We finally made it to the Cameron Highlands after a pretty long, bumpy and rainy drive. Emily sat in the very back seat of the small tour bus, right above the wheel well, which made for an elementary school bus-type experience (violently being thrown around, left and right, up and down). I sat up front, right next to a seasoned pro-driver. After 30 years of driving the route daily, the man knew all the turns and bumps and could drive with his eyes closed (and sometimes hands off the wheel as he was unwrapping mints). Our driver gave us tips that I thought would be incredibly helpful but weren’t – the best chicken marsala in town (at a resturant which ended up being closed) and for “the best tour in town” (which in our opinion was pretty weak).
We ended up staying at De’Cameron Hostel, a small guesthouse run by a incredibly kind and incredibly non-english speaking Indian family. We had a small private room overlooking a very busy and loud street (probably the loudest trucks I’ve ever heard in my life barged through the block at 5am). The Mom of the household made us a delicious breakfast each morning, a roti canai (a pancake/naan/tortilla type thing served with a yellow curry sauce) accomplained by some tea.
The Cameron Highlands is an area that’s known for its black tea, however, most of the good teas get exported and all the lower-grade tea is kept here in town for local consumption. This results in almost every beverage in town being cut with an incredible amount of sugar and/or milk. You have to make a point to ask for coffee without sugar or milk, and you also have to deal with the strange looks you get from the person taking your order. Sugar is in everything here. That said, the food here is pretty damn incredible. We found and frequented our two favorite local spots, a small café known for its tea & scones and a resturant along the main street known for the best southern Indian style food in town. In fact, we ended up eating at these resturants so much, that upon noticing visible weight gain in photos (don’t worry, we deleted them), we came up with three ground rules to try to keep our bodies flab-free:
1. Thou shalt not eat curry like soup (just trust us on this one. It’s okay if the naan to sauce ratio is off, the human body can only handle so much curry – certainly not by the spoonful).
2. Thou shalt not eat a second breakfast (an easy trap to fall into, I assure you. Our hostel didn’t serve coffee in the mornings, a must for Emily and a must for a newly-caffeine-addicted me, so that turned into us going to resturants to get coffee, which turned into us staring at menus, which turned into second breakfasts, which turned into rule #2).
3. Thou shalt not eat cookies as a lunch substitute (a quick and assured way to get fat. Cookies are not snacks, repeat: cookies are not a nutritious meal substitute).
The afternoons here are consistently rainy, as we’re on the shoulder of the monsoon season. This meant that the majority of our outdoor activities had to take place in the morning, right after our second breakfast, right before our cookie lunches. On the first day, Emily and I went for a hike on trail #10 (the trails here aren’t named, only numbered) which ended up being a surprisingly short but surprisingly sweaty trek up muddy jungle roots.
The trails here are covered in vines and complex spider web-like root networks, which are prime for catching shoes and tripping up hikers not on top of their game. Sweaty, hungry for cookies, we make it to the top and were met with a beautiful panoramic view of the Cameron Highlands landscape:
On the second day, we met up with our two German travel buddies, Lisa and Michelle, to go on a tour of all the local spots: the highest peak/ Mossy Forest, the infamous BOH black tea plantation and factory, a butterfly farm (which felt more like a butterfly prision), and a strawberry farm. Along the way, our guide showed us old British stones that indicated property lines, gave us plants that were the basis of mouth wash (maybe he was tired of our masala-breath), and showed us plants that aided in digestion (again, helpful in the first commandment – curry ain’t soup).
In the afternoon, we decided we wanted to rent some scooters to cruise around and explore with the two Germans. This was the first time Emily or I had ever been on a scooter and we were pretty nervous and unsure of how we’d do. Turns out one of us was more unsure than the other. After the kind scooter renters showed us the basics, like turning the thing on for example, the shop owners felt that we were ready to hit the road. In less time than it took the owners to put the security deposit into the cash register, Emily (1) ran the scooter confidently into a fence (knocking it down) and (2) tipped the scooter over in the intersection in front of the rental shop (everyone quickly ran over). Thankfully, Emily was okay and the deposit was partially salvaged – but the consensus was that Emily was better off sitting on the back of my bike.
And so we scootered around the local roads, to places where Michelle and Lisa excitedly exclaimed that there weren’t any Germans around (German tourism here is high), to roads that were mysteriously inhabited by puppies (we weren’t complaining) and finally to the scooter shop (where they were extremely excited to see us, and their bikes, in one piece).
All in all, we had a ton of fun in the highlands, learned alot about dieting, and learned that some people just aren’t meant for scooters.
CAMERON HIGHLANDS > GEORGETOWN