost hear my quads creaking as they tensed up, attempting to stop me from going head first down the hill. Once we’d made it to the bottom, we carried on with the dodgy terrain. We even had to cross a long, mossy, rotting log which actually went okay, though initially I thought one of us were coming off of it. The pair of us had to scramble up the hill immediately after the log, both feet sinking into the boggy soil.
After some time ducking and diving through plants and branches, we came upon several different paths, neither of which seemed totally convincing. If ever there was a point we were going to get lost in the Highlands, this was it. We took the one that looked the most likely, and took a leap of faith (just a few strides to be honest). It got tighter and looked a lot less like a path as time went on, especially when we ended up walking in a stream. After 20 minutes or so, it definitely became apparent we weren’t on any sort of path at all, and were just stumbling wildly through a wild rainforest. It was confirmed, we were lost in the Highlands, the opposite of what I wanted! We kept plodding on, and eventually came out at a random stone path.
Lost and found
After having been spat out onto a random path, we decided to continue left on the path. This took us on a cliff edge walk, and we had a random golden retriever following us from a distance. We met a middle-aged couple walking towards us, and they pointed out that we were in fact walking away from the town. So, we turned on our heels, and walked back with them, passing a pretty nice waterfall. As we walked, we regaled our story of our hike of the Highlands and how we got lost. After a couple of miles walking with them, we were back in town. They were quite a nice couple, and had a good chat, except when the dude roared and waved his stick around at a couple of barking dogs.
We waved them goodbye, and returned to our hostels victorious, just about. The pair of us had a bit of a chill, before we headed out for some grub at a nearby restaurant with Wan Ning again. This was well deserved, just the sit down was enough of a reward for me. After eating, we went back to the hostel and just relaxed the whole night.
