The author cycling past the last plantation on the trail, June 1999
Play that sweet song one more time
Janda Baik to Kampung Chennah
Please read the UPDATE section below carefully before attempting this ride.
As the clock ticks inexorably towards the day of my departure from Malaysia, I've been striving to knock off as many things on my to-do list as I can. Big on that list, Janda Baik to Kampung Chennah. It is without a doubt the best one-day ride I have done anywhere, ever. Yes, it's a logistical nightmare, being a point to point ride from somewhere near nowhere (Janda Baik) to the middle of nowhere (Kampung Chennah). Yes, it is difficult, 8 hours, 45 kilometers end to end, with hours of tricky steep ascents and descents through the distraction of mud, rocks, overgrowth and deadfall. Yes, there is the prospect of being run over by a rogue elephant, swallowed by a python or coming face to face with a tiger. But if you hunger to do a long ride through challenging conditions and really, really get out there, maybe this one is for you, too.
The Planning
With a long ride like this, there are a lot of factors to consider. There are no short cuts. There is no cellular coverage. There isn't anybody within miles to help. There isn't even anybody to ask about trail conditions. A lot of the local people don't even know of the trail's existence. Whatever you encounter, you must be prepared to deal with. It requires a realistic awareness of your own abilities and knowledge and trust of those of your fellow riders.
What's a good number of riders for a ride like this? With more riders, the ability to deal with serious problems on the trail is improved, but the likelihood of having problems is also increased. Also with more riders it becomes difficult to match abilities, and over an 8 hour period small differences in fitness and ability add up to big differences in time. It is important to remain in touch with all members of the group at all times, not to let any one person to get too far ahead or too far behind. There are real hazards to consider on this ride. For about five or six hours, you'll be in territory that may not have seen another person in days or weeks or a vehicle in months. But it may have seen wildlife of the real wild kind. Today.
In addition, there are quite a few out of the ordinary items to carry on a long ride, and it makes sense to distribute them amongst the group. Bringing along a spare tire, medical kit and water filtration equipment is a good idea, nay, a necessity, but if you stay close together only one of each should be required. Should it happen that the last person in the group shreds a tire or takes a bad fall, it will do little good to have the lead rider buggering off with the necessary equipment.
All things considered, in my opinion the magic number of riders is three. Two is O.K. but the ability to deal with a real disaster on the trail would be limited. Four might also go in another situation, but as the drop off car was to be a Proton it was not do-able this time. Four bikes and five people in a Saga? A little too friendly I'd say. So three it was.
The Players
Casper: Good fitness. Superior technical riding ability. Level headed. Great knowledge of trails and flora. Knows how to read a map. (Actually owns several maps, that alone is a rarity around here.) Rides a titanium Seven hardtail with Rock Shox SID, XTR, Avid, Syncros, Race Face.Pigpen: Good fitness. Good technical riding ability. Almost as level headed as Casper. Very conservative (well aware of his own mortality). Gets very confused by maps but understands GPS. Also very deft with Parang. (Actually owns several Parangs and GPS units.) Rides a titanium Cove Hummer hardtail with Rock Shox SID, XTR, Syncros, Race Face. And a 24 inch Parang strapped to the top tube. (Hey, you never know when you might need a knife. A really big knife.)
Wild Bill: Good fitness. Strong like Ox. Good technical riding ability. Bill was a bit of an X-factor regarding whether his head was level or not but I figured if it needed leveling Casper and I could do it for him. Good first aid skills. (Actually owns several medical kits.) Rides a titanium Merlin hardtail with Rock Shox SID. More of that XTR, Avid, and Race Face stuff.
There was something scary about the similarity of those three bikes perched on the roof of the car.
The Ride
Up at 5 A.M., bleary eyed after a restless sleep and not enough of it. I stayed up too late repacking the backpack at least twice and going over the bike one more time, and then went to sleep fretting over the details. I gently wake the Piglet from a sound slumber, as she has consented to drop us off at the trailhead. (Do I actually deserve her? I must be doing something right!) We load up the car and head off to pick up Casper and Bill and make our way to the highlands, stopping in Genting Sempah for a nutritious(?) breakfast of Nasi Lemak and Gardena chocolate Chip muffins, washed down with Kopi Susu. Then on to Janda Baik, 15 km's down quiet winding backroads with the half light of dawn coming through thick overcast.After the requisite fussing with bike assembly and double checking of who has what for tools and extras, we hit the trail at 7:45. From the trailhead at 450 meters the route rises in a series of undulations until we pass out the top of the valley at 750 meters at the 8 kilometer mark. The highland air is cool and moist, the trail surprisingly dry. The first five kilometer section of the trail sees a lot of traffic as it is the only access to several vegetable farms along the river, and last week on the pre-run it was badly chewed up in spots due to a couple of heavy rains. But since then the weather has been hot and dry and it's made quite a difference. There's only a couple of mudholes this morning, easily avoided.
