Ride to Frasers

June 7th 2008: Very early in the morning, we set out on our hour long drive to Kuala Kubu Baru (KKB). On the NS highway there are several exits. One of them leads us through a "ghost town" off of Bkt Beruntung. Fascinating how these almost town sized buildings can be just abandoned and left to rot.
Anyway, unbeknowest to many people, just a few km from KKB, lies a big and beautiful lake (manmade it seems), where 2 rivers meet to form a very huge reservoir supplying electricity to various parts of malaysia. It was along this lake that we parked and began our ride up. 25km of gradual uphill.

Weather today was great for this ride... cool, cloudy, breezy. Our aim, get up to frasers, lunch, and back.

We had 2 unfortunate changes in plans. One was that "the Gap" was closed for renovations. This was the age old place where i'd come to once or twice as a little kid with my parents on one of our trips to Frasers. My hope to visit the place for a cup of coffee was foiled. Ended up eating a coconut bun on the road while taking a rest.
The second change in plans we had to make was the route up. Due to a HUGE landslide (http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/National/2268100/
Article/index_html)
which we didnt know about, the entire highway for the route UP to frasers was closed. Because of this, the OLD route had to be used and the 1 hour up and 1 hour down traffic laws were back. Odd hours up and even hours down the final 8km climb.
This to us was a challenge because we didnt have racing bikes, and we were not quite mentally prepared for a fast 8km/hour climb uphill, let alone a fairly steep one.
We decided that if we couldnt make up in an hour, and the traffic reversed, we'd just have to turn back and come down.
At 1pm we started up.
Ride ride ride... as fast as our fitness allowed. No chance to stop and rest... just climb all the way as fast as we could.
We made it.
Frasers that day was cold, damp, drizzly... but still the same quaint, quiet, left-alone place.
Very nice stay for a day or two; anything longer than a week up here and any city person will probably go insane from nothinglessness.

At 2.20pm, after about 40 mins of riding around and taking picts, we headed back down.
Ah.. the rewards of climbing are simple...
A relaxed, swift ride down 30 plus km downhill !!!
Nice.