Gerik to viewpoint 'campsite'

Saturday January 27, 2018, 42 miles (67 km) - Total so far: 3,326 miles

(5,353 km)

We set out with the intention of camping near Temengorr reservoir, as suggested on Traveling Two's account of this route. This meant a short (albeit fairly strenuous) day of 43km. However, when we arrived at the specified spot, there was nothing but a very old, battered sign.....perhaps the camping no longer happens? That said, the lake is lovely and we backtracked and found a good lunch at the Rainforest research centre. I expect you could camp around here somewhere if you asked the right person. You can also arrange trips into the Royal Belum state park.

Revived, we bought some water and then headed off once again. Our legs felt remarkably fresh as they started climbing for a second time. We had a couple of ideas of where we might camp based on other people's accounts, and various points marked on maps.me. We also spent a lot of time looking out for flat patches of lawn (few and far between in these parts) and, of course, elephants! We didn't see any, but we did see some fresh dung. We also saw tons of monkeys earlier in the ride.

We ended up camping at our agreed furthest point for today's ride - the 'viewpoint' marked on maps.me. There's a fair bit of flat ground but it's all quite stony, so we went for the luxury option and camped on the top floor of the viewing platform! Fabulous view! Stealth camping this was not, but no one gave us any trouble - just a few friendly waves. It was a great spot in that it was flat and under cover (no need for fly sheet and great for cooking), but not so great in that it was a bit noisy and there isn't much privacy for calls of nature. There's actually a toilet in the bottom of the tower but unfortunately it was locked.

Note that we did then see several good looking spots for camping the following morning, so keep going if you don't fancy the penthouse!