When you're doing a ride like this one, it's important to alter your focus a bit. There's a lot of little things that take on greater importance than they would on a short ride. For instance, one of the things worth thinking about is keeping your bike's driveline clean; the satisfaction of successfully navigating a stretch of deep mud without dabbing pales in comparison to the grief of suffering from chain suck every time you hit an ascent. Better to portage if it looks too gooey. The same can be said for riding at the edge of your ability or your stamina. This is not the time — rides like this draw heavily on the fitness and skills you've developed on other, shorter rides. If you push yourself beyond your limit and crash or bonk out here, you may be faced with a difficult situation. Likewise if you taco a wheel or shred your derailleur. With only 12 hours of daylight in the tropics you have to make time, yet pushing too hard is not the answer either.
Most of the trail is a double ribbon of hard packed clay until we pass the last of the farms at kilometer 5; after that conditions turn worse as it appears the only traffic has been a bunch of 4x4's who have made an excursion through here in the last month or so. That they have preceded us is both good and bad; good in that they have undoubtedly cleared some of the undergrowth and deadfall in order to make their passage, bad in that they have ripped up the trail in a big way in many spots and left enough litter behind them to fill a truck. Go figure. Wouldn't you think that someone who cared enough about the wilderness to spend an entire day or two in it might be disinclined to leave an uninterrupted trail of beer cans, plastic water bottles, cigarette packages and potato chip bags from end to end? Especially since they are in a truck?
At kilometer six, we have our first mechanical failure. Casper cranks just a little too hard while trying to clean a steep uphill and breaks the chain. "Do you have any extra links?" is answered with "No, not on the list." Oops. We shorten the chain by one link and leave it up to him to remember to be careful when he's in the big ring, because if he goes to the big cog on the cassette as well it'll jam for sure. No problem, we'll be lucky to get into the big ring at all today.
Around kilometer seven, we get a taste of how quickly things could really go wrong. While negotiating a tricky downhill of exposed rocks, Casper's front wheel squirts sideways and he does a sudden multi-point landing on those very same rocks. Once again "Saved by the Bell", but he's still seeing few stars by the time I double back to find out what Bill's yelling about. Casper's worried about the extreme pain in his gluteus maximus, as always I'm worried about head injury, but over the course of the day it turns out to be the hard rap to the knee that is the most serious. It's gouged in an unsightly fashion so we wash it clean (in this age of Camelbacks it's good to have at least one good old fashioned water bottle for this sort of thing) and throw some antiseptic powder on it, but by the time we've gone another kilometer we've had to wrap it with a compression bandage as well as it's swelling quite a bit. It could easily have been a lot worse. Once again I'm glad I carry along a couple of the elastic bandages. Some anti-inflammatories would be a good idea also.
The going is really slow through these next few kilometers — it would be challenging riding under good conditions but the trail is far less than good, with a lot of bamboo falling in and the surface rutted and soggy. The bamboo tries your patience because it is as slippery as hell when you try to cross it, and unyielding if you try to push through it. Where we can, the first rider lifts it up and lets the other two cross underneath, and we leapfrog our way along. Judging by the tracks underneath there is a lot of wildlife activity through here; I'm no expert but I think it's mostly wild boar and Tapir. The Tapir tracks can be spooky because they are three-toed and as big as the span of your hand, but now and then they overlay and look like four big toes … at a quick glance the first thing I think of is tiger. Ooh lah lah. Wouldn't that be cool, to see tiger tracks? Of course that's all I want to see. Just the tracks.
