Penang Hills and Trails - The Balik Pulau Explorer 4
Searching for New Routes above the Town

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. 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.

Be aware that by December 2019, the path through the old rubber described below was at best 'indistinct' and at worse 'effectively impassable' and we decided not to attempt to follow it. 

We have spent several days testing the paths on the east side above the Balik Pulau to Air Itam road, this is the latest report, the others can be accessed by the index to this area.

There are 4 side ridges running out from the main ridge between Anjung Indah and Bukit Penara, I now refer to them by their numbers. Strictly there are 3 and the first one splits into two. Hence the Nibbinda Ridge is Ridge 1 and so on. Today's walk involved Ridges 3 and 4. As I have said before we like this area because it is still almost completely durian and rubber and apart from rotational clearances it is 'green'. 

Again unlike many of the other reports, this is NOT a suggested walk, rather it contains information which will help other people like us who want to explore and understand the system of paths around Balik Pulau. Minus the side trip to Ridge 3 though, it would make for a very pleasant Grade 2 walk and for this reason I have added a link which will allow you to bypass the side trip. However, the 'dog house' is an unavoidable real pain and would probably seriously detract from its pleasures. 

Since the routes to be explored were at the 'top end' we came up from the Relau side where we can a get a 200 metre 'hill start'. The initial account is taken from a walk in January 2015. Yes, Yuehong, is wearing the same shirt, but we reserve certain clothes for the hills, they do get washed every time, but they always dry out in 36 hours and even overnight given the warm, dry breeze at this time of year. If you want to skip the climb and start with the explorations, just click here. 

We set out at 11.45 from the lower reaches (1.2km) of Jalan Tun Sardon once I had persuaded the 502 bus driver to set us down. The lower part of the path is covered in our 'Stay Calm and Eat Kangkung' account. I couldn't use those pictures again as I have traded in the old Yuehong model and now have the brand new 17 year old schoolgirl version, what used to be called 'jail bait' when I was a teacher long ago, you can see that the dog is warning me off.

Anyway, since this is meant to be a serious work of scholarship, I should point out that this is where the trail emerges. It's a 3 way junction looking back, to the left (I guess) are more vegetable gardens on a minor peak and straight ahead is a very pleasant path which goes through fruit trees and old rubber before diving down to the same area we had come from. Our path is almost out of sight on the right should you want to do the walk in reverse.

This is where the Ridge 3 exploring starts, you can skip the off piste nonsense should you wish and continue in the direction Yuehong is showing in the right hand picture. However for the time being...

... we turned left and followed the contour until we came to the hut through which the path runs. Ahead is an area which looks even worse than it did a year ago, having been cleared almost up to the ridge. Keep to the right at the first junction immediately after the hut and follow the path up and round till you get to the farm from which you can see across to the Bukit Penara masts. Below them are the French beans and to the left is the top of Ridge 4, it may look jungly but apart from the steep face towards us it is almost denuded on both sides.

We continued along the (current) top of the vegetables after the hut and entered the jungle. It's a good path at least as far as to where Ridge 3 joins. You can't miss that point at the moment as there is a huge tree down here. To the left is the route we followed on our first ever visit to Nanshan, one day maybe when we're feeling brave we'll check it out again but having been to the other end recently and seen the conditions there, we're not in a hurry!

Anyway for the time being, we went right and very soon jungle gave way to overgrown rubber. There are very few pictures this time owing to multiple battery failure, but broadly conditions were not too bad at all. There is a very small hill with fern cover, but it's very easy to follow one of the old rubber terraces to the left of it which comes out on the other side, right at the top of a mature rubber plantation which fills the hillside on the right, the left side being totally overgrown rubber. It's at times like this that our 'chip away policy really pays dividends. Peter van der Lans has described an approach to this point from the right (sorry http://www.bicycle-adventures.com/nan-shan-hills.html is a broken link) which he himself describes as 'NOT recommended'. So we have to skip this section pictorially (we'll be back here in a few days coming up) but if you keep to near the the edge of the rubber and follow the ridge down, you'll get your reward, it's not at all difficult, this is the view looking back up from the bottom.

Actually, I had left Yuehong at the top as rubber descents are not her forte, but this was so straightforward and the result so satisfying that I called her down. This was the pineapple plantation I had visited a week and a half earlier, another piece in the jigsaw puzzle was satisfying inserted. If you're familiar with the area (only PvdL qualifies to my knowledge), it will all make sense, if not we'll do a proper account in due course (it will be called Balik Pulau Ridges in the area index page). Back up we went, we could have continued down to Balik Pulau of course but it was just 14.00 and there was another path to check out.

We returned to the Nanshan farms and took a break, it was quite warm. From the 6 way junction we took the route up to the first hut, left towards the ginger and then up to the French beans from where we would normally have carried on over towards the Balik Pulau to Air Itam road. The next two pictures have been borrowed from the Balik Pulau Explorer 3 report as I had to save what was left of my batteries for the new part of today's walk. Basically this is looking back towards the viewpoint I had used earlier and we entered what is left of the forest here as on the previous hike.

Over the hill and down the other side we came to this small hut and this time we took the path at the back where Yuehong is standing. It's an old path, narrow but in good condition and well graded downwards.

I had been some way down here previously and was confident it would go through. Indeed eventually we came to a house (which is in the background of the second picture). Not too surprisingly it turned out to be the Chinese lady with all the fierce dogs we had met 2 years earlier. Equally unsurprisingly we were recognised and welcome to walk past the house and on down their private road.

It's an unmistakable turning as it's next to a line of Pinang palms, but for the record it's by electricity pole HT NH 3 24. From here it was just over half an hour along a road we have seen too much of over the years back to Balik Pulau. We'd taken things at a very gentle pace and as a result we had to choose between a cold drink and the 17.30 501 bus and the Tiger won. Still at this hot time of year we are into one day on, one day off mode and a late return home was never going to be a problem.