A trip to the jungle

I was looking forward to this Taman Negara trip to get a break and avoid the boredom of spending an extended holiday at home. The journey was a long and arduous – 8 hours by overnight train to Kuala Lumpur, then a 3 hour bus to a small town of Jerantut, then a 30 minute mini-bus to the Temberlin jetty on the river, and finally a 3 hour boat ride to get our destination of Kuala Tahan in Taman Negara National Park.

The forests are lush and dense, but still attract a good number of tourists during the holidays. There are plenty of trails for trekking of varying difficulties in the forest. The toughest of them being the 55km 9-day trek to Gunung Tahan (2187m), the highest mountain in peninsular Malaysia. We trekked up a relatively small hill of Bukit Terasek which gives splendid view of surroundings from the top. The long canopy walk on rickety rope bridges was another exciting experience. We joined a group of tourists on a fishing expedition, learnt how to tie the bait and throw the fishing line. After a few hours of no catch, we decided to give up and blame it on the bad location. We also made another short journey upstream to get a glimpse of the cascades. To have a look at some pictures, click here.

A moment of disappointment was a night safari, in which they took us for a ride around a nearby palm plantation. The only animals we got a glimpse of were civet cats, wild pigs, monitor lizards and kingfishers. From what I’ve heard, there are supposed to be elephants, monkeys, leopards and tigers in this forest, but are probably deep inside where there are no people. In my opinion, all the human encroachment and activity in the National Park over the past decades has resulted in little opportunity for survival of these animals.