Cameron Highlands
Pauh Campsite - Mount Jasar - Mount Berembun Mount Brinchang - Mount Irau
Cameron Highlands
Cameron Highlands (Chinese: 金马崙高原, Tamil: கேமரன் மலை) is Malaysia's largest hill-station area, and with an elevation that ranges from 1300 m to 1800 m and a mean annual temperature of about 18 °C, is famous for its cool weather and huge tea plantations that decorate its rolling hills. The area was named after William Cameron, an explorer who mapped the area back in 1885. Before we go on, please jot down the numbers that are listed below. If you do see any suspicious behaviour when out hiking, encounter things like traps and snares, or even see protected animals or their parts that are sold as either collectibles, pets, or for (so-called) medicine, then please do not hesitate to contact the wildlife crime hotline. Be sure to try and document it as best you can with photos or video without putting yourself in danger, and take note of the details: descriptions of those who are involved, as well as when and where it took place.
"The Wildlife Crime Hotline, managed by the Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers (MYCAT), provides YOU an avenue to report offences involving endangered wildlife in Malaysia. We protect the identity of all informants, only key info of the reports are forwarded to the authorities."
Emergency Numbers
Wildlife Crime Hotline 019-356 4194 Wildlife Department 1800 885 151 Cameron Highlands Forestry Department 09–3551 060 Cameron Highlands Hospital 05-4911 966 Cameron Highlands Bomba 09-4911 003 Tanah Rata Police Station 05-4915 443 Ringlet Police Station 05-4956 222 Kg. Raja Police Station 05-4981 222 JKR Cameron Highlands 05-4911 105Getting There
There are plenty of buses that travel to or from the Tanah Rata bus station from various towns around Malaysia. The bus tickets cost approximately MYR40 from Kuala Lumpur and Penang and MYR100 from KLIA. If you choose to drive from Kuala Lumpur instead, you need to exit the highway using the Tapah toll, Tanah Rata is about an hour and a half away from this point.
Tea Plantations
Boh Tea owns some of the largest tea plantations in the area, with the main tea plantation located near Habu, between the towns of Ringlet and Tanah Rata. The company produces about 4 million kilograms of tea annually, translating to about 5 and a half million cups a day. The Bharat tea plantation, established in 1933, is the second largest tea producer in Cameron Highlands.
Flora & Fauna
Epiphytes are ubiquitous in the higher altitudes of this temperate zone, and the moss that can be found higher up seem to coat the trees like a soft second skin. The vegetation slowly changes as one ascends the mountains, from the rainforests at the lower elevations to the cloud forests higher up. Besides the unique vegetation, Cameron highlands is a home to a wide variety of animals, with a few of them listed as vulnerable in the IUCN Red List. One of those listed is the Sumatran serow (Capricornis sumatraensis), a strange-looking goat-antelope that, in Peninsular Malaysia at least, has a population that is said to only number in the hundreds.
Interactive Location Map
The low temperatures and the unique flora and fauna of Cameron Highlands make its trails fairly popular to the hiking community. The trails themselves are fairly established and are fairly easy, with the hardest of them not surpassing the class 4 rating (fairly straightforward). The map below has some of the more common trails hyperlinked. Clicking on each section of the route will bring you to its respective page (if the map does not work for any reason, you may also find the links at the top of this page). The GPS routes for each leg of the journey can also be found at the end of the post for each of the respective days.
Malaysia Overview
