Bobbi and I have been monitoring the covid epidemic closely in Penang. The government imposed emergency movement control orders in March that had the desired result, and new cases in Penang were brought down to almost zero by July, when we ventured out to the Perhentian Islands and co-mingled on dive boats with other divers at that time, almost losing our fear of the disease,
http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2020/07/four-days-diving-in-perhentian-islands.html.
But then in September there were elections held in Sabah and the government loosened its interstate travel policies to encourage people from Sabah but living outside Sabah to return and vote there. Sabah was one of the red zone hotspots for covid in Malaysia at the time, but the government allowed return to mainland Malaysia without quarantine, and suddenly cases jumped throughout the country and have been increasing exponentially ever since, and we are by now well into a serious resurgence of the epidemic here.
Our walking group, the Penang Ramblers, have continued their activities weekly but without much precaution when around each other. So far they have had no problem, and we hope that will continue, but Bobbi and I have stopped walking with them, temporarily we hope, until the danger passes. However, we have continued to stay on their Whatsapp group where they share information about their walks, and following the information they share, we sometimes walk in their footsteps.
One area we've been discovering in greater depth is our nearby Botanical Gardens. We've become familiar with many trails leading from there up to Penang Hill, but we haven't explored the lower terrain between there and where we live. We've taken to walking through the kampungs behind the extensive Chinese cemeteries off Mt. Erskine road as a pleasant means of returning home from the Gurney / Pilau Tikus area, and we've walked with the Ramblers along the bike tracks in the hills above that without really knowing where we were, until on a recent walk John Cheong produced this map of a route they were planning to take that week.
RECONNOITER #1
The dark circle on the map is the entrance to the Botanica Gardens, with the jeep road up to the Penang Hill summit shown in white west of there. When you enter the park you can bear left or right, which forms a loop so that casual strollers will return to the entrance once having completed it. If you go to the left you'll find a set of steps leading in a steep climb up to Penang Waterfall. If you bear right you can divert up the Curtis Trail just past the entrance, a moderately climbing trail with a lot of plaques on it explaining almost at random what lies in the forest beyond the guardrails, but there are no pictures or even engraving of leaves you should be looking for. Bring a handbook with you I guess, in case cell phone data is weak here. But I digress; this trail brings you to the Lily Pond, the spot of blue at the end of the Curtis Trail. Look around; there are box turtles living here.
The short walk in, or out, is picturesque. Actually there are two ways in or our, paralleling ether side of the gulley draining from the lily pond to the loop road running to and from the park entrance. Neither of these trails is marked, but the lighting fixtures are a dead giveaway.
On arrival at the pond it looks like a pool full of lilies, as you see below. There's a yellow sign and the trail starts just to the right of that. On one of the trees just up the trail there is a helpful sign marked "Lily Pond Trail".
Here's a picture of Bobbi about to start on the trail, taken by me from near the tree where the sign is.
These pictures were taken on three different trips here, the first to reconnoiter the way and find the trail with the famous ropes alongside. On the first day this was as far as we got because it was late in the day and we were just trying to get a feel for where things were. The date stamp on the pictures is November 20. 2020.
We did chance to meet someone coming down the trail who explained that at the top of the part with the ropes there was a T junction and Bukit Olivia would be to the right. She and her friend were just coming in off their trek and they seemed to imply we had better know where we were going if we were going to continue on that day. Not only was it late but it was also threatening rain, so Bobbi and I opted to retreat from the gardens and make our walk back through the cemeteries, passing through the Bhodi Heart temple complex, which is a lovely place to visit if you happen to be in the area.
In this picture, you can see the pagoda of the Hindu Waterfall temple, at the top of hundreds of steps, poking above the forest canopy, as seen from the Bhodi Heart complex.
RECONNOITER #2
Five days later we returned to continue up those ropes. It takes about 30 minutes to pull yourself up them, where you come the T in the forest where the trail left might be marked Moongate (I can't recall exactly, but how else would I have got the impression it led to Moongate?). Keeping right on the jungle path, the walking is fairly level until, in another few minutes, you reach the bike track.
Here is Bobbi starting out on the rope trail. Once on it, she didn't think there was much to it.
Here she is emerging on the dirt road near the top of it about half an hour after starting from the Lily Pond.
Here, she's point the way back down. In case you wanted to get down to the Lily Pond from here, what would you look for? A tree with a green leaf on it? A gap coming up might be the best we have to go on for now. Next time I'm here I'll have to look harder for a landmark. There might be some Hash House Harriers paper stapled to tree leaves; it's all over the trails here.
From here you continue behind me to your right (roughly east and north). You pass a way the trail might appear to go off to the left. But this trail doesn't go anywhere helpful, and appears join up further ahead with the main track.
