I did this hike while spending 3 days in KL. As I’m always looking to do something a bit off the beaten path, I thought it was going to be a bit challenging to go hiking in Kuala Lumpur.
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Fortunately it was not too difficult to find a couple of trails close enough from the city centre to make it easily accessible but far enough to make you feel in close contact with nature.
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Booking.comThe Bukit Tabur Trail, aka DragonBack Trek, it’s considered to be the longest crystal quartz outcrop in the world, a proper nature wonder so close to the city! who’d have thought that hiking in Kuala Lumpur would be already so cool!
It’s a fantastic day out from the skyscraper dominated city centre and something you don’t find in all the what to do in Kuala Lumpur tourist guides. In fact, I only saw 4 people in the entire trek!
There are two different Bukit Tabur trails, the West and the East. The West is the most commonly hiked path as it’s a bit easier. I decided to go for the East one as I read it was more technical and fun!
To get there, we had to take first a Metro to Sri Rampai and then a bus towards Taman Melawati.
This bus will leave you 5 min walk away from the trail entrance (this may be different depending on where you’re located in KL). To find the start of the trail, you need to walk towards the river and then enter a path under a couple of big water pipes, it will quickly get quite steep but fear not, it will get easier after 100m.
I had read on a different blog that this trail was free (and the West had a Rm 5 fee) but after 200m of walk we were encountered by a local that said we had to pay Rm 5.
I don’t know if we were fouled but for just over US$1 we were not going to stop our hiking plans and we paid him.
The path is easy to follow, it’s a mix in between short climbs and flat parts. After about 10min you get the first steep climb, for which you find some ropes that will make it safer to go up.
I highly recommend to go with hiking boots or trainers as the terrain can be slippery and some parts can be a bit technical, but not too difficult.
On your way up you will find plenty of view points, towards the dam area and the city. Take plenty of water with you as it can get pretty hot!
Once you reach the summit, which has a sign pointing this out, you can still continue walking for about 100m more, the path will end at a cliff, which caused me a bit of confusion as it has a rope as if to go down the cliff.
This is a pretty dangerous thing to do! unless you have proper mountaineering equipment re-trace your steps and go down on the same path you took initially.
After about 15 minutes going down, you will have an intersection, we took the left path to go down on a different way and it took us down to about 300m away from when we started, I’d suggest to do the same just to take a different path. In any case, both paths will take you down.
The entire walk, including plenty of stops for talking and photos, took us 3 hours.
This is a fantastic day out in Kuala Lumpur, puts you in contact with nature and it’s great exercise. You get wonderful views and the way back down is not too long, so you could time your climb to see the sunset there!
The same as it happens in Singapore where I camped for two nights, most of the time we have nature almost knocking on our door.
If you want to go hiking in Kuala Lumpur, go to the Bukit Tabur Trails and you will love them!
