Penang Hills and Trails - Dead End Checks
Titi Kerawang to Sungai Rusa

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 3 walk, given there is a short off-piste section. 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.

The 501 bus service needed to get to Titi Lrawang had been withdrawn by September 2022. This makes this hike impractical for anyone without the use of a car.

It's January 2015 and we're back in Penang. For our first outing we showed a couple of friends the Secret Garden way to Pantain Acheh which is just a gentle stroll. This walk combined elements of several previous walks on the west of the island with the intention of exploring a few turnings which we had been solemnly told were 'dead ends'. And so they were, all except one.

Well, as often is the case, things can look very different in these hills if you try to look for links in the opposite direction. In early January 2017, we came up from Sungai Rusa and things looked very different from the way they were reported below. Read about it here and the map below looks very different as a result.

Nothing in Penang is safe from 'progress' even Teluk Bahang. Now if it were only the final demise of the unloved Chinese Higer buses, that would have been fine. Unfortunately the Angsana development and JRD Properties are blighting the approach to the village. After our usual Roti Chanai breakfast at the Belimbing, we were happy to jump on the 501.

We got out at the U bend above Sungai Pinang - it's obvious on the map and there's a picture at the bottom of the the report from our previous visit - and struck up the path to the left past the house with a forestful of birds. In almost no time, we were in an area where we felt totally comfortable. Basically it's durian country.

Right above this small bridge is a superb waterfall, when we were here a month later in 2014 during a prolonged dry spell it could barely raise a trickle. Very soon we came to a small hut and I confirmed that the path ahead was indeed a dead end. The path to the right leads down to Sungai Rusa but we struck left up the hill, soon the views became apparent:

If you stick to the main path you'll end up in a dead end, (sorry not true see the January 2017 report) instead take the left turn shown below through the gate (behind Yuehong), easily bypassed if shut. Soon you'll come to a hut which is at the end of one of the many branches off the gated road up from the Titi Kerawang area.

Next was our first serious dead end check. The road on the right comes from the hut, later we would take the road behind the camera. For now we headed south, ignoring the first road up the hill past a house which we left for another time. The road we were on did indeed finish at a house with a Nepali occupant, he confirmed the path onwards did not go far (he was wrong of course as we discovered 2 years later). Instead we had a look up into the rubber estate past another house which had seen better days. There was 'money' here at some stage as, behind it, a rock had been excavated to make a small cave temple. At the end of the path, the guard dog was happy to see us turn back. That was a shame as there is a continuing path as we discovered in January 2017.

Going back towards the 'main road' up from Titi Kerawang, we could see the panorama hut above us. I was sent ahead to check we could go up directly and cut the corner, by the time Yuehong got up I was into the first amber liquid of the day. It's a great spot to chill out and break the climb. 

We continued up hill until we came to the Y-junction. It was my job to check the left fork and I trudged up to the top of the ridge where the road ended abruptly. Ahead was a rubber smallholding and to the right a vegetable garden. Beyond all appeared to be jungle although it's not impossible that the paths went on, there was no time to check. Instead we continued to where the road levels out. On the left is a track up to a more or less abandoned Buddhist retreat, but we turned right onto a concrete trail through the rubber. I had rather higher hopes of this one as I knew it had been used by the Penang Rainforest Hash Challenge in December 2012. There were options along the way but basically it seems they all ended up at the top of the hill where we took another break. 'That looks like a path ahead' said Yuehong as the concrete ended and beyond we could see the familiar shape of the Bukit Elvira Highlands. Indeed it was a happy choice as we soon came out on the track leading down into the Sungai Rusa valley. We had cut a corner and avoided the house of the million dogs as well.

However, oh dear! The Rainforest Hash had been back again in December 2014 and although the track would have been obvious to someone who was near blind, it was festooned not just with rapidly biodegradable paper but with plastic bags and plastic ties; some of the rocks had even been painted! If I had done this as a hash hare in the 1970s, I would rightly have been castigated but here were so called 'green exercisers' who should have known better ignoring the 'take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints rule'. I was naturally very disappointed and not a little upset.

At the bottom of the cleared area was the short 'off piste' section where the path is in poor condition for a short section and always seems to be obstructed by fallen trees but first it was time for some more of the amber nectar. Yes, that's hash plastic on the chain. About half way down, our peace was disturbed by a small group of students from POWIIS (Prince of Wales Island International School) who were debating where the path went beyond a fallen tree. They had been aiming for the Thai Buddhist retreat but had missed it and decided to carry on. I told them they should have read this website first and then tried to explain where the path led to and how to get down to Titi Kerawang before the last bus. I'm not sure they totally understood but at least they had the option to turn around with some four hours of daylight ahead, I guess they must have started much later than us and I am sure their combined ages were much less than our two's.

The all new slim-line Yuehong was greatly enjoying the walk although the absence of a mid-walk snack took its toll eventually. This was one tasty alternative, the first snake of the trip, it looked like it had been a victim of a traffic accident.

We came out at the top of the ghastly Botanica development, another monument created by those who believe in the triumph of money over taste. This time we kept left and soon got out onto a track at its edge. When that finished we ducked through a well used hole in the fence and used the 'Jalan Kampung' to get to the round-the-island-road by the Indian barber's shop ('Hair Derssing'). There was 20 minutes to wait for the 501 bus and by a strange coincidence there was a Chinese seafood restaurant just down the road with a well stocked fridge. A perfect end to our first serious hike.

IMPORTANT - as of December 2015, the route out of Botanica described above has been blocked by two extra metal fences erected by the developer MTT Properties.