Penang Hills and Trails - The Temple with a View Approach 2022
The New Road

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 concerned.

Several reports on this website include a path which runs up from the Balik Pulau valley towards the 'Temple with the View'. The picture on the left below shows how it started and that on the right the first fork left.

Unfortunately, at some stage between March 2020 and December 2022, the owner of the property decided to close it off. There are alternative paths in the area, you can find them described on this website but they are nothing like as convenient. The path affected is shown in brown in the yellow box on the map at the end of this page. This is where the second picture above was taken as it looks in December 2022. Crawling under the locked gate is not an option, the associated house has a clear view of the path. For those who find their way down today, this is what they would find looking in part way. 

The path used to continue through where the fence is in the picture on the left below. We know the area well enough to skirt the old path but it's a bit messy. There are instructions on this site if you look hard enough... When we rejoined the old path and started up we found that what had once been a concrete path junction looked like this. At the time of writing, construction is not quite complete but very soon the road reaches a junction which in effect replaces the T junction on the concrete path where both left and right would ultimately lead up to the temple, it's still easy to work out.

This concrete road mitigates the effect of this closure. To get to this point, continue up the valley road beyond the old turn off until it turns sharp right. Take the minor left fork past the shrine and less modest Buddhist scams and follow it up until you reach the junction below (these two pictures are from February 2016). Again, take the left fork.

The road climbs and curves to the left and this was as far as it got in 2016. It now climbs up to join with the hill paths. This will be hot come January; it's always a shame when a road replaces a path as it is invariably less shady...

 I have shown the route on the map with my traditional blue squares, it's actually very easy to find and follow. Th

Obviously, the same considerations apply in reverse, when coming down you can follow the new road down to the valley floor.