Penang Hills and Trails - Bukit Gambir Explorer 6
Unfinished Business

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a medium length Grade 3 walk with a significant less straightforward 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.

By 2023 access between the two orchards on Bukit Papan was blocked, it's a shame as it has been a very useful transit in the past.

In the early days of colonial South-East Asia it was fashionable to grow Uncara Gambir/Gambir in plantations (look it up!) and not surprisingly there are two Bukit Gambirs in Penang. The better known is between Paya Terubong and Gelugor and I wouldn't be seen dead there, it's been the subject of continuing egregious 'scalping' and development. The lesser known is further south above the Sungai Ara valley and because it's a minor peak and there are no paths to the summit, I hadn't scaled it until recently, On that occasion, to keep the length of the walk 'sensible' we had left the ridge shortly after we reached the summit and today we would go back and finish the job. As our experience showed, that decision was a wise one because as we have discovered many times before, following a ridge downwards is much more difficult than going up it.

Some of the accommodation in Lengkuk Kelicap (between Sungai Ara and Bayan Lepas) is well on its way to becoming a slum and it must be difficult to sell apartments in the new Orchard Ville condo. The parking space at its base has been wired off so we now have to park a little way up the hill - the road is now in poor condition. The first fifteen minutes are not an advertisement for hiking in this part of the island, but the climb is not steep and after the small Da Ba Gong shrine it gets better. 

We followed the road up, noting another new '541' sign, whereas the pathetic old 'trespassers' sign was in such a sad state as to be barely legible. The coconut farm's owner comes up here daily and his pick up is steadily smashing the road to pieces.

There were two more '541' signs but even though it was a Sunday, we saw no hikers or bikers at all. Conditions were perfect, it was slightly overcast but pleasantly cool.

It was time to work up a sweat, we turned right on this small track, passed through the open gate and headed upwards.

It's a stiff climb but not a long one and the road conditions decline steadily.

We got to the bowl at the top in barely ten minutes and this time decided to check out the western side.

We got a nice view of the Bukit Gambir ridge, but the wide track on this side was completely overgrown. I'm sure we could have pushed our way through but there didn't seem any point.

So we went back to the tank and started on the way we came down. Now that was definitely the 'long way round', so as Yuehong had energy to burn she insisted we mount a full frontal attack.

There is always a route through an orchard like this but 'off season' it's covered. It's a matter of choice whether to try to follow it as I did or just go straight up as Yuehong did.

It didn't seem to matter time wise as we met at the top durian. Above is best described as 'unmaintained'.

It's not as bad as it looks, it's only a few metres and after a couple of snips, we very quickly got to the wide track. With the odd break and the small diversion, it had taken an hour and a half - if we had rushed it wouldn't have been much more than an hour.

The ridge was not very far away, but it would be a bit of a scramble. Fortunately, a minor landslide had left a route up the three metre 'cliff' which Yuehong quickly scaled.

These are all old rubber terraces, there were a few vines to snip but plenty of young feral rubber trees to pull ourselves up with and as always there are wild boar wallows on some of them. 

We turned left near the top, at this point were were on our previous route.

We got to the point where we had gone down to the orchard the previous time and carried on, expecting (hoping?) that we would follow old rubber all the way along and down to the end of the ridge.

As often happens theory and practice diverged, there was no single clear route and we had to wind our way past fallen trees and prickly ferns which had occupied earlier gaps so created. Although Yuehong doesn't greatly enjoy this kind of thing, it was no problem till we started to drop and this is a classic rounded 'nose' where the gradient is similar for a full 180 degrees in front. Too far right and we would be into the area above the Sungai Ara valley, known to be overgrown a fair way down. Too far left would bring us to the top of the durian orchard owned by the xenophobic old Chinese man ("All Burmese are no more than robbers.") which was a preferable option and indeed when I felt we had gone at least as far down as we needed to, I could just about see durians trees ahead. So we turned right and climbed back up a little bit and found our way across a few fallen trees until we came to the open area at the end of the descent which had been my target. A year ago, there was a recognisable, open and quite flat trail along the ridge from here, but Yuehong wouldn't have applied that description today.

