Blog / Bumping Through the Jungle

24 March 2012

I'm expecting a flat easy day today, with a few bumps and maybe with a nice tailwind. No can do.

It's not as bad as yesterday, but the ups and downs are still there, albeit smaller. There's a flattish cruise at the start, then it's bumps all day, including a painfully steep one at around 60km down. It doesn't help that my legs are still feeling yesterday's efforts. The hoped-for northerly tailwind doesn't show at all.

There's some good views over jungle onto hills and karst in the first half of the day, but as the day wears on plantations reappear, and it gets rather repetitive. The last 25km or so are straight through newly planted palm oil plantations - I feel like the road was only put in as a means of getting the palm oil out.

Kuala Lipis is a cute and oddly configured little town clumped around the rail line, the main road and the river. A couple of strips of shophouses make up the old town, sandwiched between the iron and the water. Most of them were built in the 20s. On the riverside there is a clutch of overseas Chinese clubhouses. I wonder if goods used to be transshipped from rail to river here.

110km, 20.9km/h, 5hr14min, 7781km, c.e.g. 1663m

Older: Back Down Into the Oxygen Soup | Newer: Out of the Hills, Hopefully