Gunung Dato

Now here's somewhere i've gone over deepavalli... now legs are all "jellified" and had a serious flu case yesterday - would say a total work out, legs with the climb, and stomach with the non-stop sneezing! man! totally KO'ed by the combo...

To Get There
Gunung Datuk is about 1½ hours drive from KL. To go there, get onto the North-South Expressway and head South for Rembau, Negeri Sembilan. Take Exit 223 (Pedas/Linggi). Immediately after the toll, take a left turn at the T-junction.

Go all the way along the road until you reach a round-about. If you follow the signboards along the way, you will be directed to take the 12 o'clock exit to Pedas town.

However, a much shorter and quicker route is to take the 3-o'clock exit (you'll by-pass Pedas). Continue along the road until you come to the traffic lights at the end of the road. Take a right turn. Keep going forward (you will soon pass another set of traffic lights) until you see a signboad indicating a left turn to Gunung Datuk. Take the left turn and move on for about About 4km. There will be a junction to the left. This road goes through a rubber estate. Not long along the road, there is a fork; take the left turn. Go all the way and you'll come to Gunung Datuk's base camp.

The BITCHING corner:
now since the formality is over, let the BITCHING session begin.... (hey, if you dun like it, too bad, its MY blog and i have every right to BITCH here :P )

1) since this was a "gunung", i was actually expecting a rather "fit" team of hikers to tackle the "gunung" - but when we got there, its a 870m high HILL!!! 2) we had one of the worst beginning ever, 2 whole cars were LATE! bitching about haven't had breakfast and want to buy lunch when there was a mail sent out a week advance to prepare all these things before we leave from the gathering point.
3) our first casualty of the day happen 50KM before we even reach base camp - someone decided to crap her brains out at a R&R and never even bother to tell us she was sick in the first place.
4) all the negativity got even more as we got nearer to the base camp (things from over packing and the huge ass girl in our group would roll backwards down the "gunung" half way up)
5) we got our nightmare almost full filed- team consisting of 70% first time hill/jungle/gunuhng hikers!!! and we were bracing ourselves for the worst.

The nightmare....
1) now here we are climbing up the "gunung" with henry and i carrying our D70's kit and 2L water each, plus junk. Being the tail enders we'll have to wait for all the jim bang's "heroes" tackling the fierce "mountain"
2) now here's a quick tip... when ascending or descending a mountain, only stop at the "flat" areas and not on the slopes... hullo!!!! it hurts your muscles and joints more if you stop at an unstable surface!
3) now heres what i really hated during the whole trip up the climb... the constant BITCHING of "I'm Tired" , "I'm scared!!!" , "I'm all sweaty", "why is it so difficult going up the hill", "why so much insects" , "how long more to go?", " can i sit here and wait for u all to finish your climb?" - oh yeah!!! i'm not kidding, try getting this from 3 frantic ladies the whole way up!!!
4) now here's where the constant beginners mistakes are always done = over packing! and not surprisingly are from the ladies.... imagine, extra food that you'll never use all packed and all the other hikers have to carry them, and still have to listen to their rambling! argh... the anguish!
5) now fast forwarding pass all the screaming and bitching, heres another major mistake... running out of water... now here i am thinking about how in the world can they overpack their bags with loads of rubbish, but forgot all about the water????????
so, enough of the bitching, here are some of the "moments" that's i've capture on the hill :)

now how can people keep complaining when you have such wonderful forestry and wildlife?

now this location i will call it, the crying gape... oh how someone cried like a baby trying to cross the "canyon"!

and here is the close up look at the "deadly"canyon.

While waiting for the group to move up, the photographers decided to have our own filming time

Here's the view from top of the mountain

Now since i left the bunch of complaining ladies behind, i decided to have a cool dip in the pool at the bottom of the "mountain" and took a couple of pics of the locals there (dang, i wish i had my 70-200 here.. they were just "beautiful")

Nibble nibble, taut taut, STRIKE! Fish On!!!