Penang Hills and Trails - The Balik Pulau Explorer 3
Searching for New Routes above the Town

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.

We have spent several days testing the paths on the east side above the Balik Pulau to Air Itam road, this is the latest, the others can be accessed by the index to this area.

There are side 4 ridges running out from the main ridge between Anjung Indah and Bukit Penara, in future I shall refer to them by their numbers. Strictly there are 3 and the first one splits into two. Hence the Nibbinda Ridge is Ridge 1 and so on. Today's walk was towards between Ridge 4.

As I have said before we like this area because it is still almost completely durian and rubber and apart from rotational clearances it is 'green'. The house at the turn off (HT NH 4 88) on the Balik Pulau to Air Itam Road is in my book the classiest one in the valley. We started the climb here and you can find the details in our Balik Pulau Explorer 2 report. There is a link in it when you need to return to this page. Basically you climb up the valley's concrete path until you reach a path trailing in from the right. Go up this path until you reach the concrete road and turn right. Where another path trails in from the left take it, at the point shown in the first picture. Go up the top of the path and when it finishes, go just to the left of the hut ahead and the path will come down to the 5 way junction. (In fact there are two other ways to get from the end of the concrete road to this junction so pick the one you like, we prefer this as it has a good view towards Bukit Elvira on the other side of the valley.

Take the concrete path to the left with the electricity poles downwards. After passing a house you will come to pole NH 4 7 30, turn right here past another house. You are now on the 'Forest Ang Trail'. This is a shady concrete path which leads up the valley between Ridges 3 and 4. After a while you will come to a hut and a four way junction. Ahead leads via 'The Rocks' to Nanshan, right leads up to Ridge 3 and to the left we hoped to find a way up to Ridge 4.

The path was distinct if not very well used, looping back to the left and then entering a zig-zag, by which time its condition was only 'fair'. You can see Ridge 3 in the background of the second picture.

There was never any question of turning back, but less experienced walkers might have got worried. When the path reached a plastic water tank, ahead lay a slightly overgrown route and immediately above it was an area of young rubber. It was just a short scramble up to it, and from this point the rubber stretched upwards.

It was no problem to ascend the levels, I checked that there was no exit left and to the right we could see the residual jungle between us and Nanshan. Now clearly there had to be some sensible access to such well maintained rubber and it could only be from above. Yuehong was quite happy, it was much easier than the rubber on the climb to the 'Temple with the View' on the opposite side.

Indeed, that was the case, when we came to the top of the rubber we could see a pineapple plantation to our left with a path out and above it, yet more rubber which we had spotted from the other side on another walk. It was time for an overdue Tiger and afterwards we went on into what, for us, was totally uncharted territory.

Almost as soon as got round the next corner we hit a concrete trail coming up from our left and continuing up to the right. This was pure gold, no less, it guaranteed we would not have to scramble back down through the rubber which would have been far less pleasant than the ascent. Keeping to the main trail and ignoring minor junctions we came to the hut below.

We were spoiled for choice. I went several hundred metres down the shady path to the left, it clearly goes through but exactly where to would have to wait for another day (it turns out to be the house with the Chinese lady who keeps many dogs) on one of the other routes down from Nanshan. To the right the main path kept climbing, the small trail to the left seems to lead only to water tanks..

I confess I was getting a little excited as we climbed towards the ridge. Even though the concrete ended a distinct track continued along one terrace and mirabile dictu it continued through secondary jungle until it reached the ridge.

Looking back there was a ridge trail to the left which will bear exploring another time. By now we could hear the Nanshan pumps hard at work and very soon we had our first view of the familiar French beans.

I knew exactly where we would come out because I had looked at this path on a previous walk with Nathan and Tom while about to 'discover' the Forest Ang Trail. I was delighted with what we had found but as always distinctly underwhelmed by the Nanshan wastelands. Someone appeared out of the bushes and asked where we wanted to go. When we answered 'Balik Pulau' he indicated we should continue which of course was perfectly possible and indeed normal, but we needed to go back to find out where our new path had come up from.

So back we went, I feared it would be a little too steep for my knees and parts of it did make for slow progress. Yuehong was beaming, I got a thumbs up at the bamboo and a cheerful smile at the point where we had first joined the path.

To be honest, there was nothing wrong with path, it was just my knees and Yuehong left me far behind.

At one point there was a small hut to the left, with an electricity supply (NH 4 7 10 9 on the pole), the wire then followed us down albeit mainly on a more direct route as we zig-zagged. There was just one significant junction coming down and it was clearly a minor trail from the concrete, we had come down from the right and would continue behind the camera.

We emerged on the road with the electricity poles we had come along much earlier (NH 4 7 8), so we turned left, noting that there was another small path up to the left at pole (NH 4 7 17) and soon we were back at pole NH 4 7 30. We were a little short of time, so we didn't retrace our steps but instead cut down to the main valley road, making it to Balik Pulau by 17.00 with just enough time for a Char Koay Teow and a Tiger, Yuehong preferring the healthier Cendol and Ais Kacang. This is a great discovery, it opens up a number of possibilities from Nanshan and we'll be back soon to check them out.

As a PS, the Belimbing in Teluk Bahang was heaving in the morning, a group of 45 cyclist had come over for the weekend from Karimun in Riau Province, Indonesia for a cycle ride with their Malaysian counterparts. They even had a police escort of three motorcycles. Somehow we still managed to get a breakfast and as we left on the 501 we were held up as they started on the last leg of their round-the-island journey.