Mini Escapism : Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve + Mini Hike in the City

I've been wanting to bring Af to Bukit Nanas Reserve Forest or KL Forest Eco-Park *the new name since 3 years ago when we both explored the KL city together on foot. It was closed for construction, twice when we randomly visited the place. 

It is finally open last year but we couldn't find time to go until last Saturday. 

I really wanted to go before the fasting and Raya month, so we had to push aside other activities and focus solely on achieving that. The day before, one of the worst heavy rain hit KL and Bukit Jalil, that resulted the heavy traffics that Friday night, most signboards and trees along side of the road were broken and mutilated. We wanted to avoid the rain, so we went there right before lunch hour instead.

We used Waze, took around half an hour to reach there on Mex highway, and we parked right in front of Jalan Gereja. We started our mini hike in the city before lunch and I thought maybe we will take around 1-2 hours to finish the course?

Here is the view of the forest from Google Maps :

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We started at the entrance near Jalan Gereja/Jalan Raja Chulan. I knew the path because I went there back in 2012-2013, the path was better than before :D We headed to the newly open Canopy Walk not far from the main entrance.

Length : 200 meter long
Above Ground : 15 metres
Fees : Free
Condition : Brand new 

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We arrived at the other end soon after and decided to use the stair path to finish it up. It was a really short walk, until we saw an illustrated map near the exit showing a big forest trail map in the Taman Eko Rimba itself next to the other canopy walk exit that we passed through before ! We didn't know ! So we had to head back to the top and finally found the other entrance =.=

There weren't anyone during the hike except for a foreigner that we kept on stumble upon for more than 5 times because we took different trails and they were all intertwine at one point or another. We took the easiest course with the proper bricks trail instead of the jungle tracks because my legs were still badly sore from the hill trainings I did before - and I wanted the fastest route. We were both famished ! This is how the jungle track starts *we didn't take this trail :

Stairs, stairs and more stairs.  

We found a mentioned "Bamboo walk" by name - but just a long pathway to groups of huge bamboo on the left and smaller bamboos on the right =.= By that time, I referred to the map again and decided to take a detour and end our trail at the mini canopy walk with exit to the mini zoo. But alas ! The gate is closed, so we had to reroute.

Af said that we should continue our trail to the other exit like we planned. We stopped by at the abandoned par course to snap some eerie pictures before we sat a Chinese guy. He was all sweating and panting, he told us that the other exit is closed for construction, so if we want to continue our path, we have to take the jungle track way farther inside. He seemed a bit pissed of and exhausted, he then told us that he was heading back. 

There was no other choice than to return to our previous course and hike back towards the entrance T^T 

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I was curious. Both my legs were cramping so bad *I had 2 days of hiking training and haven't had my rest day yet during that time, and it was my 3rd consecutive day of hill training =.= So I manage to count the distance of our trail path. We hiked and walked for approximately 'only' 3.5 km ! I thought it was more than that, considering we spent for almost 3 hours in the mini forest, finding ways and explored the places. Plus, I was exhausted like I've never trained in my life, and here I thought I was fit and ready =.= But Af said his legs were fine during the exploration, and I can conclude that this bad muscle strain was caused by my hill training at the gym + our mini hike. So normal people can go on any of the trails fine, they are less than 5 km pun.. You can choose harder forest trails, because there are a lot of trails you can choose from, we took the easiest ones but the one with the most stairs.

Here is a rough map of our trail that includes several repetition of the same trail because we keep on getting lost and some of the paths were closed for construction.

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I think I need recovery time for at least 2 days before starting my next hill training because seriously, I can't walk properly, I can't even bend my knees or sit comfortably. Not even minor yoga stretches ! :D But I'm really happy we did this.

Note : My iphone 4s is currently dying and couldn't do more than minimal task. Not quite sure 'when' I will buy the new SE, so before reaching to that, I'm going to fully utilise my LX3 again to take photos. I've forgotten how fulfilling it is to use my old friend. Here is a highlighted picture of me with LX3 :