Trekking Singapore and Beyond - The Journey of an Urban City Kid into Beautiful Nature

Great! After setting up this email list, I received an email last week about one of the members going for a 15 day trek to Garhwal Himalayas in July.

The trek crosses through high altitude regions with rivers, and passes, highest point being about 20,000 ft (about 6,000 meters). According to Ravi (our member), this trek is only suitable for people with experience trekking.

The trek is scheduled in the month of July, as this is the only month when these pass are accessible. The cost of the trek is about S$2000 apart from the air tickets.

Do drop a comment if you are interested, so I can connect you up with Ravi!

In effort to form up this community of trekkers in Singapore, I have recently subscribed to an email management service so that I don’t have to keep track of all your email addresses by copying them into my Excel file one by one!

Through this list, I hope that I can help to connect you with other people interested in trekking, so for example, if you are organising a trek and you hope to find some company, you can contact me and I can help you broadcast out. Do sign up for the community at the blog sidebar if you are interested to be part of the community!

Actually, I would love to use a forum for this purpose instead, but from my own experience, forums need a lot of time and effort for moderation… and I doubt I will be able to spend that time doing that! So I guess email is the next best alternative yeah?

I actually spent my last weekend over at Endau Rompin, it was a short and fun weekend. Well, lots of pictures and details I want to put up but for now I will need to get going with my work first!

It seems like this community is growing, and there is a demand for details and contacts to get to the different treks in Malaysia. I apologise because I don’t have all the contacts at the moment, its been two years since I’ve been trekking regularly. But what I will do is I will start to compile them, and then put them up on this blog (or maybe start a wiki, so everybody can contribute?)

My guess is that I won’t be doing much trekking for the next few months. The uphill and downhill treks at Endau Rompin took the toll on my right knee. I might need to rest again for a few months, eat more nutritious food and do more soft exercises to build up my knee again. Argh.

But I won’t give up trekking. Too fun. Maybe no Kilimanjaro, but definitely there will be more Mount Ophirs, Gunung Stong etc.

I was chatting with a friend over on MSN a couple of weeks back and we decided that after their school term ends in May, we will be putting down everything we have to do and go for a (very) short trek together.

After exchanging a few emails with the group, we figured most of us wanted a trek where we could just nuah (relax!) in the waterfalls, and isn’t too physically demanding. In the past, we always chose Lumbong (Pelepah) falls for a quick no-need-to-plan weekend getaway, but word has it that now there is a need of a permit (which costs money!) to enter the grounds, and we are not allowed to camp overnight there anymore.

So, the discussion brought us to the idea of exploring Ken waterfalls in Kota Tinggi. According to the BOAC website (that seems to be the only agency doing a trip there now), it seems to be a fairly easy trek - sounds even easier than Pelepah, with less than an hour of uphill trekking.

But the issue is that there doesn’t seem to be any resources online about where exactly the trail is, the administrative procedures (if necessary), how to get there and the condition (or availability) of a campsite.

Anyone been to Ken waterfalls before? Care to share some details?

I think one of the main reasons why people stop trekking is because of the difficulty to arrange suitable dates where everyone (you normally trek with) can take time off and go out for a few days together. Busy city life is plagued with deadlines to meet, appointments to tend to, and schedules to follow.

Eventually, the momentum dies down and then we find either people trekking alone, or at maximum in pairs… and the rest of us give up the recreation completely.

I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to continue to take trips out of the busy city life even when I am 40, 50 or 60 - as long as it I am physically capable of overcoming the trails and obstacles.

So, I want to hear from you - where do YOU want to go this June/July? Gunung Tahan? Berkelah Waterfalls? Mount Ophir? I want to build a community from this website, so we can all meet and plan trips together.

And yes, it doesn’t matter if you are old or young - as long as you love the outdoors and you love mixing and meeting around with people… and you love trekking.

I’ll be hearing from you - where do you want to go?

I was kinda disappointed because I was supposed to make my trip to Desaru over the weekend, but it was called off due to some other time commitments and constraints from the rest of the team. Still, we met up for half a day yesterday at East Coast Park to do some roller skating. It was fun.

