Conquering the East Tabur

The beginning of the climb is more like a battle against gravity. You’ll be going up and up like there’s no end to it and it pushes you to the near point of passing out.

It doesn’t really serve you with much space and flat ground to stand on steadily so you gotta keep going so that whoever it is behind you won’t be left dangling on the rope or something.

I think I was caught off guard at the beginning of the climb. All the runs that I did on flat tracks say at Tasik Titiwangsa didn’t do much in strengthening my calf muscles after all.

They might have improved my stamina and I was so thankful for that but not my leg muscles so I was still struggling in the end. Damn.

I actually expected to see a long line of people on the trail just like how it was at West Tabur when we had to take turn every time we had to clamber over a boulder or climb up a (wall of) rock and waited quite long in the process (Damn those camwhoring girls! 😀 ).

Instead, we had the whole trail to ourselves – or at least the ascending part of it so I was most worried about stepping on some living creature than anything else in the world.

But then, looking at the trail, I realized then that it wasn’t a good idea to do it in the wee hours especially when you are there for the first time.

The quarts are just so thorny and sharp and so ready to rip your butt apart if you are not being careful enough. I mean, you have to be very sure of where to step on or you’ll risk losing your balance and sliding off right into the waiting abyss.

It’s a bit of a risky environment you’ve got up there. We are talking about doing some wall-climbing here so you may want to wear gloves.

Ouch!

Being one of the most trekked hills in KL, it came as no wonder that some good Samaritans had provided ropes for trekkers to hold on to where the trek is too step to climb independently.

I keep telling myself and trekking buddies not to throw their weight wholly on the ropes because God knows what’s gonna happen if they suddenly snapped off and .. well, that.

While some of them looked very much new as if they have only been replaced the day before, some of the ropes looked very much ready to give up any time probably waiting for the right victim to come by.

Being all first timers, none of us had any idea when to tell that we were or were not there yet (are we there yet? Are we there yet?).

I did read from somewhere that the climb at the Tabur East was go forth – and-back business and not a loop like the one at Tabur West so the trail has to stop at some point from where we’d return to where we had come from exactly on the same trail.

The destination is the end point of the trail so you know you’re not there yet when you see the trail still goes on.

Funny how we thought we had reached the peak and actually jumped in excitement only to find the continuation of the trail somewhere in the bushes later. Then we’d continue going again and again until we gave up hoping and just kept going.

We really thought we were past all the challenging parts of the trail only to find ourselves facing down to a big ‘mound’ of rock with a visible trail on it so ready to serve us with the fact that the most challenging part of the climb has yet to come.

Your last climb before the end point of Tabur East

At the top of the mound is where the peak of East Tabur is but you gotta walk for a little bit further on to get to the end point the trail.

You know you’ve reached it when you can’t go any further unless you are extremely adventurous to go down the abyss with all the equipment in the word. I wonder if anybody has actually attempted it.

I can’t find any word to describe how beautiful it is up there and even more beautiful is the feeling when you see the sun first appears from behind the multi-layered horizon and later rises further and further away from it.

Sun rise has always been my favorite time of the day so watching it from atop Tabur East was very much a wonderful experience.

All the agonizing climbing and panting and sweating and probably swearing were paid off in a blink of an eye.  It was worth the every bead of sweat (but then they are burned lemak after all. LOL).

Not far across the distance is the peak of what I believed was the Extreme East. It was  right there waving and probably challenging us to take her on on our next visit to Tabur.

Bukit Tabur is one of the best things that I’ve come across in KL not only for fact that it is very much near to where I stay but also for the breath-taking views and the adventures that it offers AND most importantly for its free admission. Heh.

Sadly though, some people don’t seem to appreciate what the Mother Nature has granted to them in free packages. Bukit Tabur provides some kind of buffer zone to separate the hijauness of nature from the mad urbanization of KL.

Looking at how things are going, there’s no guarantee that Bukit Tabur would still be there in its original form if the development continues to close in. And there are plenty of signs. For me, Bukit Tabur deserves much more appreciation that what it is getting now.

All the littered rubbish made me sad and angry at the same time. They go there for free without having to pay a cent but then they throw whatever they feel like throwing as if the rubbish is going to vanish by themselves.

Something really is so wrong with our society.