The one thing a lot of people love to do is to go hiking and what better thing to do in the early hours of the day, breathing in fresh air and getting a spot of exercise. That was the initial plan when BK decided that a group of us would head over to Taman Melawati and climb up Bukit Tabur. We decided to do this on Labour Day itself and boy, was I wrong about it being a holiday. There is no way in hell that I would consider it a holiday.

Let me begin to explain to you why I don’t call it a holiday. First of all, it is not a walk nor is it a hike nor is it an early morning stroll. Going up Bukit Tabur consists of not only hiking up but also climbing up rock walls which are almost at a 90 degree angle which in my opinion, is only meant for mountain goats to scale up.

The view however, was something else indeed. The early morning sun coupled with the cool breeze was something out of the norm to me.

Before reaching the first peak or basically the first wall where we had to scale, you could actually get a peek of KL City with the Petronas Twin Towers and the KL Tower basically in perfect view (praise God that the weather was good that day).

(Left to right: Me, Yu How, Chris, Boon)

Of course I needed proof that was up there as well but to be entirely honest, this was just the first peak and I could still carry my camera bag. After an hour, I was literally crawling on the ground because I was just so exhausted! Every stop I could make, I rested. I won’t even begin to tell you about my pants! (I shall leave that for another story or do join me in one of my mamak sessions with the four blokes up there and you will hear all about my pants).

I took the photo above to show how high up we were and you can practically see the clouds at this level.

Most of the photos were actually taken before the first “wall” where you actually have a view of the water dam. In the early morning, the place looks absolutely gorgeous and stunning. Definitely worth making another trip there again with more gears (namely some filters and some tripods).

The last image above shows Bukit Tabur from Taman Melawati (which is near the National Zoo). Basically you can see about 5 peaks and to climb throughout the entire hill you would need to scale through at least 4. The fifth however is just another hill but in order to get to the pass downhill, you would need to climb down again.

In total, it took me almost 6 hours to climb through that. Definitely something I want to experience again in the near future but I do plan to head up the first peak just to take photographers. But first, I need a tripod for that.