With the beginning of a new financial year, and at the end of exciting options to choose from for exploring nearby domestic attractions, I decided to set my sights on something higher—literally!
Hiking trips in Malaysia are not the cool, heady pursuits of the cool-headed in the West, but sweaty tramping through dense tropical jungles in muggy weather; most are below the one thousand meter elevation level, but doing even one of these still offers the thrill that comes with similar experiences anywhere in the world.
Happily for me, I found one hike less than twenty kilometers from where I stay, and one morning I dragged myself out just at the crack of dawn to explore it, not knowing if it would suddenly start raining in the middle of my approximately twenty-minute hike, because the main difficulty of doing this lay not with the humble altitude of two hundred meters but the prospect of slipping on the mildly steep terrain in the event of rain.
I was lucky indeed when the day passed uneventfully, and maybe the fact that I prayed fervently at the little shrine at the beginning of the trail had something to do with it…?!
Hiking in the tropics is a sweaty business. But does give one a sense of accomplishment. Congratulations!
True, that! Thank you!