We have peaked out at 750 meters vertical and we will gain and lose altitude about equally until Kilometer 25. Now it's Bill's turn for trouble — somewhere around Kilometer 10 his derailleur decides to fall apart under power and in the process the cable gets sheared clean off. That won't matter if we don't find the missing jockey wheel because without it he's looking at spending the rest of the day in his favorite gear; not much fun. (But at least we'll have those extra chain links we needed for Casper's chain!) Luckily a search through the long grass yields it after a few minutes; if also yields a couple of the disgusting leeches Malaysian rain forest is famous for. We discover they hate Dettol — one squirt sends them into a frenzy. Brilliant! Removal and disinfectant in one act. I like!
I have the spare gear cable; a quick cable replacement and derailleur alignment and his bike is as good as new. There's no excuse for not bringing at least one as they pack small and can be bundled into a tidy package with a long brake cable. No need to bring short ones, a long one can be cut down if need be. We keep Bill's sheared spare for exactly this reason. Besides, pack it in, pack it out, right?
By 11:00 A.M. we are at kilometer 14, pretty shagged and ready for lunch. The first seven kilometers took us about an hour; the next seven took twice that. We come through a clearing and cross two pristine mountain streams — the second one has a hard-packed sand bottom and the remains of an old log bridge, and seems a good place to enjoy a rest. According to the map and the GPS it's either Sungai Serdang or close to it. We wash and lube the drivelines on the bikes and wash out our clothes, hang them to dry and enjoy Nasi Goreng courtesy of Casper's mother. Pretty terrific stuff. The local butterflies are in love with Bill's new electric blue Shimano shoes.
It's still difficult going for the next few kilometers, but we are over the hump and now and then we get terrific views of the Kenaboi river valley off to our right. Some of the downhill sections are really a lot of fun if you like them steep and technical. We don't see any sign that the trail has been used much except of the 4x4's; last year there were indications that there was some foot traffic along here. Have all the Orang Asli gone to seek their fortune in Kuala Lumpur? Maybe that's why I'm able to take a Kancil (mouse deer) by surprise, sending him bounding down the trail in front of me like a large furball on sticks. I feel lucky to have seen one on the wild.
Somewhere along here Bill takes a helluva rap on the shins from a hidden branch. It leaves quite a gash and lots of blood, so out comes the medical kit again — wash, disinfect, bandage. That's the second of the two compression bandages used, so from now on we'll have to move them around based on need. I hope it doesn't come to that.
It really pays to be careful going through the vegetation hanging over the trail — ferns brush aside easily but could also be hiding thorns or rotan (rattan) or something absolutely solid, as Bill found out. It's all good fun until someone loses an eye. On last year's ride Twinkletoes was garrotted by a tendril of Fishtail Rotan, and it was not a pretty sight. Casper and I had a good laugh though, after it was established that his jugular had not actually been severed. It only looked that way at first.
After another two hours we make it to a beautiful waterfall just short of kilometer 21. As Casper removes his Camelback he notices he has a fluorescent orange centipede for company. I can't say I've ever seen anyone slam dunk a Camelback with quite that vigour. Rumour has it a centipede sting hurts like extreme hell, so I can't say I blame him. We crack out the filtration unit and replenish our water supplies, and snack on our favorite power food. Lately mine has been Marshmellow Rice Crispy squares. After 5 hours in my backpack they certainly aren't square anymore, but despite the abuse they still taste great. The water looks clear and there isn't likely anybody living upstream in these parts, but it is the tropics and it's not worth taking any chances with bacteria and viruses. It takes us about 15 minutes to filter 8 liters, more than enough to get us to the end of the ride. The filtration unit is a SweetWater Guardian, compact and light, certainly lighter than a couple extra liters of water, let alone 8. And if anything went seriously wrong and we were stuck out for an extended period of time, we would have an unlimited supply of water, the one thing you can't live without.
Amir riding through the tall gingers.
From here the trail climbs one more time to 700 meters at kilometer 23, and then we get some serious downhill action. One can tell from the erosion channels that the trail drains better, and as a consequence it is much drier, rock hard clay with a sprinkling of pebbles on top that give the kind of traction you might get from ball bearings on glass. It's just too much fun for the next 2 kilometers as we lose a bunch of altitude in a series of sharp descents. It's difficult not to ride beyond the limit here, as the trail descends in twists and turns that limit forward visibility and the erosion channels crisscross the trail continually, up to 2 feet deep. A big cloud of dust ahead signals that Casper has dropped all anchors, finding he is rapidly running out of lane. He manages to scrub off enough speed to safely hop a shallow section of ditch; after that the entire left side of the trail is washed away. Yikes! It's like having someone with their hand on your adrenal glands. Squirt! Squirt! Squirt!
