Penang Hills and Trails - Two Ridges
Balik Pulau to Anjung Indah

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

This account is linked from my Penang Peaks page which lists peaks over 400 metres as well as other places of interest and viewpoints. To find other hikes which visit this peak please check the maps of this are using this link.

We've been actively exchanging walks with Penang resident Mike Gibby and now we had established that he was not as destructible as just about everyone else whom we have deigned to allow to accompany us, it was time to ratchet up the 'degree of difficulty' and throw in some 'South of the Island Ridge Paths' which unlike their northern counterparts come as an obstacle course. 

We'd had a spot of bother with doing the Nanshan to Anjung Indah path southbound, the first time we fouled up completely and the second time we made the same wrong turning but were able to turn back. Today was arranged so we could demonstrate that we could consistently get it right. I've recycled some of the pictures from the first two walks.

We'd dragged Mike onto our standard Balik Pulau start with the 501 bus from Teluk Bahang and walked up to the Spice House on the valley road to Air Itam. We went down the side to the chicken shed, there are two paths here, we knew to ignore the one on the left next to the shed as it would lead to a house with many dogs.

We now knew the direct route up and naturally this speeded things up. Yuehong prepared her patent ice head cooler as we took the first left. Mike expected to carry on climbing but we kept straight on into the durians where the path turned back on itself. 

It was two minutes on the flat and a couple of minutes scrambling up to the path. Beyond the 8742 hut, we ignored the red arrows on the left path and kept climbing.

The estates here are quite small and often the paths do not cross the boundaries, so another off piste section beckoned. Where the gradient eased, we knew to turn left along this well maintained terrace. That's only the start of the solution, as soon we needed to make our way up two more terraces.

That's our target, the next durian estate, just a few metres but a bit of a scramble, it helps when you know how much you've got to go through.

This was a first for me, I don't now why anyone needs to inject a durian tree. Yuehong was smiling as she had spotted an 'old tyre path' up to the Nibbinda access road.

We used the path round the side of the hill to avoid using the road through the middle of the complex.

At the far end, the weeds had recently been cut back and so it was easy to get to the concrete path leading up the hill. Going straight up would lead to the back of Nibbinda, but there are three concrete paths to the left. The first I knew would lead to some unnecessary off piste work in old rubber, the second was an unknown but I fancied that the third would be a bit of a short cut. So I left my companions and checked it out.

My worry was that it might have finished at a hut but I had seen a path coming up from here before. Indeed the path continued at the anticipated hut and Yuehong needed no encouragement to try out this new route.

Soon we were exactly where I had hoped to be and we turned left to follow the terrace to the end of the rubber estate.

A single step through the bushes and we were out on to another concrete path, up of course. When Mike said with a hint of concern "The concrete's finished", we just said "Turn left". This led through the house with the constantly blaring radio.

Soon we came to the point where the main path up this valley comes in and again continued upwards. There's just a sandy path on the left which is best ignored as it leads only to an abandoned path to Nanshan. The path went round to the right before finishing at the bottom of some very young rubber. Common sense readily brought us to the top and Bukit Relau Forest Reserve in front of us although Yuehong, as she put it, had 'run out of steam'. I couldn't recycle an earlier picture here as the top has dried out completely in the two months since we were last here. It was time for the first part of lunch, jungle juice and sandwiches for me, steam buns for the others which had the necessary restorative effect.

Mike looked concerned as he could see no sign of a ridge path onwards. Yuehong had been here twice and knew she could breeze through the next section. Indeed it was no different from before which is why I have recycled several pictures although I suspect that even more small / medium sized trees had been felled around the summit of Bukit Relau itself.

Since we had done the climb directly and without any sidetracking we were making good time. We turned right after the final (deliberate) blockage and were into Nanshan just after 14.15. The second part of lunch followed and we went down the track in front of us, turned right and went down again to the farm workers' quarters where we went back into the jungle at 14.40, for a second and rather longer ridge path.

I find the first picture totally depressing, we'd already passed larger trees recently felled nearby, the forest is suffering a 'death by a thousand cuts' and almost nobody seems to care. The state forestry department are sat in their air-conditioned offices playing with their smart phones and the state government is planning to cover more and more of the island with roads and concrete (see https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zJ3-vcE0Vpa4.km27BVlgpQhg&shorturl=1) in the name of 'development', whatever that is supposed to mean. Grandiose would be the politest thing I could say here, in private I would use a more earthy phrase or two.

Beyond the horizontal tree at the minor summit, we knew to turn right, go down and to be very, very careful!

Very few people come this way, probably it's just used by the occasional hashes, and I was quietly confident that my informal sign post would still be in place. You can't see it? There's a dead branch across the route ahead just above ground level. The picture on the left was obviously taken on this hike, that on the right was 'one I took earlier'.

Now there's still one chance to get it wrong and that comes almost immediately where we had to take a distinct right turn, I have to say again that it's not at all obvious. Yuehong's reassuring yellow berries had of course disappeared but my landmark rubber trees were more enduring, I knew we were on the right path and I could relax. 

As Mike put it 'the ridge path does go on a bit', and it was just as much an obstacle course as before. I think he ended up using a host of muscles which are not required on more straightforward paths where you don't have to get down on your hands and knees from time to time.

Yuehong, on the other hand, without an unwanted diversion thought it was 'no problem at all', I've lowered her expectations, and by 16.00 we were through in 80 minutes, some 20 minutes less than the previous time. We could 'improve' on that if we really wanted to but there would be no point to go at anything other than a comfortable pace for both of us.

The 502 bus, as always kept us waiting longer than we would have preferred but in due course it delivered us to Balik Pulau for a Nasi Kandar which was not perhaps the best I have had on the island but it did the job. I think we have cured Mike of his ambition to go from Bukit Genting to Gertak Sanggul which would involve a whole day of 'more like this'. Anyway time is running out for us, I have yet to show him Bukit Elvira and I am on the track of some more unrecorded rain gauges which will definitely not keep me out of trouble in the next couple of weeks.