Penang Hills and Trails - Malihom Explorer
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.

This report covers a similar area to our previous Bukit Pondok Upeh report.

This was supposed to be a gentle outing as we had been out the day before too, but as often happens to us it was a bit more strenuous than that.

We got to the Malihom turn-off via the usual  10.30 501 bus from Teluk Bahang and 401E onwards from Balik Pulau. Details of the bus stop the early climb and the initial descent are all in the Bukit Pondok Upeh report. We were in no hurry, so there was plenty of time to enjoy the 'garden' atmosphere of the road up.

We turned right at the corkscrew statue as usual, made our way through to the col and turned left on to the new path which more or less follows the contours of the hill towards the rubber. The hill opposite was starting to recover from its clearance and beyond was urban sprawl with Pulau Jerejak behind.

We came to the ridge and went through the rubber until we came to the road on the left which we followed down as far as the big bend just before the metal gates. This was where today's story would begin as there is a road just below here. We could have continued through the gates and turned left and left but this was an easy short cut.

Just below is a hut, this is the view looking back along the road. We followed it for about 5 minutes but it finished. We could have bashed on but since we could see another road below, it made sense to go back and find our way down to it. That involved walking past what was one of the most attractive and well maintained traditional hill dwellings we have ever seen.

We joined the road beyond it, noting there was a concrete path nearby running downwards. This was delightful hiking country, as always the road finished but the gates with their chains were no obstacle to progress.

We had hoped to be able to continue around the bowl in the hills, but eventually ahead of us were overgrown durians with what looked like jungle beyond. We would have turned back now except that the path started to zig-zag upwards, someone had even recently brought in a mini-digger to widen it.

The path looped around behind this house with its delightful view, sometimes sand, sometimes concrete. 

Eventually the concrete ran out but it was easy enough to keep climbing. The path didn't quite reach the ridge but it was only a short climb to the fence by the main gate of Malihom. Should I have wanted to, I could have joined the access road just outside, indeed I am pretty certain I could have followed the fence in the opposite direction to where we had been on the ridge an hour or more earlie.

Actually, I had left Yuehong and the bags some way back where she entertained herself until I returned. We had no choice but to go back, although we could see a house below, the terrain was steep and on doing a quick recce, we could see a large metal sheeted fence half way down. So we took the concrete path we had seen earlier. We could see back to Malihom and across to an area being cleared which has been our target. Soon we joined a concrete road which led only to the house we can seen from above. It was still being built and the concrete electricity poles were dated 23rd September 2015, barely two months earlier.

Very soon we came to a complex junction. We had emerged from the road on the left and on walking up a short distance behind, the road was the Bukit Pondok Upeh Cycle Track. The road to the left below clearly led to the cleared area which would have to await a further 'explore' and we went right and downhill.

I had rather hoped that the road would come out near Pekan Genting but soon it curved right, eventually another road came in which was also part of the cycle track and we realised it was the one we had come down on our previous visit here. Should you wish to do this route in reverse, the turning off Jalan Pondok Upeh is clearly marked. Unfortunately, it's a bus free zone so we had to walk a further 500m or so on the opposite side of the nearby stream until we hit the main road right opposite Police HQ for the western side of the island with a nearby bus stop. So, more questions had been answered, but there is still a significant area between Pekan Genting and Malihom that reamins although I have to say that from a distance it doesn't look too welcoming...

We were rather later than expected into Balik Plulau but there was still plenty of time to do the business before returning home.

With twice retracing our steps and coming to both sides of Malihom, the map is more than a little misleading, the text should make it clearer what we did.