While staying in Ipoh, we took a few overnight trips to explore more of Malaysia. Our first destination was to the famous Cameron Highlands.
After several weeks of Malaysian heat, the idea of escaping to the cooler mountains was irresistible.
We were ready for some hiking, and we planned to explore the Highlands without a car.
Finding Our Way to the Highlands
We arrived at Aman Jaya bus station 45 minutes before departure, as recommended. Then we waited.
Our bus was delayed by more than 30 minutes, and Valery, eager to get onto the hiking trails, was soon ready to abandon the bus and take a Grab instead.
I put my foot down.
Guess who was doing the budgeting?
At last, our bus arrived. Fortunately, it turned out to be very comfortable, which partially redeemed the delay in our eyes.
The 100 km drive to Cameron Highlands took about two and a half hours, as our bus wound its way torturously slowly through the mountains, one curve following another.
Finally, we arrived in Tanah Rata, where we had booked three nights.
We chose this small town as our base because several hiking trails start here or can be reached with a short Grab ride.
As we had a few hours before check-in, we started with the first priority — food.
A small Pakistani eatery right across from the bus station supplied both food and entertainment as we watched naan being prepared right in front of us.
Looking for a Hike
After lunch, we trusted Google to guide us to local tour agencies offering hiking tours in Mossy Forest. We should have known better.
The first agency didn’t exist.
Another was closed for two days.
After that, we decided to try a less sophisticated approach and simply walked along the main street looking for tour agencies.
There were plenty of them, but they all offered very similar itineraries, none of which particularly appealed to us. The Mossy Forest boardwalk was closed, so they substituted another location. The hiking routes they offered were trails we could do ourselves, while the rest of the itinerary was filled with attractions we weren’t interested in — butterfly farms, tea factories and strawberry farms.
What we really wanted was a hike to Gunung Irau.
There were no tours offering it.
In the end, we decided to do what we usually prefer anyway: explore independently. We chose a couple of hikes from AllTrails and planned to use Grab to get to and from the trailheads.
That evening, we chose Highland Spice on the main street for supper, where I had my introduction to a South Indian banana-leaf meal.
After dinner, we walked to Parit Waterfall.
The walk itself was pleasant, but the waterfall was underwhelming.
Worse, there were piles of garbage floating at its base.
It wasn’t exactly the spectacular beginning to our Cameron Highlands adventure we had imagined. We hoped the next day would be better.
A Trail That Wasn’t Quite a Trail
Our plan was to hike the alternate route to Gunung Jasar and then continue along Trail 6 toward Tea House 2. It seemed like an ideal combination: mountains and a tea plantation in one hike.
We wanted to start hiking as early as possible, so we had breakfast at home.
Our spread was decidedly practical: canned tuna, carrots, pears and peanuts.
Not exactly the breakfast you would expect at a mountain resort, but it gave us enough fuel for the hike ahead.
By 7:30 a.m., we got out of our Grab and began looking for the trailhead.
There was just one problem.
There was no visible trail. There were no signs or markers either.
The location on AllTrails pointed toward a glamping property, so we decided to ask there. Sure enough, we were told that the trail started behind the property.
And what a trail it was!
A steep, narrow stone channel for water runoff rose up the cliffside, with rough steps built into it. The steps were wet and slippery after the previous night’s rain.
We had seen similar stairs all over Cameron Highlands. Now we were about to climb them.
According to our map, this was the trail, so up we went.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was steep, but manageable. As we climbed, I thought how lucky we were to be going up rather than down. Going down this slippery channel would surely be much harder.
Eventually, we reached the top and found a trail marker for Gunung Perdah and Gunung Ruil.
But we wanted Gunung Jasar.
We turned left onto what looked like a trail and followed it for a while. Soon, however, it became increasingly overgrown. Valery went ahead to investigate. A few minutes later, he returned with his verdict: we couldn’t get through.
We had to go back. So much for our good fortune with those stairs!
As I had feared, descending was much more difficult. The steps were uneven and slippery, and there wasn’t much room to maneuver. We found a different waterway that traversed the slope instead of going straight down, which helped a little, but it was still a struggle.
But eventually, we made it back down.
Gunung Jasar, Here We Go!
After that failed attempt, we decided to try another Gunung Jasar trail.
A short Grab ride later, we finally found a proper trail and started climbing.
It was steep, but much more interesting.
Rocks and tangled tree roots formed natural staircases.
In the steeper sections, ropes and even ladders helped us make our way up.
There were no mountain views yet—the trail passed entirely through the forest. But that was actually a blessing.
As the sun climbed higher, the Malaysian heat intensified, and the shade of the forest became increasingly precious.
The trail kept us entertained with its changing terrain until we finally reached a junction. To the right was the trail to the Gunung Jasar summit; to the left, Trail 6 led toward the tea plantation.