At the 25 kilometer mark another trail joins in, and it's obviously well traveled. The trail is still descending steeply, now extremely rough. Last year this section had been freshly surfaced with concrete that yielded no traction whatsoever, but whoever mixed the stuff needs to go back for lessons. It is rapidly going natural, leaving a base of fist sized rocks and some lethal looking bits of heavy metal reinforcing screen poking through. Wouldn't that rip you or your tire a good one? Thankfully it's more fun to ride than the concrete was, but you have to watch like a hawk for any wire that's been torn loose. Another two kilometers and we're done with that, and finally descend into lowland plantation country. We are back to civilization, more or less. We encounter a couple of Orang Asli on a motorcycle who seem extremely surprised to be sharing the road with us. They are the first people we have seen since kilometer 5, 6 hours ago.
10 more kilometers of winding dirt road that parallels the Kenaboi river, gradually losing the last 100 meters of altitude. We can really crank on this stuff and it goes by quickly. We bypass Kampung Esok at Kilometer 30, and from here on we are constantly passing dwellings and people beside the road. At somewhere around Kilometer 40 the road turns to tarmac and we spin off the last 5 kilometers to Kampung Chennah in short order. It's a nice relaxing finish as the narrow tarmac winds through shaded rubber plantations and orchards, but the beauty is mostly lost on us as we are bone-tired and hungry and have only one thought now, getting our sore butts off the saddle. At Kilometer 45 we reach Kampung Chennah Police station, and there's Casper's Truck. The round trip to position it last night took three hours, but the time spent was worth it as the alternative would be another four or five hours of riding to get back to K.L. After 8 hours on the seat in, no thanks. Besides, I left a cooler of beer in the back and right now, it's like the nectar of the gods.
A trip up the road to the Gembar Waterfall for a wash, a change of clothes, and we are almost human again. The only disappointment is the absence of the Ramly Burger man. Who ever heard of a Malaysian waterfall without a Ramly Burger man? I guess he must have retired after we visited him last year, figuring he would never do a single days business to equal that one. Ah, well. Still, got a couple of those marshmellow rice crispy squares left. But they taste decidedly weird with beer to wash them down. Ramly Burgers are better.
Pigpen
2000.06.21
Trailhead and Logistics
Take the Karak highway from Kuala Lumpur heading east towards Kuantan. Immediately after the Karak tunnel, turn left on exit 803 heading towards Janda Baik. Follow the slip road around until it takes you on the old Gombak-Bentong trunk road (route 68). Head north-east, following the signs to Janda Baik. Take the first right on this scenic country road into Janda Baik, which is a pleasant village worthy of a visit in its own right. Continue straight on this road (C1) to the end, going straight ahead at both of the main 3-way junctions on the road. The trail starts at the left-hand fork at the end of the tarmac road, following the Benus river upstream, which will be on your left.The trailhead near the village of Janda Baik is an hour's drive from K.L. The other end at Kg. Chennah is an hour and a half, quite literally the middle of nowhere. Our method was to drop one vehicle at Kg. Chennah the night before, sweet talking the local police to keep an eye out for its well-being, and have my long suffering wife Karen drop us at the trailhead the morning of the ride. You may also cycle the 60km-plus distance back to KL over Genting Peres, as Richard "Vibrator" Aubry, Sha "Dr Nosedive" Damis and Joe did in January 1999, but be prepared to dig deep into your wells of endurance should you attempt this.
The ride itself should be estimated at at least 8 hours, 45 kilometers over badly abused doubletrack, a rarely used logging track and a bit of tarmac at the end. Trail conditions can vary widely: in January 1999, the trail was obstructed in many places by deadfall, at least until km14. Joe's subsequent rides, in June 1999, June 2000, May and July 2001, were during the dry season when the conditions were much better (although see update below).
The trail heads in a south-easterly direction from Janda Baik, first ascending the Benus river valley, then crossing the watershed at the highest point in the ride, before joining the Kenaboi river valley to Kampung Chennah. The vegetation is mostly hill forest that would appear to have been logged sometime in the distant past.
For navigation, a 1:50,000 scale topographic map ("Ulu Langat", Sheet 126) is available from the Mapping and Survey department, but covers the trail only from about km13 onwards. The map for the Janda Baik area ("Ketari", Series L7030 Sheet 3858) is restricted and available only with approval of the Home Ministry.
