I decided that I wanted to take a hike. Really. Maps of the Cameron Highlands show lots of hiking trails, allowing a hiker to get to most of the peaks in the area. Someone had shown me one of the hikes on a map. It would take me up to the nearest peak and then down the other side to the picturesque tea plantation I had seen on the way into town. Great! I decided to do that one. Now as I am travelling alone, I finally did what I was supposed to do and let someone know where I planned to be, in case a bear ate me, or some poisonous snake left me dying on a trail somewhere. They would at least be able to locate what was left of my body and my family could get closure. But when I told the inn proprietor I planned to take track 13, he said I couldn't. Nobody goes that way anymore and it was pretty much closed. I should take track 9A instead. He showed me where on the map and off I went. I got to where track 9A was supposed to start. I saw a sign announcing the beginning of track 9. Hmmm... Well it was close. And I couldn't see any sign pointing the way to track 9A, so I figured maybe it was along track 9 somewhere. I started off on track 9. I passed a dam with an open and I wondered if maybe, just maybe, that was the way to track 9A. But it had a sign saying not enter. In the end, I continued along track 9. I passed a waterfall, I think called Robinson Waterfall. It cascaded down into the valley along the river I was following. And this started to give me pause. On the map I had seen, track 9A was supposed to lead to the peak of the nearby mountain. Following a river down a valley was not going to lead me up to any peak. I could have turned back, but I wasn't sure how I would find the right track without returning to the inn, and that was going to take much too long. I figured the track I was following would lead somewhere and I thought it would be a nice way.
It certainly started out as a rather easy track. It was all manicured and lined with paved blocks.
Before long it became a dirt trail and it felt much more like a hiking trail.
The sun was coming down in streamers of light at times. It was quite beautiful. And then I started passing spots where trees had been washed over the track. And the track became very narrow. And there were parts of the track that had been washed away in landslides. I couldn't take any photos in those stretches because I was concentrating so hard on staying on the track instead of sliding down the side of the mountain. Suffice it to say that the second half of the trail was more like an orienteering exercise. And since I was on a different track than I had advertised, nobody would have found me if I had come to grief. Me and my map-reading skills. Tch, tch, tch.
But in the end, I got to the bottom and started working my way to where I had hoped to come out. Unfortunately, because I had followed the wrong track, and followed a river down the valley, instead of going over the mountain, I was on the other side of the mountain. So to get to where I wanted to be, I had to walk around the mountain. Luckily, by this time I was on paved roads and it was easy going. And, since I was in an area that people don't really go to anymore, I was walking through rural areas with farms on the sides of mountains. It was interesting.
And I did, in the end, get to the Bharat Tea Plantation.
And it was far more picturesque than the Boh Tea Plantation, as I had suspected.
Then I began the long hike back to town, made longer by the extra detour I had given myself. When I got back to the inn, I asked the man I had talked to in the morning where track 9A was. He said it was really easy, and he couldn't figure out how I had missed it. I'll tell you how. I am map-challenged and need very explicit directions on how to get somewhere. Simply saying, “It's easy to find, just go here and you can't miss it,” isn't usually enough for me. But, it did all work out in the end and it was a good day.
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