Penang Hills and Trails
The Reverse Titi Kerawang Loop

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk, based mainly on length. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

There are a number of walks on the island which we share with other people who visit Penang and this is one of them. A lucky very few will find their visit coincides with a Hakka makan at the Da Ba Gong temple, but today we were here on our own just for the pleasure of walking a beautiful circuit. Mavis was left at our finishing point, the electronically controlled gate at the Teluk Bahang 11km stone and we walked up the road to what must be Penang's most understated starting point. 

Just up from here, someone with a sense of humour had erected a sign which was unlikely to scare anyone away. We had started quite early by our standards (10.45) and in December, most of the path was still in shade. The hill behind me is the one above the durian estate on the north side of the Titi Kerawang stream. This section was cleared a couple of year back for some unknown reason because no planting has since taken place and along the side of the path there are young rubber trees growing 'wild' where once there had been very old ones and a few jungle trees. It looks rather better now than a year ago.

This is a key junction although round the corner on the wide path is a gate which is sometimes locked. We continued up into the durians.

This tree was festooned with small durians, Yuehong said "They wouldn't miss one?", but unfortunately a sharp tap with the walking stick revealed they were not ready to fall. Yuehong has trouble remembering where to turn left on this section but for me it's quite easy because it's the first one after this strange junction where the path has been widened to allow motorbikes to make a sweeping turn. 

The turning heralds the finest section of the walk. To the right in the background is Bukit Laksamana and shortly after you can look back to the hills above Sungai Pinang and Pantai Acheh with Bukit Batu Itam in the distance in  the National Park.

The path continues through some quite young rubber which was being actively tapped before passing through part of a durian estate and into a somewhat overgrown area which I guess has been left this way to discourage people from using the path.

This section didn't last long and once gain we were into a well cleared durian orchard. At the end of it was a padlocked gate which would probably not have deterred mountain bikers but would have those on motorbikes.

The next section is in shady old rubber and while the path is less than perfect it's usually readily passable. Except for this time, when there was a tree down at the end, easy for those on two legs but probably not two wheels.

Never mind, there were signs that the next durian orchards were being worked on after years of neglect. Where the path becomes a dirt road it has been graded. 

Beyond the famous 'Sungai Pinang' sign the road is now concrete, hopefully as usual it will lose its brightness over the next year or so. Ahead, a mini-digger was tidying up the roadside. To my surprise the mature Chinese operator spoke excellent English. "Be sure to come back later in January for the lunch." he said to which I replied "Yes, the 28th." much to his amazement. I explained we were regular visitors to the Hakka Makan and he said that we ought to know that there would be an event at the Sungai Pinang Chinese temple a week earlier on the 21st. Excellent, it always pays to take time out to talk to the people in the hills on these walks.

Unusually, there was nothing about forthcoming events at the temple, but Yuehong pointed out that the vertical panels had been donated by women. These temples are always run by a committee of men! We continued on and met a group of well laden young Malaysian hikers who were planning to camp in the jungle, something you wouldn't catch me doing voluntarily. I for one have no plans to let myself get sufficiently lost for that to happen.

We climbed to the next junction and did a sharp U turn, continuing up would have taken us eventually to the Air Itam Dam. Going down we were again flanked by gingers.

Climbing up the other side we found the vegetable gardens overgrown except for terraces of mint, which I believe is a component of laksa, Penang's classic 'Marmite' dish. It's not one of my favourites! The next section has been newly concreted and a gate erected on the road which leads down in the direction of 'Botanica' - although it does not connect despite what Google Maps thinks.  

This hillside has been a cleared mess for as long as we have been coming here (nearly 4 years) and it desperately needs replanting with more than the odd banana plant, maybe it's time has come at last. We never turn right at the end because down below the house has dozens of noisy dogs and we don't want to take the risk that one of them decides to show off to its mates. So we maintain height and then turn into the rubber estate - it looked a little different this time. The concrete road on the left is now being extended downwards.

 There was more actively tapped rubber here. Now if only the path was as well maintained as the trees....

We rejoined the concrete road for the journey back down. This is my #1 house in this area, it's now complete as far as we could see and has a beautiful garden too. Just below and just off the road, is a small resting point, it's definitely in the 'Two Cans of Tiger' class with a fabulous view of the Balik Pulau plains with Pulau Betong and the far south-west hills of the island behind, today it was too overcast for photography. Only hunger drags us away from here. If you look closely at the durians going down you can see that they have been planted on the remains of old rubber terraces which must have made establishing the orchards much easier for the farmers.

We had been on the move nominally for nearly 5 hours, but actually walking for barely 4 of them. It's a walk that never fails to please as does our little place in Sungai Pinang opposite the Chinese school and temple. We were away on our journey home well before 17.00 and as a result avoided any snarl ups in Batu Ferringhi.