Our route from Jerantut to Kuala Lipis today was “only” around 60km, so we granted ourselves 30’ longer before the alarm went off. 6.30am is still early though... Once we left the hotel, we noticed it was a grey morning, and it had cooled down a bit. Hmmm, maybe a less hot ride today? We started our day with a relax Chinese breakfast next door to the hotel, noodle soup and a local coffee. This is very dark coffee (called “kopi”, a nice article about it
here), usually with a bit of condensed milk, and it’s pretty good.
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| Breakfast with noodle soup and kopi in the cool early morning |
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| Natural beauty, a muddy river through the jungle |
So we left just before 8am, and the weather was much better than the previous days. And luckily it was, because we had some serious climbs on our way; not too long, but boy they were steep!!! Probably some of the steepest climbs we’ve ever done! Even with the temperature a bit down, we still looked like we had taken a shower... So after almost 2 hours with some heavy work, we stopped at the Tembeling jetty - where you can take a speedboat to Kuala Tahan, Taman Negara (which we did not do) - to have a cold juice. Wow, we really needed that. After that the ride was much gentler, until 20km before Kuala Lipis when we had some more hills to conquer. While these were a bit higher, they were not as steep as their morning brothers (sisters?) and so we finished the day without any problems but more tired than we would have expected.
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| After one of the very steep climbs, the reward: down we go! |
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| Representative for the day: at the top of a steep hill, green everywhere, and we can see the next heavy climb already in the distance |
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| This is a swiftlet farm, found in many places throughout Malaysia. Swiftlets are attracted to these places with speakers making sounds to attract them, they build their nests inside which are then harvested to be sold as bird’s nest - a Chinese delicacy |
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| More impressions of the nature road |
This was perhaps one of our most beautiful and rewarding days of cycling, through the heart of the Malaysian peninsula. The nature in this area is so real, alive, lush, especially traveling through it on a bicycle you can see, smell, hear (wow those sounds!), and FEEL this nature. You feel the energy, the raw power, everything is green, lush, growing, full of life. Even though we went through very little pure jungle, even plantations and kampungs felt more natural than elsewhere. From the first minute till the last, this ride was impressive and positively overwhelming. It was not an easy ride and I would not recommend it for first time cyclists, other than that: get on your bicycle and try it...
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| Kuala Lipis, a small town with some interesting old Chinese buildings |
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| Visit Malaysia tourism year 1990... you’ll be fascinated! |
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| Kuala Lipis |
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| More Kuala Lipis |
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| The Chinese temple - the no 1 attraction according to TripAdvisor - was unfortunately closed |
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| A Malaysian specialty, cendol: shaved ice with some green jelly (which you don’t see on this picture), coconut milk and palm sugar. Delicious and cold! |
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| A plastic fix... |