Welcome to Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.
This tea-growing region is about a 5 hour drive north of Kuala Lumpur; three of which on a very modern super-highway, and the following two on an extremely climbing and winding road like a few others we've traveled. This place, situated at 5,000 feet of elevation is considered the coldest in Malaysia. Of course it's all relative. My Massachusetts friends will giggle, while they are battling 0 degrees (-18 Celsius), but we had to resort to wearing jackets in the evening, which we had not expected.
Workers picking tea
The area is quite beautiful and lush. Lamentably we arrived for the weekend, when hordes of city-dwellers escape the heat of their town and convene at this locality, making it super busy and crowded. Today being Monday, the difference is quite palpable and marked.
Naturally, the first day was spent nearly entirely on the road, while yesterday we dedicated most of the day visiting tea plantations and learning all about the process of tea making, from picking to manufacturing. We even visited a tea factory, where , alas, picture-taking was strictly forbidden.
The Cameron Valley plantation #2 was first on our list. Beautiful views of landscaped hills graced our sight, and the tea was undoubtedly the best I've ever tasted.
We had intended to continue on to the Cameron Valley #1 plantation, which was supposedly nearby, but Google-maps once again played a trick on us, as it had in Argentina when we ended up on a road that was no longer upkept and ended up having to cross rivers and travel on an unpaved rocky surface with boulders the size of car tires. This time it wasn't as bad, but we knew we were in trouble when the road it took us on became barely wide enough for our car to fit. Surely enough, it led us to a small peasant village where the road ended and we had no space to turn around. We asked a kid, who spoke no English, if he could get someone to move a motorcycle that was in our way, so that we could attempt the turn-around. He came back ten minutes later with an older kid in tow who took care of the problem.
This was the end-of-the-line
We decided to skip the #1 plantation and headed instead to Boh, another growing area in the mountains, but considerably further. The horde of local tourists flooded the narrow, winding road, and the driving was treacherous. At one point, the road was just too narrow for us and another vehicle to get through, and we ended up damaging the bottom side of our vehicle against the cliff to our left. Oh well, it isn't the first time. We continued on and enjoyed the rest of our Sunday at Boh.
Among the tea leaves
I will now continue with today's post, rather than doing a separate one, and I will call this...
The long road to the National Park we never saw.
We woke up to a beautiful sunrise.
From our window, this morning
Our Monday itinerary was intended to take us to Taman Negara N.P, Malaysia's premier destination. With some luck you could spot wild elephants, tapirs, and other type of wildlife including several types of monkeys, that inhabit the jungle, along with the few remaining Malaysian tigers.
You wouldn't want to hit one of these, but we would have loved to see one.
The trip was to take us about two hours, but when we entered our destination on Google-maps, it showed 4 and a half hours. We decided to go on, as we had read that that the road can get pretty congested, so we had figured that the change in travel time was due to to heavy traffic, but one hour later, the road was as clear as one in the desert. That's when I figured out that our wonderful GPS was actually taking us to the South entrance of the enormous park, which is more than twice as distant. At this point, realizing that it would actually take us as long as the GPS was stating to get to the park, we decided it would have been too exhausting to do the whole thing, round trip, in one day, so instead, we kept on going, but only as far as halfway, to the town of Kuala Lipis, where we would lunch. And that's just what we did.
Mural at the train station in Kuala Lipis
There was nothing worth mentioning about Kuala Lipis from what we saw, but the Indian meal we had was excellent.
So, we began our journey back, foregoing Taman Negara, and taking in the beautiful lush landscape that surrounded us.
Once back at Cameron Highlands, we did finally make it to Cameron Valley plantation #1, before a huge downpour turned the hills into a surreal panorama.
In Cameron Highlands you'll see many greenhouses, mostly cultivating strawberries.
After the storm
Well, here are our two-days worth of blog. Tomorrow we'll be moving from this place, heading northwest toward the border with Thailand. Until then, keep warm, friends.
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