So we stayed on the main track until we found this path to the right, opening on a trail with orange paint on it, marking the way to the northerly east.
This leads another 15 or 20 minutes into the forest on a pleasant jaunt to where the trail was blocked with fallen branches and the way around the log jam appearing to be to the left. There we found a tree with a Mount Erskine sign on it, and beyond that, a trail heading downhill and in the direction of Mt. Erskine Road.
I scouted the first trail a little beyond the log jam and saw it was heading south, apparently toward Mt. Olivia, which I imagined to be an uphill slog in that direction. On our next trip there, where we retraced our steps from the Lily Pond, we took that southerly way and, just a few minutes ahead from where I'd stopped on this reconnoiter to go downhill east, found a signpost (on the ground) marking Bukit Olivia. But on this trip it seemed from John's map that east was the surest way out. The trail was well marked, slightly steep downhill in places, and if we had to backtrack to the bike road we'd have daylight time for that. So on this day, I opted for that direction.
As often is the case in the jungles in Penang, the vegetation took on sometimes surreal forms. Here are some of the interesting root sculptures we encountered on the way.
I'm not sure exactly where we were on John's map because I can't pinpoint the trail going to the right from the main track (the one marked with orange paint) which ends north of Bukit Olivia, but on Google Maps, here is where were were.
The way down is unpleasant toward the end because of the mosquitoes, but the path is clearly discernable the whole way, and comes out on this line of graves at the top end of the hill.
We walked to the north end of the cemetery where we could see a relatively shaded way down from there, among the trees at the north end of the graveyard, which was without cover and exposed to the midday sun.
Dropping down into those trees, we upset a troupe of monkeys who started shrieking and leaping about in the branches in the trees overhead, but soon we were in this level part approaching Erskine Road. The condo complex was just below us to the west, but there didn't seem to be any straightforward way to drop down there.
The lower graves area is fenced off into private property near the road, and dogs roam here at will here, barking aggressively at strangers. Fortunately one of the neighbors let us in through his gate and out to the road on the other side.
At the base of this road the business on Jalan Erskine just opposite this turning is the one in the photo below:
GOING FULL CIRCLE, 3RD TIME'S THE CHARM
Following our reconnoiter walks, we had a spate of bad weather where we limited our walks to nearby Pearl Hill, but on Monday December 7 we awoke to clear skies. It had rained the evening before, but after a leisurely breakfast it looked like the weather might hold so we ordered a Grab e-taxi to drop us at the entrance to Botanical Gardens.
We arrived at the Lily Pond after mid-day. It would have been hot with the bright sun overhead, but the trail heading up the ropes was shaded. Bobbi had been looking forward to it, the ropes were no problem for her by now.
We knew the way by now and completed the trek to the log jam by about 2:30 in the afternoon. I had been pushing to reach there before 3:00 in order for us to have plenty of daylight to complete a summit of Bukit Olivia and then proceed south down the other side to wherever that led.
We picked up the trail going south on the other side of the log jam and were surprised that in only about 15 minutes we had come out on this pair of trail markers.
I don't know how reliably you can treat a sign on the ground that claims to mark a summit when there is no viewpoint, especially when there is evidence of scouts having been there, but the signs indicated that we were at that moment standing at or on the summit at 260 meters, and there should be a scout camp further down the trail, down being the only direction you could logically go from a summit.
So we kept going the logical way and another ten minutes down from there we found a tree with a marker on it that said Waterfall Road," which is the name of the street that leads into the Botanical Gardens past the impressive Hindu Waterfall temple.
It was a very pleasant walk from there down through the jungle forest canopy, with the occasional fallen tree trunk offering a bench for respite.
Within an hour of having left the summit we arrived at the trailhead, which looked like this as you emerge from the forest. Beyond the gap, on the other side of the road, you can see the famous Moongate starting point for multiple trails leading up as far as the top of Penang Hill
Here's a shot of Bobbi emerging from the forest, taken from the bridge at the upper right of the photo above:
And here's Bobbi's view of me completing the trek, heading for the little shelter just over the bridge on the left, with Moongate on the opposite side of the road more clearly visible in this picture.
Below, Bobbi completing her trek to the Waterfall Road destination as she crosses the bridge.
There's no sign here indicating that there is a trail leading up to Bukit Olivia, or markings on the trails themselves showing the way to the exits or distances, apart from the ones we photographed here for the record, and the painted dots on some of the trees in different colors making the different trails you would be on.
And here's what we had done in Google Maps terms:
From there we summoned a Grab and went home for a refreshing drink and possibly a nice nap.
All photos by Vance and Bobbi Stevens
