My holiday schedules tend to be always very tight and especially when I travel alone I give only little to no time to rest. Here it was no different, but I felt that after running 100k I should recover a bit, so I gave myself one day before climbing Mount Kinabalu, 4095m high Borneo prominent mountain and highest peak in the South East Asia.
Because the mountain is a National park you are obliged to
pay many fees, hire a guide, sleep in a mountain lodge and purchase meals for
two days. Agencies online or in Kota Kinabalu wanted 1500 ringgits, which was
way over my budget, because I’ve read a blog that a guy did it all for 500!! So
when I didn’t find anybody in the city to arrange the tour for that much I said
“Ok then…let’s go to the park gate and see how is the real situation there” and
on Monday early morning I took a shared taxi up to the mountains.
By chance two Finish girls Iitu and Jenni were already
inside on the same quest, so the two hour ride flew by nicely. Even bigger
coincidence was that we met another two Finish guys Ville and Jarkko and Dave
the Australian at the gate arranging the trip up. And this is the spirit of
travelling J I
was ready to do it on my own, but his was just excellent. More people, more
fun!! I paid all the fees, booked a bed in the top lodge, which was supposed to
be booked out, we hired one guide together, picked up a packed lunch pack and
headed up. And with no commission to anybody the trip was exactly what I
wanted. There are a lot of traps set for uninformed travelers. I luckily
escaped this one ;)
The climb itself is very easy, so a lot of people go up.
Fortunately it was low season so we, all strong and fast hikers, didn’t have to
fight our way up through a crowd on a narrow and steep trail full of steps. But
I was definitely not the fastest. I had quite a hard time going up. Feet full
of blisters, muscles still aching from the marathon and full backpack of
survival gear for two days (just in case it wouldn’t go well at the gate)
didn’t help either! But in around four hours we climbed those 6km and 1200
vertical meters to Laban Rata lodge and were waiting for dinner. Beer I was
carrying up and the warm sleeping bag were well welcomed J
As it is at almost all the big mountains, the ascent starts
during the night to be at the top for sunrise. We had 2km and 800m more to
climb so we started at 2am. And it was freezing cold with constant drizzling
and quite strong chilling wind, but we were happy that we were allowed to make
the climb. The guys from day before
couldn’t do it because of heavy rains!! And it was the same smooth and easy
hiking up a wet stone slopes occasionally holding onto a fat white rope lying
on the ground. This also served as an excellent lifeline that you don’t get
lost in the dark as many hikers had none or very weak torches J
I knew that were are
starting too early and we would be waiting up there for the sunrise quite a
while, but what to do…better early than sorry!! And it was work it…I had enough
time to position my camera and film and watch the sunrise come up between the
clouds. Because of the cloud cover it was not that spectacular, but still
magical when the clouds were flying just around you and you were looking down
up to the sea. I spend a lot of time up there and didn’t want to leave despite
shaking cold, but after 45 minutes of recording flying clouds around I followed
the lifeline back down to have the second breakfast with the other who left
long time ago. I just love heights and mountains and was enjoying every step.
After having some more food at the lodge we headed down back
to the gate. Lower were getting more I felt that those awesome four days in
Borneo are getting to its end. We regrouped once more at an Indian bar at Kota
Kinabalu promenade, but because we were all quite tired from the climb we
finished early, said goodbye and everyone continued its own direction of a free
traveler. Dave flew to Vietnam, Ville and Jarkko back to Malaysia, Iitu and
Jenni to Singapore and me to Kuala Lumpur and then to Thailand J
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