There's one good reason why tourists usually don't venture this far into the heart of darkness ? the bus trip to get here.
Staring out of the window in typical tourist awe while winding past tea plantations, cloud nine comes to mind. But then the rickety bus ventures higher, until the road becomes narrower, windier, overwhelmed by jungle?
Suddenly you're on an ascent to hell, clinging to the unsuspecting tourist to your right, while banging your head routinely on the window next to you as the bus takes the next corner on two wheels!
When we arrived at Tanah Rata, one of the small, bizarrely colonial towns in the Highlands (perhaps a legacy left by the area's British coloniser), all visions of hell disappeared and we settled into our rather comfy hotel.
Walking the streets, lined with vendors serving local food plucked from a nearby gutter (or so it seems), Tanah Rata is lush and cool in stark contrast to the hotter coastal regions.
Somewhat of a melting pot, one can also find a variety of restaurants to choose from serving anything from chop suey and roti, to teppanyaki and toasted sandwiches.
So close to civilization, yet so far...
There was one Indian joint which, as I recall, served yellow rice and sambals on banana leaves. The only reason I remember this is because this was my first and last meal in the Highlands, not due to any kind of gut-wrenching Bombay curry, but rather due to events which followed?
My father spent some of his childhood years in the Cameron Highlands, being forced to attend a school for missionary children (talk about abandonment issues) and took us on a short walk to see the remains of the school and the surroundings.
Our midday walk was rather intriguing: strange insects screeched overhead as we made our way deeper into the jungle...
After a look around the school my boyfriend Richard and I decided to walk a short trail for the rest of the afternoon while the remainder of the party turned back.
This was no ordinary day-hike
At one point we came to a junction where the signs were pretty unclear, so we took what looked like the right path. Fatal error.
Soon enough we were descending down monkey ropes in pure childlike bliss, oblivious to the fact that this wasn't an ordinary day hike.
The path seemed endless. The clock rolled round to 5.30pm, leaving just an hour of sunlight in this rather chilly corner of Malaysia.
Then the path mysteriously disappeared into a small river of sorts, and while trudging through knee-deep water, I began to panic.
When we stumbled upon a man-made structure: a stack of poles with a sackcloth roof and beds, Richard turned to me and said: "This means that we are going to sleep here, as this would not be here unless it was necessary".
Naturally I burst into tears.
We had one apple on us, and one rain jacket?
A night of hallucinations
There was what appeared to be some kind of cooker and so with nothing else to do but wait for dark we attempted to play MacGyver, but our efforts were useless and so after some more tears we settled into our sackcloth beds.
The night consisted of hallucinations ? me imaging the fireflies nearby were a search party coming to rescue us; a lot of shaking due to what, after magical Thailand, felt like sub-zero temperatures; and a few anxiety attacks thanks to rather disturbing noises not too far off.
At first light we attempted to out our shoes back on ? fingers still frozen from the cold ? and plodded back the way we came. When we reached the exit we almost expected people to congratulate us, hug us, welcome us back to the real world...
Apparently there was no search party, as the police said people get lost here all the time (usually for more than one night). So we counted ourselves lucky. And luckier still, as if we had carried on going in the direction we were headed in then, said the police: "they might have never come back."