Yeap, you saw it right. I got lost while trekking alone in the jungles of Cameron Highlands. More about that later. Anyway, this is gonna be a long post with quite a bit of pictures, as I’m going to attempt blogging the 3 days’ happenings in this single entry.

This was my second time going to Cameron Highlands (with some colleagues and friends). The first time was 2 years ago, where I went with one of my buddies. In Cameron Highlands, you basically have to self-entertain, because there’s pretty much nothing to do except hiking, eating and sleeping. Here, you can find lots of nice food: Pratas twice the size of Singapore’s ones, but only at half the cost; cheap but huge servings of steamboat dinners; scones with jam and butter, one of the specialty treats in Cameron Highlands; and last but not least, lots of strawberry farms where you can get to pluck the strawberries yourself and buy them at a cheap price.

After an over-night bus journey, we reached the highlands feeling fresh. After having our breakfast, we checked into our Bala’s Chalet Hotel, and then went out to walk a fairly easy trail. (By the way, the forests in Cameron Highlands offer quite a fair number of trails for the visitors to hike, although most of the people who actually hike here are the ang mohs.)

This is how an easy trail looks like. It even has bricks lay out for you to walk on. However, after reaching the end of this trail, we decided to continue another longer trail, and that took us quite awhile to complete. Halfway into the long trail, there was a watch tower, and all of us climbed up to get a scenic bird’s eye view of the highlands. 

Different views offered by the 2-storey watch tower

Some camp-site that we came across while doing the trail. 

After we completed the trail, we were already famished, so we got to Tanah Rata Town’s T-cafe to have our lunch. I had claypot chicken rice, scones and chocolate milk shake for my lunch. It costed only about 5 sgd.

It must have been the long night bus ride that made us tired, so much so that we ended up sleeping in our chalet after lunch. Got up 2 hours later to visit some strawberry farm.

Yea, this is the outside of the farm. I didn’t take any pictures of the insides though. 2 of my friends went to pluck half a kg (or was it 1?) worth of strawberries while I bought some ice-cream to enjoy. We hung around for awhile before going for a delightful steamboat dinner in some restaurant in some hotel. Dinner was great! Having steamboat in such a cold rainy evening is definitely pure indulgence.

We spent the rest of the night by playing interesting card games, before retiring to bed.

I Got Lost 

I would consider the second day my highlight of this trip, simply based on the fact that I almost got lost in the moutainous jungle of the highlands! My friends had decided a day earlier to go for a guided tour to visit the tea plantations, catus valley and some other attractions in this morning. Since I’ve gone for such tours 2 years ago, I opted out and planned to do my own trekking alone instead. Well, not quite a smart idea to trek alone here.

The hike started off well. I got to the starting point of the trail (leading to one of the orang asli villages) without much difficulty. Walking alone, I was able to appreciate the view and sound of nature. Weather was cool under the thick canopy, and I had ample energy to stop and take some pictures every few minutes.

This is the kind of path that I was walking on at the beginning of my trip. The paths are typically narrow with an edge at one of the sides.  

Because of the climate here, you can find some interesting plants, flowers and fungi that you won’t be able to see in Singapore.

Some interesting blue beady (seeds?) plant 

Some fungi that grew on the tree trunk 

White mushroom!

Another interesting one, with a red top. 

Well, the above pictures were taken when I was still able to enjoy the trek at my own sweet time. Not for long though. Approximately one hour into trekking, I took a wrong path at some fork, and that marked the beginning of my exciting trekking experience.

To begin with, the trails were not well-marked. Trees between some distance were either tied a red tape or painted red on part of the barks to denote the route. Sometimes, the distances between 2 marked trees could be longer than 200 m, and before you realise, you’re already on the wrong direction. Which is what happened to me.

I wasn’t quite worried at first, because it wasn’t my first time getting lost here. I got lost 2 years ago with my friend. The map I had was quite useless, without any detailed information or contour lines at all. How on earth would I be able to figure out which part of the trail I’m at? Heck, the map even stated "not drawn to scale"!

So, I continued to walk on the wrong trail, which eventually led to something less than a trail. I even bashed through some vegetation and deadfalls in hope to get back onto another right trail. When I passed by quite a number of dead logs, I was thinking to myself that there’s a high possibility that I could appear in the Strait Times headlines: Another Singaporean man killed by dead tree log, this time in Cameron Highlands. Shudders.

Anyway, I kept on ascending the trail, and the altitude increased gradually. In no time, I was walking between the clouds, and everywhere around me was misty. It also started to rain quite heavily, by which I responded by putting on my disposable poncho. After 2 hours of walking, I eventually got onto one of the mountain peaks of the highlands. I believe I was on the peak of Gunung Jasar (1670m), because it’s the nearest off-track from my supposed trail.

Great, I thought. How did I end up at this peak, I’d absolutely no idea. Looking all around me, I see no nice routes to retreat. At some edges of the peak, I could see nothing thousands of feet below. The thought of falling off the edge sent me shivers. I gingerly stepped back and found one of the more walkable paths to descend.

As you can see from the above picture, visibility was very bad. I could hardly see anything beyond 10 metres.

The above two pics once again showed how bad the visibility was. From the 1st pic, I retreated a little backwards, but when I took the second pic, the cable tower was nowhere to be seen. Thick mist isn’t friendly.  

A poor map and compass wasn’t of much help too. So, I used my 6th sense to navigate my way through, which was a bad mistake cos men are supposed to have bad 6th senses. I had to back-track quite a lot because many paths that I took ended up as dead-ends. I started to get a little worried because my water’s almost finished, and it was already 3pm by then. Few more hours and the sun would set. Would I be able to get out of this maze before nightfall? If I so badly needed someone to locate me and help me out, how should I even describe to anyone where I am through the handphone?

And guess what? I tried another path, and five minutes later, I saw red (no pun intended)!!! The flourescent red paint on one of the trees seem to welcome me back on trail, and I almost wanted to run straight into that tree and kiss it. Not. I finally was able to enjoy the rest of the descending trail back to civilisation. By the time I was out of the forest and back into town, it was almost 5pm. I spent a good whole 6 hours in the trap.

In the evening, I was back in the chalet. I’ve never been more appreciative being able to have a good bath (to get those mud off my limbs) and then relax on the bed in the room. Ahh..

During our last night there, we again got together and played games in the attic. It was fun. We played Taboo and bridge until we finally got tired. Well, this concluded my 3 days 2 nights stay in Cameron Highlands. Not a bad trip at all, but certainly more adventurous than I would’ve wanted!