We talked about trekking, skating, and some of the other outdoors sports - and it struck me that I haven’t been doing outdoor stuff for a very long time now. Yesterday’s session re-ignited my life for the outdoors, and I think I should get back to schedule, at least for a skating session every week.

I think it would be tough for us to all meet and do things together as every one of us get busy with our one schedules… but I think again that most of us go on a trip not because of the trip, but because we enjoy each other’s company so much. After all, counting the number of years since we go to know each other in the Rovers committee, its been almost 3 years.

Its sad but true that many trekkers trek alone, or at the most, in a pair. I think the fun in outdoor sports does not lie only in bathing in the hot sun or shivering in the cold rain, but also with the people are with. I really hope that the small group of us (there are only like 5 left in this group amongst the 15 comm members!) can stick together for activities.

Now that I’ve more time to think about what I really want to do - I should really start real action towards my goal of conquering Kilimanjaro in 2008.

According to a friend, the mountain’s terrain is not difficult technically, and the main issue concerning most trekkers is the altitude sickness.

Its still a year away, but I’m not taking any chances with my fitness. So, what treks shall I go for in 2007 to prepare me for Kilimanjaro in 2008?

Here are some which I think I need to conquer first - to conquer my fear of that 5000m mountain in Africa.

1. Gunung Tahan - a must go!
2. Gunung Rinjani - I heard the scenery is too breathtaking not to go!
3. Kinabalu - I want to go there again!
4. Mount Ophir - Maybe for a night trek to the sunrise

Apart from these, I think there will be a lot of Bukit Timah Hills and a lot of stairs climbing to do. I’ve already got my stairs climbing training schedule out, but I’m still reluctant to travel 2 hours to climb a 165m hill. Heh…

So onwards I plunge into 2007, onwards with more treks for myself to train towards Kilimanjaro in 2008!

I had dinner with a couple of my Rovers friends a couple of days back, and as usual, we were talking about potential treks other adventure stuff we could explore. One of things that we brought up that appealed to most of us was a cycling trip to Desaru.

Cycling to Desaru is one very popular trip for many professional cyclists in Singapore - from what I know, the whole trip (one way) is about 70 - 90 kilometers, and it will take about 5 - 7 hours of to get there, Desaru is a beach resort, but I guess by the time we get, there it would be almost time dinner and a good night’s rest.

Besides, I doubt we would have the energy to play with out butts cracked and legs sore from cycling 70 kilometers!

I was supposed to make trip there once this year, but something cropped up (I forgot what it was) and I wasn’t able to make it eventually. This time, now that most of us are not burdened by school stuff, we hope to organise a group of at least 8 people (from our rovers committee) to make a trip there this early Feburary!

Let’s hope things flow smoothly, I’m really looking forward to some adventure!

Oh.. pardon me with the Datuk photos - I am planning to make some changes to this blog (making changes to the installation), so I will upload the photos when I’m done with that!

Over last weekend, I was over in Malaysia again for my Gunung Datuk trek.

The trek was pretty good - it was moderately tiring, considering its an all-the-way-uphill trek, but going up with a slow pace took us only 3 - 4 hours.

Unfortunately for us, the campsite was taken by other trekkers, and we had to find another alternative site, which wasn’t quite big enough to fit all three of our eight man tents. We still managed to squeeze in somehow, albeit there was like no space at all between the tents.

The summit was fantastic! The summit was like a 10 minuted climb from the campsite, and there were already ladders and ropes to assist us up the boulders. The setting sun and the nightsky was fantastic, and so was the sunrise!

One particular thing I didn’t like about the trek, however, was that there was no water source at the summit… well, not really NO water source, but the water source was 1/2 an hour away. So fetching water (both ways, up and down) would take over an hour.

Nevertheless, it was fun!

I was just surfing on by some other blogs and I came across this post about the Qinghai-Tibet Railway! According to the post, this is the world’s highest train journey with an average altitude of 4500m! Man! Look at those photos! Imagine travelling on a train ride higher than Mount Kinabalu!

The train provides oxygen to every seat, and over 500 kilometres of the track runs over the frozen earth! I’m so amazed and awed by what is going on outside my little country! I think this shall be “one of the things I must do before I leave this world”! What an adventure it would be!