Penang Hills and Trails - Not Quite Nirvana
Searching for the Main Hill Rain Gauges

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a longer than average Grade 2 walk. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed. Click here for a list of the known PBA rain gauges.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

As of the middle of March 2016 when I returned to the UK, there were just three rain gauges left to locate, all in the Penang Hill / Waterfall catchment area. Since when Peter van der Lans has been to two of them, but right now RG 5 in the Western Hill military security area remains unvisited..

The Rain Gauge on the left is unnumbered next to the Air Itam Reservoir, but it has since been moved elsewhere in the complex. This is a secure area and you may have problems (as I did earlier) just walking in, Peter was luckier but I got in at my second attempt by choosing to go on a Sunday when there is usually no one on the gate.

Rain Gauge 7 is marked on maps as being some way along a ridge running north-east from between Tiger Hill and Western Hill. Peter van der Lans failed to find it there, but later found it a few minutes walk off the Summit Road just beyond Southview the Moniot Road junction (the red sign explains the medicinal significance of some of the jungle trees). I visited here in February 2017.

Two days before, I had ticked off the remaining seven reported rain gauges I had yet to visit in an extremely long but glorious day's hike between Batu Ferringhi and the Botanical Gardens. Now on my last day's hiking I had one final chance to locate the three which the PBA map showed to be in the main hill area. It was supposed to involve an investment in a ticket on the Hill Railway and a gentle stroll along the Summit Road. However, like Baldric's cunning plans, this one went out of the window as soon as I got to the station, it was like a zoo, later I learned that I had disastrously picked the first day of the school half term.

Now this would mean walking up instead, of course if this had been part of the original plan then I would not have started from where I was and I would certainly have started earlier, it was already 12.00. I went up past the Bats' Cave Temple to 84 on the Jeep Road (click here for a description of this route as a descent) and then trudged up the Jeep Road with the intention of searching the area around The Crag which was where the PBA map suggested I would find RG 8. By the time I got there, it was already 14.00, I was hot and sticky and my change of plan meant that I would probably be short of water later. I didn't expect to find anything at The Crag as I had been there before and many hikers had been through without reporting it, so when I was greeted by the usual gaggle of noisy doge I decided to look elsewhere. Immediately above is Richmond which is in use for officers of the City Council (MPPP) and lo and behold there was RG 8, nicely painted up and obviously 'preserved'. It was definitely the best moment of the day.

I went on to Bukit Bendera which was packed with happy holiday makers. On my interpretation of the map RG 7 is shown as being some way west and in the middle of nowhere. The path round the back of Bukit Bendera is being developed as a canopy walk and Mike Gibby assured me that RG 7 is not on it. So it was a question of examining nearby properties. Now Bel Retiro was actually the site of the hill's first recorded rain gauge many, many years ago, but it's not accessible to the general public and if RG 7 is inside it will need strings being firmly pulled to see it. Next, I checked Convalescent Bungalow without success, but below I could see Fernhill even further set back. Now that's in a disastrous state, but on a flat area in front of it I found a modern weather station, that's a logging rain gauge on the right, seemingly powered by a solar panel. It's maintained by Jabatan Pengairan dan Saliran Negeri Pulau Pinang, basically the irrigation and drainage department (known in local English as DID or Drainage and Irrigation Department), and calls itself a 'Stesen Hujan' or rain station. It's not impossible it's in the location of the original RG 7 but equally RG 7 may still exist elsewhere. It also goes a long way to explain why the PBA is getting out of the rain gauge business.

Time was rushing on, I had to make a dash for Western Hill on the slight chance that RG 5 would be accessible. Not very far beyond the turn off for Bukit Laksamana, I found the invitingly raised barrier with threatening notices. That on the left forbids all photography, that on the right makes it clear that this is a military installation (Ministry of Defence) and since other hikers have reported hassles in this area, I turned back. My obsession is only a hobby after all.

I retreated back down the Summit Road and turned right at the Brothers' Bungalow turning just after Southview, this avoided the swarm of electric vehicles which inhabit from here to Bukit Bendera. It's a steep concrete road and I needed to follow the path known as 'Chili', it's described elsewhere in this section, once you spot the turning which is a concrete path on the left, the route through several junctions is intuitive. Eventually, when I came to the junction where left leads to the Middle Station, I turned right and took a rest at the nearby small modern temple. Not far on, I took this turning on the right, the picture was taken on an earlier walk. I had been told by Peter van der Lans that it would lead eventually to the access road to the Lean Fah Thong temple not far from the Air Itam dam. Apart from being a new route, it would avoid the unpleasant last part of the descent. It's a great path and for some considerable distance it more or less follows the contours in and out, I was so tired by now that I skipped photography initially. How not to organise a mountain bike event... After more than a month, the banner and signage is still in evidence.

Now the banner was at the first major junction and I had to turn left, coming back up it would be easy to carry on up the hill. The path actually turned back on itself as it descended, I must almost have been walking parallel to where I had been before. Ahead I could see a farm and the path soon entered it. A concrete path trailed in from the left, another point at which I would have to be careful if going up.

Below it, the path curved right and left and then re-entered the old rubber. There was one junction with a path up which could also cause issues in the opposite direction and then I hit the access road to the Lean Fah Thong temple, it was at electricity pole 9 34 just above the small temple at the junction with the shed on the right. At least this would be easy to find another time.

It's another gathering point for early evening hikers and riders. Given it was now 18.30 and I was tired and very thirsty, I had no hesitation in begging a lift down to Air Itam on a motorbike. First priority was rehydration and second was to get back to my side of town for dinner, followed by another bus ride home. From the look on Yuehong's face when I pitched up 3 hours later, it would have been a better idea to have invested the beer money on a taxi instead.