Penang Hills and Trails
Another Malihom Loop

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 with a very short 'off piste' section. 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.

We've just a few days left for hiking in Penang and we're still coming to terms with the need to put less stress on Yuehong's bad knee. At the moment, a lot of the island is off limits to her which makes it difficult for me to design walks. Today we were back on the Pondok Upeh Cycleway and it was a late start as we had to do some shopping for bits and pieces. The starting point was pole JTS 133 41, a spot we had used a couple of times before but not for over a month. The start was a bit of a pain as it's very steep although the surface is good. We took the left fork at the first junction. 

Part is shady, but part is quite exposed, not too good on what was another very hot day.

With clear conditions we had a good view back to the main range with Bukit Elvira prominent.

The rubber trees are only just beginning to grow new leaves after the end of the dry spell. Afterwards, it was left and almost immediately right and round the gate on a very familiar stiff but quite short climb to the ridge.

At the top this is the current view south to Bukit Gambir above the Sungai Ara valley, the cleared area is green but they are taking an awful long time with the replanting. I wish people like these would clear only the amount of land they can replant within, say, a year.  

A lot of rubber trees came down here last year and there's no sign of their being replaced yet. The mosquitoes seem to have moved en masse to what is left, we always rush through as quickly as we can.

On the other side, the concrete path is a bit of a roller coaster, but very soon we were at the Malihom Pass. I was amazed to see it had taken us barely an hour.

I was denied a refreshment stop as were still covered in mosquitoes so we headed on for the Malihom access road.

Past the corkscrew we went and down through the tea bushes which seemed to unsettle our insect friends as they finally vanished and we could take a break.

We wanted the turning on the right and I had forgotten just how far down the zig-zags we had to go. To our considerable relief, the gates were open, a car went out but they didn't stop to close them.

So, not surprisingly, we found someone at the house and we checked we were welcome to hike through as indeed we were. The Hokkien family had owned the orchard for some 10 years, I wouldn't call it aggressively commercial but the 30 acres (!!!) is slowly being developed. I think I would call them gentleman farmers but it is clearly loved and well kept. We saw no sign of chemicals being used and interestingly with the top of the hill above having a generous cover of near jungle, there was no sign the trees needed supplementary water. Before we left, we were given a short tour including the views which ran from Pulau Betong to Pantai Acheh.

We headed down for the northern border, I doubt our host is aware of the exit route which is just next to the bottom durian tree and behind Yuehong. It's hardly an obvious feature and we would never have known about it had we not been brought here in the opposite direction.

For a couple of minutes the grass is a bit long but more or less maintaining our height we came to the next orchard which is receiving a much needed makeover.

We paused for our second refreshment stop under the trees next to the house. Yuehong was so relaxed she not only nearly left her glasses behind but was expecting to leave in completely the wrong direction. Actually, all we had to do was follow the electricity poles down.

We'd now done all the hard work for the day and we dropped gently and curved around the hillside until we came out on the concrete road.

This is the south part of the Pondok Upeh Cycleway and we only had to follow it back to the car.

This was a similar lower level view towards Bukit Elvira compared to the earlier one.

Maybe because it's flat, it seemed no time at all before we returned to the first junction and round the corner was Mavis. Yuehong was chuffed to bits, she'd done 5km in what for us was a pretty good net time of just two hours, I suspect the 'chat break' had helped rest her knee.

We had an early dinner in Sungai Pinang and Yuehong chilled out in the pool. It was another very pleasant walk, albeit shorter than what had been normal but fine for us considering it was the fifth day in a row we had been out.