Update: May 2003
On 1 May 2003, Pat, Joe, Michael Lim and Jake Slodki rode this trail, starting from Kampung Chennah. Due to overgrowth, the trail was very indistinct from the waterfall onwards until about 6 or 7km from Janda Baik. This was because the trail had seen very little vehicular traffic due to a large landslide at about the 20km mark. We had to cut our way for some 15km (very useful to have a long parang), and took more than 20 hours to reach Janda Baik. Having left Kg Chennah at 7.30am, we emerged only at 4.30am the following day, having hacked our way through the night. Despite 3 GPS receivers, navigation was not straight forward, and we had to frequently rely on our memory to corroborate our position.
Due to unseasonal wet weather, the trail in the middle valley had turned into a big swamp, which we spent much time trying to navigate through. The mud in the swamp had many tapir tracks, the significance of which would only hit us, hard, much later.
One week after returning from trip, all 4 of us developed high fevers, interspersed at regular intervals with shivering chills. We all contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial infection caused by leptospira borne in the urine of wild animals. Leptospirosis is said to have a mortality rate of 30-40%. We suspect that the bacteria entered our blood through the many cuts and scrapes on our legs (from rattan and other overgrowth) when we crossed the swamp. Unfortunately, the correct diagnosis was only made after about 3 or 4 days in hospital, due to the similarities in the symptoms of malaria, dengue, leptospirosis and a whole host of other tropical diseases. Mike, Pat and Jake were all prescribed antibiotics almost immediately after the first symptoms appeared, but Joe (who alone among them checked into hospital immediately after the symptoms appeared) did not because the doctors initially suspected dengue (which is caused by a protozoa, against which antibiotics are ineffective).
All of us ultimately checked into hospital. After 3 or 4 days, the fever disappeared, and everyone felt well enough to be discharged. Unfortunately for Joe, his condition considerably worsened a day after discharge, suffering cramps and later symptoms of jaundice (yellow skin, indicating an ailing liver). He was experiencing the second phase of leptospirosis, referred to as Weil's Disease or Syndrome. By the time he was able to get back into hospital, he was experiencing near-total failures of his kidney and liver. At the nadir, he was incoherent, slipped frequently in and out of consciousness, and appeared to have lost some reflexes, as he did not flinch when the nurse inserted a hypodermic needle the size of a small bazooka into his arm. A week's worth of intravenous penicillin did the trick, although it would be many weeks before he would recover fully from the effects of the kidney failure.
Here are a few pointers if you are attempting this trail:
- Any attempt to ride this trail should be preceded by a recce, so that you can determine the condition of the trail beforehand.
- It would be best to have someone who is familiar with the trail go along with you. If you would like tracklogs of the trail for your GPS unit, e-mail Joe.
- Try to avoid crossing still water.
- Before attempting this ride, consult a GP who is familiar with leptospirosis, telling him or her that you anticipate having to cross bad water suspected to contain leptospira. A prophylactic antibiotic called doxycyline is sometimes prescribed to prevent infection.
It was interesting to note that the 3 who did take antibiotics immediately after the first symptoms appeared were not subsequently affected by the second phase of the disease. It is possible that taking doxycycline immediately after the first symptoms appear may prevent Weil's disease, although this does not appear to be documented anywhere.
Trivia
- In 2001, the PCC's Hell-on-bikes tour made a variation of the route: at Kampung Tohor, the riders crossed the Kenaboi river and ascended the Genting Peres pass through logging tracks (which unfortunately were very hot and exposed). This track joined the main road just shy of the peak of the pass. This trip took 2 days, with the riders spending a night in the hills in a camp near an orang asli village. Read about this ride here: An unforgettable 74km journey of never ending torture
- Encounters with fauna: apart from the tapir and wild boar tracks and the kancil or mousedeer that Pat "Pigpen" Brunsdon saw, we've also come across elephant dung and tracks (May 2001) and gibbons leaping through the forest trees (June 1999).
- According to Wan Ghazalli Mansor, a veteran mountain biker who told Joe about this trail, a wild elephant killed an orang asli on this trail sometime in the early 1990s.
- In July 2001, we came across a bunch of folk who were clearing the way for a pilot road into the jungle! A road is planned that will link Pahang to Negeri Sembilan via the Benus and Kenaboi river valleys.
