79 km

More rolling through the mountainous jungle today as we continue West across the Malaysian peninsula. We are very close to the Thai border as we near the end today. Palm plantations line both sides of the road.

We stopped for drinks and ice cream at the highway intersection outside of Girik, and the women at the mini-mart told us the road ahead had huge mountains to climb, steep hills. They said we could take an easy route around them, and they drew a map. After three days of climbing and descending, I was ready to avoid any unnecessary hills I could. They spoke good English, and explained the turns three times through, making it sound very easy. We took the map and headed out.

Well. That didn’t work out very well. The turns were not where they should have been (“about 12k to here, then four k to this turn…”), nor were they labeled with signs like the women said. We made some turns and may have avoided a little of the steep climbing, but very soon we found ourselves back on the same main highway we were trying to detour around, with plenty of climbing to do.

Oh well, at least we didn’t get completely lost, because these roads were not on our Malaysia map. We did, however, enjoy a nice quiet road and some friendly, smiling people along the way. We also heard the 4:45 call to prayer in a small hillside mosque as we stopped for a snack. We weren’t sure, but we didn’t think the mosque had the usual speaker system set up. We think he was wailing at the top of his lungs without the help of a microphone, and it showed in his poor scratchy voice. Ouch. He mostly hit the notes, and we gave him high marks for effort. By now we’ve heard many, many calls to prayer throughout many days as we’ve ridden through and stayed in all these towns. Some of the voices coming from the tower speakers sound forced, but many are sweet and smooth and melodic as they waft over the sounds of the bustling towns.

We finally called it quits high up in the mountains today, 16 km before Penkalan Hulu. We rode down into the cool, quiet shade of a palm plantation and found a spot near a stream running through. As we were setting up camp we heard a scooter slowly making it’s way toward us over the hill. I was so nervous, thinking they’d get mad and throw us off the plantation, and there wasn’t any free jungle in sight. But the old man who puttered by on the little road above us looked down and nodded as we said hello, and he turned around and rode back. That’s all we heard. So we finished setting up and bathed in the clear stream. Three nights in a row camping, and each spot offered a cool place to bathe. What luck!

The many layers of insect and frog sounds blended to lull us asleep on this clear night.