Again we had to extemporise, but keeping to the clearer areas pushed us over to the Sungai Ara side, there was a real risk that we might unintentionally skirt our exit point.

This was where our previous experience really paid off.  We returned to the ridge and soon found the known route, when it took us down a couple of levels in quick succession, I knew we were exactly where we needed to be and as we came down the slope through the small gingers, I turned to Yuehong and said "Just a couple of minutes, now."

I got one of her famous 'looks', smirked confidently and then turned to look ahead. That turned out to be at least three large rubber trees stretched out and covered in vines and ferns, most of which were of the prickly varieties. With downward slopes on both sides, going round wasn't really an option. It wasn't so much a case of "Oh dear" as "Oh shit!" and out came the secateurs... 

It got worse, half way through, Yuehong got attacked by her nemeses, the large red-brown biting ants. A year ago  she would have jumped around and got agitated which would just have enraged them. Today, she acted the stoic, picking them off one by one but they still left their marks. Inevitably we emerged off the trail and as we were just ahead of the cleared area, it was overgrown and some normal snipping was required as well.

This durian orchard-to be-has reached the 'established' stage where the best option is to walk away for a couple of years because the durians are now just a bit taller than the shrube but some years off bearing fruit. We could see the refreshment spot but by the time we reached it we had taken over 20 minutes to cover what can have been barely 200 metres. I have to say that Yuehong took it very well but I decided it would be prudent to apply the Tiger Balm to her before enjoying my cold Tiger. 

As a newly converted exercise junky, Yuehong follows our progress closely on her toy and today's statistics showed that the total of kilometres covered was barely ahead of hours spent hiking. A year ago suggesting unnecessarily extending a hike like this would have gone down like a lead balloon. Today, it was a master stroke, especially as crossing to Bukit Papan would allow us a much more gentle descent, but, of course, she seized on the probability that I would take the opportunity to have a second Tiger at the viewpoint. I let that one pass and we headed off down through the unloved rubber and joined the road to the coconut farm.

These are the high yielding dwarf variety. We had seen no sign of our Burmese friends so far today, but their yapping dogs told us they were working up here, these coconuts are very easy to harvest,

The next durian estate defies conventional wisdom, despite being perched on a hill top and, unusually, being run by a Malay family, it is making good progress. Since last year, the dividing 'hedge' has vanished and crossing the ditch Yuehong wisely let her arms do the work instead of her sticks.

By 2023 access between the two orchards on Bukit Papan was blocked, it's a shame as it has been a very useful transit in the past.

This route has one of the best views of Pulau Jerejak I know. The state government seems intent on turning much of it into some kind of theme park, building on the disastrous record of the failed resort project. No doubt they will justify it by claiming that their hands are tied by the contract signed by their predecessors. Yuehong had recovered now and was eagerly awaiting the next section as I took the chance for a bit of relaxation.

Before we started down, we passed this interesting tree, I've no idea what it is, we've seen others on the margins of fruit orchards.

I'm sure the numbers on her 'app' were rising nicely, note how the sticks are tucked away so as not to slow her down.

Sadly the path to the right is more overgrown than ever, we proved it could be traversed last year but I doubt we'll be trying that again this time around. The adjacent cleared area is in desperately need of some TLC, the residual nutrients will have washed out and getting the assumed new fruit orchard established can only get harder and harder.

The path is indeed pleasant and the rain had held off completely, for almost the first time this visit we found rubber trees being tapped.

It was time to return to civilisation. 8.6 km and 378 metres climbed were satisfactory statistics but 5 hours elapsed was maybe less so.

While we have yet to test the descent at the east end of this ridge, our experience suggests that anyone mad enough to want to traverse all of Bukit Gambir in one hike would be best advised to start from the west end. With the wide new track as a finishing target, it would be more difficult to get 'lost'. I don't think we would want to try it, but what we will try is going up through the durian orchard on the north (Sungai Ara valley) side as it is maybe only some 200 metres from the ridge just west of the summit although I am sure the orchard will be rather overgrown at the moment.