Penang Hills and Trails - Balik Pulau Explorer 11
Bukit Penara Inspection

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.

There are a lot of paths on the valley sides above Balik Pulau, we've done most of them this time but were still a few which needed a revisit especially at the eastern end. Today, we would go up to the area below Bukit Penara which had received a lot of adverse publicity a year ago when it was 'discovered' that the forest reserve had been encroached on by farmers. The State Forestry Department would have it believed that it was all quite recent, but apart from a vegetable patch in the forest, nothing had changed since our first visit five years ago. Indeed, many of the fruit trees which were in 'the wrong place' were clearly rather more than 10 years old. But what would such people who inhabit the department now (and their predecessors) know about trees? Anyway, you can see earlier pictures taken here in the Balik Pulau Horseshoe (2015) and An Inspector Calls (2016).

We parked up where the 'road' to Air Itam gets more than a little steep. Normally we avoid this road as it's surprisingly busy, but at the moment there's no access to the dam without a permit and we anticipated correctly that it would be rather quiet. Surprisingly this was the only landslide we passed before we got to our desired turn off.

Bereft of traffic, it's a very pleasant and not particularly steep climb. This is the first major turning on the right, it's at pole HT NH 4 7. 

The next turning is at pole NH 4 7 8. A path came in from our left, we had investigated this area earlier in the visit and subsequent paths to the left for some way up had also been checked out..

We like this part of the climb, it's steep enough to burn the calories but not excessively so and the durian orchard is quite well maintained.

There's a change where the pole line finishes, the path gets much steeper and my guess is that it was constructed much later when more powerful motorbikes became affordable.

We were quite high up now and durians were giving way to rubber, the tree decoration was most attractive.

The light was getting grimmer by the minute and it was touch and go whether we would get to the (known) shelter before the rain. Despite appearances, this is well cared for accommodation, there may be no electricity but everything is clean and tidy and definitely shoes are left outside the door.

The shower passed quickly and in 10 minutes we were on our way again. Over at Bukit Elvira, there was again some serious rain coming down.

As I have often remarked, the cultivated areas at or below a ridge tend to be rubber rather than durians and this is typical.

At the moment, there's no tapping here so the inter-planted pineapples will be providing welcome income. Ahead the actual ridge is still (just) original forest although some cutting for firewood is evident.

 I don't think it is technically forest reserve, it was perhaps the most relaxing hiking of the day, albeit barely 5 minutes.

This was our first view of the Nanshan wastelands for this trip. Despite the storms, this end at least seemed to be 'business as usual' with rows of beans installed. Round the corner the terraces were being prepared for the next crop using small mechanical ploughs. From the smell, my guess is that they had been mixing in chicken shit as fertiliser.

Ahead lay more 'forest', on the right is the beginning of the Bukit Penara Forest Reserve and it seems that these days the farmers keep out of it at this point.

We were treated to a few moments of sun and then passed a pumping station, there's no doubt that the water being used here has been abstracted from within the reserve.

At this junction, we could have gone down to the house of the 'dog lady'. She's an absolute charmer, we see her at the Hakka temple lunches, but she has quite a few which are wilder than most and barely under control even when she is present. We do avoid going there but in any case wanted to check on the upper path to the right. I guess the plastic is used to stop crop nutrients from getting washed out by the rains.

We climbed up along the path which runs just inside the forest reserve, it's an area which has rubber trees which must have been around before it was gazetted back in 1981 but were subsequently just left. This time, this part of the path was similar to before, a branch off it leads to a water abstraction point in the forest.

Nature is no respecter of official notices... This is a pond no doubt used to store water for the nearby crops below.

This is the side path leading to the illegal clearing well into the reserve, it was almost impenetrable without cutting after about 100 yards, I had nothing to prove, the secateurs stayed in the bag.

Now from this point on, last time the path had been seriously overgrown, that was no longer the case. There have been no new plantings but no doubt some harvesting has been done, there are motorbike tracks so it's not (just) hikers keeping it clear. 

There was a single minor landslide here and Balik Pulau and the plain behind it were covered in clouds. It looked like by going a day earlier we had lucky in Sungai Ara and Pondok Upeh. 

This picture sums up the long term problems associated with the State Forestry Department. There is an official Forest Reserve notice (as indicated) attached to the durian tree on the left which presumably means that those above it and to the right are well within the reserve. Patently, these are not young trees and illustrate 'the don't see and don't care' attitude of those who have been paid to protect the reserve.

The house below (well outside the reserve) was locked up a year ago, now it was back in use, the plants are used in Chinese curries apparently. There were many young durian trees here, ready to be planted out.

Walking on down the path, we came to a junction with another path which had been seen 'under reconstruction' the last time we were here, note the way it has been built up at the side to act as a drain for excess water running off the hills. It was too much a temptation to resist.

Not very far along it, we could see a house below which appeared to be built across a concrete road, I recognised it as being on the way out from the dog lady's house.

Nearby was this small private dam and we joined the concrete road at pole NH 3 24 13. The house was still incomplete and occupied by half a dozen standard cowardly dogs, but best of all there was a newly built viewing platform just beyond which was perfect for our lunch stop.

There were several more new concrete paths off to the side and then we could see the Pinang Palms which meant we were coming down to the 'main road' again.

The clouds were thickening, rain could not be far away. Knowing this we turned right at pole HT NH 3 43 because there were places to shelter along the back route to the car. I made it just as the rain started. 

The trail was rather slippery and Yuehong was a little way behind. Helpfully, while the house was empty, there were two stools to sit on left outside. It was time for that second can, we weren't going anywhere in a hurry. In fact it was 40 minutes before we could safely move on. As we passed the next house below, the dogs obviously hadn't heard us coming. Neither had the resident rotund old gentleman who had just emerged from his house dressed only in his underpants which were nearer his knees than his navel. It was bad enough when I said "Hello" but when he saw Yuehong his face dropped as much as his underwear and he waddled back into his house as quickly as he could. I would like to think that this time the noise that the dogs made was their laughing!

We'd been out for just over 4 hours but an hour of that had been spent watching the rain come down. We had a bog standard journey home with a visit to the Magic Tiger Tree and our restaurant in Sungai Pinang. Now the school holidays are over, the journey over the hill and through Batu Ferringhi is more or less guaranteed to be idiot free.