It will soon be one year that I live in Malaysia and I now have some routines. One of them is a trek on a cliff (actually the technical term is ridge) called Taman Melawati.
One particularity of KL is that it is enclosed in a valley (Klang Valley) surrounded by cliffs. You can really tell when looking from tall
buildings. And that's great because it offers plenty of nice opportunities of day treks. The Taman Melawati (officially called Klang Gates Ridge) is one of them. It actually is a WWF classified spot and the officials claim it is the biggest pure quartz ridge in the world... The Taman Melawati is located North East of KL, about 30 min bike ride from downtown. Well, that's when you know the way to the trail head. It's actually hidden at the end of a small dirt path leaving from the village called Melawati. It took me long time to discover it.
The journey to get there is quite an adventure by itself. We've been caught there by the tropical rain once. In Malaysia it can rain 10 cm in a 10 min time frame, and when this sudden huge amount of water is collected by the ridge and concentrated on the dirt path, it gets swamped in the blink of an eye. I had to ride my bike out before getting really flooded and I found myself riding in 30 cm (1 ft) of water, no kidding!! The whole exhaust pipe was sunk underwater so I had to make sure never to release the throttle to continuously exhaust gas and therefore prevent water from entering into the engine via the exhaust pipe, while praying not to fall into the ravine (couldn't see the ground because of dirty water flowing over)! Stressful time! So bad I didn't shoot pictures of it 'cause it was really impressive.
Anyway, most of the time the weather is nice and this is a really pleasant walk. I've been there about 5 times, bringing different friends each time. They all loved it. It is so unexpected to feel so remote from the city after just a 30 min ride. That's a good thing with KL: nature is never that far away. Kuala Lumpur is definitely a rather small capital. Once up there, the view is breathtaking. We actually stand at the edge of the KL area. And as we are on a ridge, we have a perfect 360 view. On one side we can see the whole Klang valley: KL and its suburbs; and one the other side the wild rainforest, the mountains, etc... Strong contrast! I like to be there, I feel like I'm at the edge of the civilized world...
Most of the time the path becomes pretty wild, but we can't get lost since it follows the top of the ridge. Sometimes it becomes more about climbing than
walking! It can even be dangerous: a friend of mine survived a 2 meters fall with just minor scratches! Apart from this the real difficulty comes from the heat: there is no shadow at all and the quartz acts as a reflector concentrating the heat... That's why we usually (try to) get there by sunrise.
I heard about other nearby spots like this one, I'll keep you posted about it.
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(thanks to Guilhem for some of those pics)
One particularity of KL is that it is enclosed in a valley (Klang Valley) surrounded by cliffs. You can really tell when looking from tall
buildings. And that's great because it offers plenty of nice opportunities of day treks. The Taman Melawati (officially called Klang Gates Ridge) is one of them. It actually is a WWF classified spot and the officials claim it is the biggest pure quartz ridge in the world... The Taman Melawati is located North East of KL, about 30 min bike ride from downtown. Well, that's when you know the way to the trail head. It's actually hidden at the end of a small dirt path leaving from the village called Melawati. It took me long time to discover it.
The journey to get there is quite an adventure by itself. We've been caught there by the tropical rain once. In Malaysia it can rain 10 cm in a 10 min time frame, and when this sudden huge amount of water is collected by the ridge and concentrated on the dirt path, it gets swamped in the blink of an eye. I had to ride my bike out before getting really flooded and I found myself riding in 30 cm (1 ft) of water, no kidding!! The whole exhaust pipe was sunk underwater so I had to make sure never to release the throttle to continuously exhaust gas and therefore prevent water from entering into the engine via the exhaust pipe, while praying not to fall into the ravine (couldn't see the ground because of dirty water flowing over)! Stressful time! So bad I didn't shoot pictures of it 'cause it was really impressive.Anyway, most of the time the weather is nice and this is a really pleasant walk. I've been there about 5 times, bringing different friends each time. They all loved it. It is so unexpected to feel so remote from the city after just a 30 min ride. That's a good thing with KL: nature is never that far away. Kuala Lumpur is definitely a rather small capital. Once up there, the view is breathtaking. We actually stand at the edge of the KL area. And as we are on a ridge, we have a perfect 360 view. On one side we can see the whole Klang valley: KL and its suburbs; and one the other side the wild rainforest, the mountains, etc... Strong contrast! I like to be there, I feel like I'm at the edge of the civilized world...
Most of the time the path becomes pretty wild, but we can't get lost since it follows the top of the ridge. Sometimes it becomes more about climbing than
walking! It can even be dangerous: a friend of mine survived a 2 meters fall with just minor scratches! Apart from this the real difficulty comes from the heat: there is no shadow at all and the quartz acts as a reflector concentrating the heat... That's why we usually (try to) get there by sunrise.I heard about other nearby spots like this one, I'll keep you posted about it.
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A friend of mine tracked our itinerary with his GPS. Here is a Google Earth screening of it. You can download the whole kml trace here.
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