We set off for a five-day and four-night trekking trip to Taman Negara. This is located along the borders of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang in Peninsular Malaysia. Here, we would like to share our adventure with you.
The 14 of us boarded the train at about 8.20 p.m and spent our first night together in the seventh freezing compartment. We arrived at the Jerantut train station at about 2 a.m. and met up with the Malaysian co-coordinator. We were then taken to the Taman HQ base camp, which was about 70 km away from the train station.
After having breakfast in the floating restaurant at about 7 a.m., we took two speedboats to Kuala Kenyam where we started the 16 km trek with plenty of up and down slopes. We had two local guides attached to us for the trek.
Leeches were found almost everywhere in the jungle. They crawled quietly up to our shoes and penetrated through our socks to suck our blood. We came well prepared with bottles of vinegar to get rid of these bloodsuckers. During the trip we also encountered hornet attack and one of the members was sent to the local hospital for treatment.
Along the way, we visited three caves – the wide cave, the bat cave and the elephant cave. We spent our second night together in the elephant cave. Though we did not see any elephant, we did see fresh elephants’ footprints on the ground not far from our sleeping area. According to the guides, elephants only come to stay in the cave during November to March.
We visited the Orang Asli tribe, the first aboriginal tribe to inhabit the Malay Peninsula. These people are generally short, dark-skinned, with flat-facial features and tight woolly hair. They live a nomadic life in the jungle. As the Orang Asli tribe people are great guides for the jungle, we took the opportunity to learn how to hunt animals with a blow pipe and to start a fire using stones, wood and cloth.
We completed the trek the next day at about 4 p.m. The same speedboats took us back to the base camp where we could clean up, rest and eat. We had our third night in the air-conditioned Tahan Guest House.
The next morning, we were brought to experience the Canopy Walk. The Canopy Walkway is about 450 metres long and 20 metres above the ground and is built on top of the vegetation in the forest. This walkway is connected from one tree to another by the use of ropes. No nails, bolts or nuts were used.
We left the guesthouse at about midnight and headed for the train station. The train left at 2 a.m. for Singapore. We spent another night sleeping in the cold freezing compartment of the train
We reached Woodland checkpoint finally at about 10 a.m. the next morning.