We chose the summit first.
And finally, we were rewarded for all that climbing.
We emerged from the forest and suddenly had beautiful views over the mountains below.
After spending some time taking in the scenery, we continued toward Trail 6. On the map, it had looked easy, mostly downhill. How hard could it be?
As it turned out, quite hard.
The trail was mostly downhill, but that didn’t make it easy.
Heavy rains had washed out large sections, turning parts of the path into something more like a drainage channel than a trail.
We were also hiking above the forest now. The exposed slopes gave us beautiful views, but there was nowhere to hide from the increasingly strong sun.
Still, the scenery made up for the effort.
And then we discovered something completely unexpected.
A slope beside the trail was covered with chayote vines, their long trailing stems heavy with fruit.
Valery immediately began picking them.
After the fourth one, I had to intervene.
I reminded him that he would have to carry every single one of them in his backpack.
That finally put an end to the harvest.
Tea Terraces in the Mountains
Eventually, we completed our long descent and walked along the road toward a tea plantation.
We had seen a tea plantation in São Miguel in the Azores, but this landscape looked completely different. Here, tea was planted in terraces climbing the mountain slopes, almost like the rice terraces we had seen in Pu Luong, Vietnam.
Misty mountains surrounded sunlit, emerald-green terraces that seemed to stretch endlessly.
A small stream gurgled between the slopes, and every turn of the road revealed a slightly different view.
It was one of those landscapes that made us stop repeatedly, even though we still had a long way to go.
Eventually, we reached the tea factory.
We decided to skip the visit. We had already learned about tea production in the Azores, and after hours of hiking, what we really wanted was to get back to Tanah Rata.
One final hot and steep climb brought us to the road and Tea House 2.
We called a Grab and headed back for lunch.
Finally, the Mossy Forest!
We had originally planned to hike Gunung Berembun the next day.
Unfortunately, Valery had hurt his knee during our hike yesterday, so our plans had to change.
Instead, we chose the Coral Hill Rock Garden trail. It was supposed to be easier and, importantly, included sections of the Mossy Forest we had been hoping to see.
We took a Grab to the trailhead, where quite a few cars were already parked.
Our driver didn’t drop us exactly at the beginning of the trail, so Valery decided to take a shortcut.
We walked a little farther along the road, then turned onto a trail.
It wasn’t part of the official Coral Hill route, but it should have been. It turned out to be one of the most beautiful and interesting parts of the hike.
The trail climbed steadily through a forest of enormous trees covered with moss and lichen.
Sometimes we climbed over gnarled roots; sometimes we had to duck beneath low-hanging branches.
There was always something to negotiate.
Eventually, we joined the official trail and reached what had been the main reason for coming here: the Mossy Forest.
It was an eerie place.
Huge trees twisted into almost grotesque shapes, their branches and trunks covered in thick blankets of moss.
Deep green shadows surrounded us, pierced here and there by shafts of sunlight.
The light only made the shadows seem darker.
After the heat and open mountain slopes of the previous day, this felt like entering another world.
The Sweetest Part of Cameron Highlands
Our final exploration that day was something completely different: strawberries.
Cameron Highlands is famous for its strawberries, and after tasting them, we understood why. We had bought a small box from a fruit stand in Tanah Rata the day before, and they were fantastic.
I love strawberries. In Canada, I go strawberry picking every summer because they taste so much better when freshly picked.
But these Cameron Highlands berries were the best I had ever tasted.
Big Red Strawberry Farm was not far from the trail, so naturally we had to investigate.
The strawberries here are grown differently from those in Canada.
Maybe that is part of the secret.
The strawberries were certainly delicious.
They were also very expensive.
Pick-your-own strawberries cost 60 MYR (about CAD 20) per kilogram—much more than we usually pay for strawberry picking in Canada.
And you couldn’t even eat them while you gathered them!
We decided to skip it.
Instead, we bought two more boxes in Tanah Rata. Surprisingly, they cost less than picking them ourselves.
Sometimes the best travel strategy is knowing when to put the basket down.
Farewell to the Highlands
The next morning, before leaving Cameron Highlands, we managed one final short hike to Robinson Falls.
It was considerably more impressive (and cleaner) than Parit Falls—a much better farewell to the mountains.
Then it was time to return to Tanah Rata and catch our bus back to Ipoh.
We had come to Cameron Highlands for cooler weather, mountain trails and tea plantations. We found all of that — and plenty of things we hadn’t expected.
Some of our plans worked out exactly as intended. Others took us down unexpected paths, quite literally.
And perhaps that was what made the experience memorable: Cameron Highlands kept surprising us, even when we thought we knew what came next.
But our Malaysian adventures were just beginning. Our next escape from Ipoh would take us in the opposite direction — away from the mountains and toward the sea.