Penang Hills and Trails - Sungai Ara Explorer 1
Filling the Gaps in our Knowledge

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 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.

Earlier on this trip when we had 'wheels' we had entered the Sungai Ara valley from Jalan Kenari and explored the south side in some detail, these are covered in our Sungai Ara - 541 and Sungai Ara - The Blue House reports. Today our friend Mike Gibby had offered us a lift to the south of the island which would allow us another crack at the area. In return I had to promise a 'short walk' by our standards entirely on paths, I value his friendship and am acutely conscious that few people have an appetite for our lengthier walks, however beautiful the scenery.

I had two sections which merited investigation. The first was the route between to the Sungai Ara Valley near its top end and the house near the 541 point and the second was the path down from the west end of the Blue House ridge which would emerge somewhere along the early part of the valley.

As we had done on the first of our walks here, we parked the car next to the bikers' shelter just short of the Fig Tree Hill resort. We walked straight on up the valley, ignoring the major turnings left and right.

Some way further along there are two turnings to the left in quick succession, I chose the first based on an old map I had seen on Everytrail. We could always try the second if the first failed.

We sent Mike ahead to plough through the spiders' webs. At some stage we were probably going to have to turn left, but this wide track came too early to consider as a candidate. Yuehong reported the gradient 'more than acceptable'.

I have not shown the first serious contender here as in the end we took it, but in these circumstances I always like to check out a path to the end - especially here as Peter van der Lans' reports of this area suggest that none penetrate the jungle areas on the upper hill. Mike passed another path on the left which we agreed looked to be a tapper's trail and rather muddy from being used by motorbikes.

At the first hut, the path behind it just led to a small reservoir and the main path continued past the second hut.

The path now started to descend gently and another path trailed in from the left. Ahead, the path turned sharp right and continued down past some 'working' rubber trees. We went a little further and it seems clear that this path would prove to be the second one from the main valley road where we had turned earlier.

We now checked the path shown above  While it initially looked quite promising, it soon ended with the view ahead of the jungle above.

So back we went to our chosen path. Mike reported "You'll like this one" and so we did initially.

It climbed a short distance to a shelter presumably used by those clearing this area and beyond it became what also looked to be a tappers' trail which turned out to have branches in all directions. However, we did pass a tree with a piece of blue 'Giant' plastic which indicated that the mountain bikers had been here.

So we basically kept going up until we came to a small open area and beyond it we found what was clearly the same muddy trail which we had declined to follow earlier.

We followed it for a short way and as we emerged from this narrow section, I declared 'Success' because ahead I could see a house I recognised. If there had been any doubt, it would have been removed by further blue 'Giant' plastic.

This was the house with its Hakka occupant and half a dozen not unfriendly dogs. It is a modest place, with a traditional offering for the recent Chinese New Year. 

Mike took this picture of yours truly with our new friend, it makes me look a lot younger than I am (or feel).

We wandered on, the first junction on the right we knew from some years back to be a dead end, the second leads past the 541 refreshment stop towards Bayan Lepas. It was a Thursday so no one would have been in attendance.

We walked down enjoying the view of this mansion through what was a rather murky day and when we passed this gate, we had finished the first half of our exploration and it had taken almost exactly two hours.

"Ready for another hill?" I asked as it was surely too early to finish. Now the path we wanted at the multiple junction is the least significant one and to make it even less intuitive it starts by going down to a stream.

As we started to climb rather slowly, Mike got ahead a bit and took the opportunity for some nature study. I'm a little envious because the very ordinary cameras we have just refuse to focus well on this kind of subject reliably.

When it comes to paths like this, they tend not to stick in Yuehong's memory. She'd been in the opposite direction about 6 weeks ago but there was not yet a glimmer of recognition. I did my own bit of successful nature study, this is a ground ginger.

We passed a couple of traps neither of which seemed to be baited and soon reached the junction which needed investigating. We would go left, the path on the right leads to what the bikers call 'The Blue House' which makes it sound a lot grander than it is.

It wasn't much of a path especially as it was outside the fruit season but hopefully it would lead us back down to what some might call 'civilisation'.

We soon learned not to make any assumptions about it, especially after a  young couple came up on a motorbike. Sometimes the path was clear and wide...

... at other times, it was so overgrown you could hardly see it, but it was certainly a pleasure to walk.

There were even some quite large trees. Then the couple came back, still smiling, I couldn't begin to guess what they had been doing. Whatever it was, it hadn't taken very long.

They shot off into this durian estate and we came to the first junction we had seen. Given we wanted to go back up the valley we opted to go left, but the way things worked out I would guess right would have been equally good.

We wound down past a small hut and as we approached a large open area we could see we were not very high above the valley road. Rather than scramble down we followed a clear path across it.

There was a gap in the tall grass and a proper path below. Immediately, we both knew where we were because this was the small Da Ba Gong temple at the start of the Blue House walk.

We dropped down the last 100 metres or so and Mike snapped the moment we emerged, the sign of course is for the temple. The pole being OJK 21 was not great news because we had quite a few poles to pass going back up to the car and of course it took twenty minutes making two hours for the second part of the walk too.

It was a very pleasant largely new walk, hardly spectacular but represented another piece in the giant jigsaw map of rural Penang Island.