Penang Hills and Trails - Balik Pulau Explorer 5
The Continuing Search 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.

For a follow up see our Balik Pulau Explorer 6 report.

With effect from 2022, the initial climb described here has been blocked by the landowner. While there are other less convenient alternatives, for most people the best route now will be to continue further up the valley and take the new concrete road which rejoins the traditional trail part way up. A description of this is given on another page - the link will open in a new tab.. 

Right at the end of our early 2015 visit to Penang, we had visited the top of the valley leading towards Air Itam from Balik Pulau and found a route down we hadn't used before. Now we wanted to explore that area more thoroughly. I haven't bothered to describe the initial walk out because we have done it so many times before. Some of the houses along the way do a good line in flowering plants:

After a while the main 'road' takes a sharp right hand bend and starts climbing, but we kept left (electricity pole HT NH 4 43). Just follow the main route ignoring two side turnings to the left which go to houses.

Go past the 'goal' which we had emerged under last time and carry on past this large house.

There are two ways out beyond the next house.  The old man was most insistent that we needed that on the right with the electricity poles. I very much doubted this but we went up anyway and found it came out on the 'main road' back at pole HT NH 3 43. It makes for a much more pleasant walk than the better known route.

That road finished at a large house and while I checked out the rear of it, I parked Yuehong under a nice shady tree. When I got back, she was understandably looking a little agitated. It seems there was a not inconsiderable snake asleep in it at roughly eye level. I got the camera out, snapped it and we quietly moved on. It's almost certainly a 1 metre long adult female Wagler's Pit Viper often called the Temple Viper as it's a well known tourist attraction at Penang's Snake Temple. It's quite common and generally arboreal as here. Allegedly it's venomous but not dangerous except to mice but I didn't want to put that to the test. 

To the left of the house was the Bridge to Heaven and a concrete path rising into the fruit orchard, an irresistible combination. Near the top we stopped for water and to enjoy the view and, of course, 30 seconds later the path finished with a wall of secondary jungle ahead.

I walked on from where Yuehong is standing to the small water tank to see what the possibilities were either for following the contours or going further up. Immediately, I spotted signs of a rarely used track into the scrub and up I went, calling Yuehong up as I could see a small hut. Of course, I didn't tell her that!

We'd actually been here before, at the time it was occupied by a group of guest workers who had told us that there was no way through, no doubt they had never looked. So at least we now knew exactly where we were in relation to the upper paths.

Previously, it had been an unwanted trudge back up, but today it was just a short stroll counting down the electricity poles up to the shelter at the top of the Balik Pulau to Air Itam Road. Time for a Tiger and a rethink. Despite our best intentions we had frittered away a lot of time enjoying coming up and there was no time to explore the area above the 'Temple with a View' (three hikes at least described there).

So we decided to repeat at least in part our descent from the house with the 'Balik Pulau Sacred Heart Lady'.  At the HT NH 2 9 pole we turned left, knowing we had a pleasant 1 km or so before we needed to engage the brain again. When we came to the point where we had descended last time we were here, we could see the concrete path clear below but the connection was rather overgrown and something told me to check out ahead. Big changes! That was a brand new road to the left and it zig-zagged all the way down... .

It was hardly a thing of beauty and it won't win any environmental prizes but it did the job splendidly and the views from it were outstanding.

At the (current) bottom the monster was resting, there are several houses around here and I guess with the way out below blocked at the bottom by owners who don't want a road through their land this was the only way they could get 4 wheel access. Certainly at the moment it doesn't look like it will go much further.

They had faced the same difficulty with their electricity supply. The first pole read NH 2 75 2 24 4. Now the NH 2 route is that leading to the 'Temple with the View', this line had branched off at pole 75, at the 2nd pole of that a branch had gone off again and at that branch's 24th pole was the final branch to here. A long way round indeed but there is at least one house further down still that is also served by this basic route. Now we could have swung around to the right when we got to pole NH 2 75 2 24 but we've done that route several times and the path to the left (to the right in the picture) offered an alternative.

Actually it didn't go very far but the owner of the house must have understood Yuehong better than most as he confirmed we could carry on down. In this case it was literally so as we had to got straight on into the long grass at the T junction before plunging down a bank to another path

It was a real 'tough man' route, someone had erected a plastic sheet which had collapsed on the path but very soon it emerged on the main trail to/from the 'Temple with the View' and it had proved to be a very handy short cut.

We rejoined the poles and where they finished continued the zig-zags down to the point where they end. It would have been easy just to carry on, but decision making today had been perfect and the sight of a contour path right was again irresistible.

Below us we could soon see a concrete road and that in turn brought us past 'The Valley'. Here they had completed a set of chalets which had barely been started on our last visit at the beginning of the year. I have to say that they have done a brilliant job as Yuehing said, they not only do they look good, they look as if they have been there for years.

It had been a great walk with some new discoveries enjoyed at a comfortable pace. We were in Balik Pulau just after 16.30 in good time to relax, have an early dinner, organise two day's supply of fruit and make our way home. Walking up, the day's second snake crossed the road in front of us in the twilight. This was dark grey and also about 1m long, possibly a small cobra showing that we are not much more at risk on our hikes into the unknown than on more familiar territory.