Penang Hills and Trails - Bukit Pondok Upeh
Genting to Pondok Upeh via Malihom

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 walk. 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.

For an update to this walk, see the Malihom Explorer report.

We had used the last few trips to start tidying up our knowledge of the upper Sungai Ara Valley. Today's walk was based on only our second visit to Malihom - the first having been ultimately successful although we definitely did it the hard way. Our regular driver on the 10.30 501 bus from Teluk Bahang had been replaced by Balik Pulau's version of Michael Schumacher again, we did the 13km to Sungai Pinang in just 20 minutes, helped no doubt by light traffic and the complete absence of extra passengers. We got a 401 almost immediately and were at the Malihom turn off at 11.20. It's on the left coming up just after the first viaduct, you'd be blind to miss all the signs. And when you eventually get to the second set shown, by all means read them but ignore them, turn left and follow the road up!

Not far up you'll probably find the main gate closed but never mind, everything on less than 4 wheels uses the side gate. It's a stiff climb but well shaded and you don't have to go to the main property at the top. At the end of one of the zig-zags is an unmistakable marker. Your path onwards is behind Yuehong.

This is Durian country and the recent rains had brought the trees into flower in quantity.

In a few minutes, we were at the col below Malihom and it still wasn't 12.30. We had plenty of time to explore, the main targets were the concrete roads to the left lower down the hill, but, hang on, there seemed to be a path off left just below the first house (the one behind Yuehong)  - this simply had to be investigated as it led up into some 'working' rubber trees. From that path we could see three paths below. The left one climbed up towards us, the middle one was the continuation of the path from Malihom and the right one would have gone towards the rubber on the hill behind. 

Always a gentleman, I went ahead and even thought this path soon finished just ahead of where Yuehong is, the way through the rubber to the right of her was easy and the other path climbed up towards where we were.

Yuehong was beaming, we were at the top of the climb and she was on her first cold towel! Even better there was a concrete road starting ahead, never mind it went down towards Pondok Upeh.

I had to check out the rubber ahead, but as seems standard practice it soon finished with secondary jungle ahead. It was a bit hazy but looking eastwards I could see straight down to Sungai Ara and also across to Bukit Papan, that's the bird's next factory on the right.

Even by our standards the road was not well used and when we came to a T junction there was the unmistakable sign that our mountain biking friends had beaten us to it. Nevertheless, this was our seventh ridge crossing point and definitely worthy of our investigation.

Clearly the main direction was down, but I did need to check right when we came to a junction. Very soon the road finished and through the scrub I could see some large plastic water tanks. In front of me was a fence and beyond another road.

In the interests of science, this needed checking out. Let's just say that the fence was not in the best state of repair. The road upwards forked and on the hill top was a nice house, beyond it was a concrete path which curved to the left keeping within the fence. I retreated, went left and passed what had been signposted as a 'Meditation Hall'. It was no doubt my fault that I failed to recognise that it was in use when I tried to talk to a lady sitting outside. A gentleman appeared who made it clear that my presence was unwelcome, even if there was not a great deal he could about it. Like the UK's News of the World reporters of old, I made my excuses and left the way I had come in, there was nothing here of interest to us and these harmless nutters were best left to their own devices.

We declared lunch time, especially as Yuehong's weak ankle was playing up. Somebody had spent a lot of money on this road to no apparent good use, we could see it continuing below.

Now that has to be an excellent location for a country house... Almost inevitably these days we found a closed gate with a way round it, at least it wasn't trying to keep us out, the lock was on the other side.

Back across the valley was Malihom, in front of us was a chameleon who gave me three attempts to photograph it and then vanished.

At the junction I needed to check out the road up to the right which as expected led to the meditation centre. Given they wanted to keep to themselves, I was not surprised that they were anonymous. I wasn't too keen on the tone of that URL, even less so when I checked it out and saw Supreme Master Ching Hai, but their heart seems to be in the right place even if their brain isn't.

Instead of going straight down as I expected, the road sloped northwards, beyond we could just about make out Jalan Tun Sardon.

We came to a junction, a concrete road led temptingly upwards. I parked Yuehong and her ankle and investigated. I'm a sucker for these 'come ons' but the road soon expired, another failed project.

Walking back down, I saw there was young rubber to the right, I walked through it and found myself in the FCS Fruit Farm, I even spotted a familiar motor bike and face from our visit here. Now after 1,000 or so examples, every durian orchard path looks much the same, but when I saw this hut I realised I was in a different part from that we had been in before. There was rubber on the left and below what was obviously our road - I ducked down and climbed up to where I had left Yuehong. She was more than a little puzzled, but she saw I was hot and sweaty and sensibly suggested finishing the other Tiger.

.This part was less than flat and I was glad I had found a short cut back. Soon we joined a section of the Bukit Pondok Upeh cycle trail.

.We came to a T-junction, ahead around the corner was indeed the FCS Fruit Farm, that represented a safe exit which we knew well. Instead we chose to go down, a pleasant if steep descent.

At the bottom of the hill we found ourselves in 'Kampung Country' and duly emerged on Jalan Pondok Upeh.

The price we had to pay was that this is a bus free zone, we had to turn right and then left for some 500m to access the bus route, better by far than walking to Balik Pulau. Thereafter everything went to plan.

We caught a 401 bus and had refreshments and more in Balik Pulau before heading for home on our familiar 17.30 501 bus. It may not look far on the map but it was another hot day and we slept well afterwards.