Penang Hills and Trails - The Temple with a View 2015
Above Balik Pulau, Part 1, The Recce

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 elements of Grade 3. 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.

See also our previous visit in December 2012 and Part 2 which suggests a (more) civilised version of this walk.

With effect from 2022, if you follow this route down from the Temple with the View, then near the bottom you will find you are on a new concrete road. While the path ahead down to the right is still present in part, it is not easy to find a route out. Instead you will need to follow the road down. A description of this alternative route is given on another page - the link will open in a new tab.

I had often looked across to 'Bao Tian Gong' on the ridge above the valleys between the Air Itam to Balik Pulau Road and that leading to Bukit Elvira and thought that there must be access from the west side as well as the east side. Today was my first attempt to check it out. It's on the minor peak behind Yuehong, who's standing on the Balik Pulau to Air Itam Expressway in the middle of the rush hour.

First we had to turn left up past the cemeteries and I didn't anticipate initial problems as I had long identified a suitable new concrete road on the right.

Now clearly this wasn't going very far up the hill even if made for pleasant walking.

So at the first opportunity, we branched right up an older road which turned into a path above the house (out of sight on the left), that's rubber on the right. There's a lot of it about on this hill.

After a while we wandered off left into the bananas where there appeared to be a path but it soon brought us back to the rubber.

Again we were tempted into the bananas and this time it was clear that we were at the limit of the new road. So that just left us the rubber and as the ridge path was looking less and less 'user friendly', we opted for following the terraces to the right. That was just as well as soon we could see a concrete path winding up below us, origin unknown (which will need checking).  

Now that seemed like the answer to our dreams and so it was for all of five minutes until it abruptly came to a finish. We looked ahead but could find only an out-of-season durian estate with no paths. We now know if we had gone just a few metres further we would have found a path. See the Balik Pulau Explorer 6 report.) It was lunch time but Yuehong knew what was coming next, a set of decaying steps dating back to before the days of the concrete paths.

Up we went and just when the path looked like vanishing into a newly half cleared area I found a terrace to the left which miraculously brought us into another rubber plantation. Madam really should have known better, but at least on the left we could see the top end of another concrete path which must have originated from beyond where we had started climbing - that was one to save for another day. But the smile stayed in place even when I suggested transferring to some rubber which had seen better days. After a while we were back in the durians but on the left, there was yet more young virgin rubber. Now, to be honest, it looks easy terrain but being covered with leaves in the dry season it is anything but. Finally, I scouted ahead and found a glimpse of the promised land.

It would be fair to say that my credit and Yuehong's enthusiasm were exhausted. However, it was clear ahead, in fact totally cleared ahead in an egregious example of 'slash and burn' which could only have been achieved by impoverished Burmese guest workers paid by a greedy Malaysian who has more money than sense. The upper terraces are already exhausted, the middle terraces are full of dahlias whose flowering heads will no doubt be sold to some gullible visitors to Hindu shrines and the newly cleared area will follow in turn. In a couple of years it will be a wasteland. Organised religion? You can put it where the monkeys put their nuts; if your religion matters to you, please practise it in a way that doesn't hurt Penang's fragile environment. Mercifully we were soon out of this nonsense and approached someone's new villa in the hills.

There are concrete paths down here to the left but we are assured (and tested one) that they go to nearby houses. Soon we were up at the temple but time was rushing by and there was no time to visit. Yuehong remembered the dogs on the direct route down and the notice was enough to put her off repeating the experience. Being neither a mountain biker nor a jogger, and rather tired I didn't worry too much.

So we went our separate ways for a change, Yuehong going down by the knee friendly but longer Air Itam to Balik Pulau road. It's a measure of her newly acquired fitness that I was not even half way through my Char Kuey Teow and Tiger when she pitched up at the Green Garden. Like all recces by its nature it had been very tiring, but clearly this was an area ripe for a proper hike and we returned next day.