[Travel] Bukit Timah
Perhaps one of the most flattering things in life I’ve stumbled across recently is to looking around on what nature has given to us over all these times. I didn’t realize that it is so much fun to go explore to different places, be it extreme or mild in terms of adventure level. This time around, me and my girlfriend is lucky to get up to the Summit of Bukit Timah in Singapore since the weather doesn’t seem to bright on that day itself.
Took a bit of guessing here and there to get there. But it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find this place, eventually.
By taking the bus 170 from Newton MRT station, you are supposed to alight and get down to a place that has a lot of shops and restaurants on both left and right side of the road. Cheong Chin Nam Road would be few metres (approximately around 20 metres) away from the bus stop.
If you are unsure, right almost next to the road, there’s this Da Vinci shop. I think this shop sells lighting for house interiors.
By walking a bit further down the road, you will come across this flyover that you can cross over towards the other side of the road.
Look ahead you while on top of the flyover bridge, the top/summit of the nature reserve is just right ahead you.
Upon going down from the bridge, go straight and over 50 metres, you’ll stumble across the entrance of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. It’s pretty straight forward onward. From what I understand, there’s actually several trails that leads you up to the summit.
This is the Kampong Trail which is supposingly the easiest and relaxing one. As you approaching the entrance itself, you would certainly notice a change in the tempreature, possibly due to the trees around.
Not so long after that, we’re greeted by this tiny cute creature known as monkey.
I’m not sure why, but it seems this dude is trained to be posing professionally in front of a camera.
While there might not be lot of things for you to look around near the entrance, as you walk forward you might discover more things ahead.
Such as this welcome-stone.
And some really serious looking dude.
This is where the trail starts.
Suprisingly, though our main intention is to head up to the summit only, we never realized that there is a lot of diversion from the main trail itself that leads you to different attraction inside the reserve, I’d wish we had a lot more time that day.
While as you go up ahead towards the trail, you’ll notice that it’ll get more steep, but instead of running towards the top, try going up slowly, possibly it’ll help you to save more breathe. While it may surprise to most of you that haven’t seen it, there’s quite a lot amount of locals that is walking backward towards the bottom of the hill. Well for my side of story, I’ve once heard that the reason people walking backward is a practice that they believe that would lengthen their life from increased blood circulation. It’s a belief that is said that to have the same amount of backward walking in compared to your usual walking habit. What do you think? A myth?
As you go around, you’ll notice a lot of high-rise trees around you. Things you can expect from a tropical forest.
As from what I mentioned earlier on alternative diversion of trail, there’s some as narrow as this, I just had no idea where it will lead us.
After a casual walk for an about 30 minutes, you will see a path that leads you right to the top of the hill directly, and another road on the left side. Basically both path will reach the summit of this hill, but if you choose to go through this direct path, you will just need to go through the stairs.
But if you decided on a non-extreme path like me, and took the left one to the top, you might spot more exciting things around you. We think that this resembles something that we have from human…pimples.
Almost a symmetrical shaped leaf.
Fungus-ed tree trunk.
The Summit
As you reach the top, do not hold your expectation too high on things to expect here.
The mark.
This does come to me as odd where this flowers only seems to exist right at the top of the hill and no where else?
There’s two of these radio transmission tower beside you as well.
While there’s nothing much to see here, probably just to hang around for a while, we decided to back down through the “stairs” path that we didn’t take. this is the signboard that leads you there.
And of course before we are about to leave, we saw this massively huge tree.
Some overgrown mushrooms. (fungus)
Feels like SMB all over again.
There’s ant there if you notice. (My bad for not zooming near enough)
The stairs up to the summit, we’re taking it backward, walking down of it.
As the weather turned cold and about to rain, had no choice but to leave early.
If you wonder what these might be, it’s all over the place here that marks the different colour of the path you took, namely there’s total of 4 path, with RED being the easiest one.
And as soon we have reached towards the bottom of the hill, there’s still weird looking chilies.
And a lot of monkeys on the entrance.
Basically this trip has been a short but fun one, probably would give it another visit next time just to check out the gardens and alternative trails. Below are some links to get you started :